When I set out to take on the matter of cover songs, I thought I’d be seeking uncomplicated answers to simple questions like: Is there such a thing as a definitive version of a song? Who decides these things? And why do we care? When it got down to probing the world of covers, or, more accurately, versions, all bets were off (although, that said, the Jimi Hendrix version of “All Along the Watchtower” by Bob Dylan is always a safe bet when it comes to defining version status).

Taking a byway or wrong turn on the covers trail is easy; there within exist roads toward the novelty version, the instrumental, and the dead end, note-for-note tribute. There’s the possibility of exploring traditional songs and ballads and tracing the origin of a song for hundreds of years. And then there is the big question of taste: I could hardly offer up a list of versions without forgetting your favorite and inspiring hatred from the most passionate readers. I don’t think I’d be going out on a limb if I said that Devo’s version of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” stands as a high watermark of versions, while we’d all be better off if we never heard Samantha Fox’s dance-pop take on Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Want to Be With You” ever again. Yet there is a harmonious junction where every cover version worth a jukebox dime lives: It’s at the intersection of rhythm and innovation, and it’s a place that produces undeniable results.

“It’s when the rhythm gets a fresh turnaround or perspective—like Charlie Parker did it with jazz: He took phrases and turned them upside down. Same with Jimi Hendrix,” explains singer-songwriter and performer Stan Ridgway, formerly of Wall of Voodoo, and for 20 years his own brand. Ridgway is the recipient of a fine tribute to one of his own compositions (turbo-charged rockers Kinky recently scored a hit with their note-for-note take on his rock of the ’80s standard “Mexican Radio”). He also created one of those rare, innovative cover classics with Wall of Voodoo when he rearranged the June Carter and Merle Kilgore song “Ring of Fire”, first made famous by Johnny Cash. Ridgway also made an album of standards titled The Way I Feel Today on which he croons big band classics.

“Jimi’s approach to the rhythm changed music. He played a lot of the same blues, but he started playing them on a different beat than everyone else did. It’s a different lick. He gives a different emphasis to the language—it’s familiar, but fresh,” says Ridgway.

I’m glad Ridgway mentioned Hendrix, as it was my viewing of the recently issued Hendrix Live at Monterey DVD that got me started on this whole covers thread. Watching his career-making performance in its entirety, I was struck by the fact that five of the nine songs Hendrix performed that night were written by other people. And yet, by the time of Monterey in ‘67, the recent release of Sgt. Pepper’s and the release of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds a year prior established the long-playing album heavy on studio innovation as a new art form. So why was Hendrix covering? Bob Dylan and the Beatles both made a stylistic move from versions toward all-original songwriting during the first half of the decade, and the self-contained singing-songwriting-performing artist or band had officially replaced singers—both on the charts as well as in fans’ hearts—who relied on writers for repertoire. Increasingly, the studio creations were becoming difficult to reproduce live, which kept bands off the road. It was in this live music climate that Hendrix, with his road dog background and studio innovation tricks, exploded with fresh rhythms in his covers. Whether it was warming up the fret board with a speed-core version of Howling Wolf’s “Killing Floor”, throwing down a riveting version of “Like a Rolling Stone”, or literally somersaulting during Chip Taylor’s “Wild Thing” (made famous by the Troggs’ version the previous year), Hendrix was working his way toward establishing a definitive rhythm for his most enduring version of all, “All Along the Watchtower”, his only Top 40 hit, in 1968.

I asked Crawdaddy! Guru Emeritus, Paul Williams, a well-known Dylan chronicler, if there is such a thing as a definitive version of a song and why, in the case of “Watchtower”, the distinction belongs to Jimi:

“There can be a definitive (defining) version,” said Williams. “The original Hendrix single of ‘Watchtower’ is definitive in regard to the unique rhythmic figure he creates… Dylan acknowledges the power of this figure when he included it in his 1975 live performances of the song.”

There it is: the rhythm, the rebel. Certainly Hendrix’s add further informs Dylan’s question: How are you going to live your life in the face of the end? And there is an element of Dylan’s version within Jimi’s cataclysmic mix.

“The inspiration for Hendrix’s rhythm of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ came from the original Dylan recording of the song played by Charlie McCoy. The power of particular live or recorded versions of a song is a tribute to the power of arrangement (planned or spontaneous) in making a song what it is. New (fresh) arrangements are the key to the power of certain cover versions of songs,” said Williams.

Ring of Fire

And so, if the definitive cover version combines those elements, is it then safe to say any definitive version requires the same recipe? I asked Ridgway how he came upon his fresh take on “Ring of Fire”:

“I didn’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Let’s do “Ring of Fire,”’” he said. As it turned out, the recording was a way for Ridgway to intermingle two or three of his interests and passions. “They all collided on this one song,” he said. “I find that a lot of covers are inspired by fresh ideas and they have to do with the instruments in hand.” Ridgway’s version, borne of necessity, became Wall of Voodoo’s calling card during the first wave of electronica.

“One of my habits was to go to Radio Shack and buy all kinds of adaptors,” said Ridgway of his experimenting with junky, broken-down electronics. “I wouldn’t know what they were doing, but I’d plug them into these electronic instruments. One day I was fooling with the Moog and this sound came out, this throbbing sound. The thing was put together with scotch tape and bailing wire, and I thought, ‘I’d better remember this. But how?’” He thought of an easy song he used to play in bar bands, and that’s how “Ring of Fire” got put to tape.