Number 32: Dead Flowers
Cover by: Townes Van Zandt
Covering: The Rolling Stones
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"Dead Flowers" is a song written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the rock and roll band The Rolling Stones, appearing on their 1971 album Sticky Fingers.
Recording of "Dead Flowers" began in December 1969 at the Olympic Studios in London. The lyrics to the song are notably dark, and feature the line, "I'll be in my basement room, with a needle and a spoon", a reference to injecting heroin. The song was performed live on the 1970, 1971 and 1972 tours, as well as during the 1976 Knebworth show. It would take until 1989 before the Stones would perform it live again.
This was written during the period when the Stones were stepping into country territory, when Richards' friendship with Gram Parsons was influencing his songwriting. Jagger commented in 2003: "The 'Country' songs we recorded later, like "Dead Flowers" on Sticky Fingers or "Far Away Eyes" on Some Girls, are slightly different (than our earlier ones). The actual music is played completely straight, but it's me who's not going legit with the whole thing, because I think I'm a blues singer not a country singer - I think it's more suited to Keith's voice than mine."
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8YRdxHHFKvQ" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/8YRdxHHFKvQ</a>]]> The song has been widely covered. Townes Van Zandt included a version of the song on his album of live covers Roadsongs; this version was used in the film The Big Lebowski.
John Townes Van Zandt (March 7, 1944 – January 1, 1997), best known as Townes Van Zandt, was an American singer-songwriter. Many of his songs, including "If I Needed You," "To Live Is to Fly," and "No Place to Fall" are considered standards of their genre.
While alive, Van Zandt had a small and devoted fanbase, but he never had a successful album or single and even had difficulty keeping his recordings in print. In 1983, six years after Emmylou Harris had first popularized it, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covered his song "Pancho and Lefty," scoring a number one hit on the Billboard country music charts. Despite achievements like these, the bulk of his life was spent touring various dive bars, often living in cheap motel rooms, backwoods cabins, and on friends' couches. Van Zandt was notorious for his drug addictions, alcoholism, and his tendency to tell tall tales. When young, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and insulin shock therapy erased much of his long-term memory.
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Topic: List of Crap 72: Top 51 Cover Songs (Read 38917 times)
