Saturday September 26, 2020 “Happy Together” Weezer
Always interesting where artists take their inspiration from.
We encountered Weezer earlier in our song of the day adventure with their delightful “Islands in the Sun” and here they are covering the Turtles. Fronted by Rivers Cuomo, Weezer has an entire worthwhile album of covers (the Teal Album) from some very unexpected sources, like Black Sabbath, A-ha, ELO and Michael Jackson.
What do all these covers mean? That just like us, musicians go back to their favorites and some of those sources can be quite surprising, like Pearl Jam’s earlier interpretation of “Last Kiss’. Weezer’s take on “Happy Together” is quite faithful to the original which was a number one song for the Turtles.
Interesting aside, the arrangement on the Turtles version of "Happy Together"was done by Chip Douglas who wrote, among other songs, the classic “Wild Thing’'. Douglas is coincidentally Jon Voight’s (Midnight Cowboy, etc.) brother.
Weezer, the band's name comes from founder Rivers Cuomo’s childhood affliction with asthma, list their quite diverse influences as Kiss, Nirvana, Pavement, Oasis and the Cars and obviously the Turtles. Ric Ocasek of the Cars would produce several of Weezer’s albums/CDs, not however the Teal album.
Here’s the Turtles’ original in case you have forgotten it, but Weezer’s version is pretty much identical to the original. Classic drumming in the original version if you are interested.
Stay safe and well...and happy together.
