10 Rock Covers That Improved Classic Songs
3. Summertime Blues - The Who
As the '60s came to an end, there was still a debate on what constituted hard rock. Though the Beatles had already started to flirt with the idea of heavy music on Helter Skelter, Black Sabbath hadn't quite gotten their footing yet, and Led Zeppelin were still in the blues world. If you're going to get in touch with the harder side of rock, you're going to have to go back to what made the genre so exciting in the first place.
If The Who really wanted to, they could have just filled out their entire live album Live At Leeds with an authentic performance of Tommy. Though many pieces of the rock opera appear on certain versions of the album, the real strength of the album is in the covers, with Summertime Blues sounding like a completely different song when put next to the Eddie Cochran original.
When you listen to Cochran's take, this is just a breezy piece of early rock and roll talking about some of the hangups that come in the summertime. Putting that song in the hands of Pete Townshend and Keith Moon though made for something a lot different, beefing up the entire song to Godzilla like proportions. After having earned his chops as a storyteller, Townshend made this cover as a chance to remind us of the old R&B band that could rattle the walls back in the days of My Generation.