Rickie Lee Jones has been recording other people’s songs almost as long as she’s been recording her own. The EP “Girl At Her Volcano,” back in 1983, collected her versions of torch songs and jazz standards, and she has repeatedly returned to similar projects. “Pop Pop,” released in 1991, was recorded with jazz players such as Charlie Haden and Joe Henderson and contained, along with a clutch of jazz standards, her take on Jimi Hendrix’s “Up From The Sky.” On “It’s Like This,” in 2000, she sang songs by Marvin Gaye (“Trouble Man”), Steely Dan (“Show Biz Kids”), Traffic (“The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys”), among others.
Her new record, “The Devil You Know,” due September 18th from Concord, returns her to interpretive territory, with a set of intimate, sometimes stark, versions of songs that she loves—and, consequently, that she loves to sing. The album kicks off with Jones’s take on the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” and moves through Van Morrison’s “Comfort You” and Donovan’s “Catch the Wind,” Rod Stewart’s “Seems Like a Long Time” and Tim Hardin’s “Reason to Believe.”
Jones agreed to discuss the album, its predecessors, and the art of the cover song.
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You’ve come back to these interpretive projects throughout your career. Are they all motivated by the same impulse, or do you think of them each very differently?
They are part of the same overall project. When my career started in 1979, the division between singer-songwriter-dom and singer-dom was a wide abyss, and singer-songwriters were not allowed to cover songs. Before I got signed, when I played live, I would do some of my own songs and also songs that I loved, like “Makin’ Whoopee” and “My Funny Valentine.” All those songs, the originals and the others, were part of me. And I got lots of flak. I’m not sure why, exactly, but there was a strong belief that singers should only sing their own songs.
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Why do you think that was?
Singing other people’s material was perceived, I think, as a weakness of my persona. The effect, though, was to make me dig my heels in and try even harder to combine the two. There was a moment when I was doing jazz, with “Something Cool,” from “Girl At Her Volcano.” But I didn’t follow up on it right away. I went back and recorded originals, other albums. Then Linda Ronstadt released those records arranged by Nelson Riddle. So, when I decided to return to it, I was talking it over with David Was, who was my producer, and I wanted to do a guitar-based record. He suggested the bandoneón, which is how that record, “Pop Pop,” ended up with this Left Bank, café sound. I thought if I did a piano record it would bury me. It almost buried me anyway. The L.A. Times did a review with two journalists on the same page, a pop writer and a jazz writer, and the jazz writer tore me apart. What was happening? Was I being punished?
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Part of the dynamic with recording other people’s songs, though, is that a listener is automatically going to compare your version to what’s already known, and it can either seem like you’re revealing something new or tampering with a treasured memory. Take “Sympathy for the Devil,” which is an iconic Rolling Stones song. You open this record with your version of it, which is completely different in arrangement and feel.
In my mind, I guess, I see a group on the right side: those are the die-hards with their hands folded who see any interpretation as tampering. On the left side there are the people who say, “Hooray, whatever you do is great.” I have to say that I am hardly aware of the people on the right side. They feel that they are holding a line, I guess. I am not sure why. Mick Jagger already recorded that song. What would be the point of doing it the same way, with the same drums and the chanting? There’s no point in competing with that. It’s definitive and it exists and it was a long, long time ago. The only point in singing it, for me, is that the way I’m singing it now is new. In this case, I was part of a tribute to the Stones at Carnegie Hall, and I got to play “Sympathy For the Devil” before I recorded it. I walked out and sat in a chair and started to play rhythm guitar and I felt the audience gasp. Their reaction was like sucking in air. They held their breath and then, about eight seconds later, most of them were totally with me.
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At the same time that you want to make these songs new, though, you must want to keep the core of them, right? Or at least retain their emotional content.
On this record, I sing Van Morrison’s “Comfort You,” which is from “Veedon Fleece.” I didn’t do that song particularly different. It’s a kind of obscure song. Casual fans probably don’t even have that record. But it’s a heartbreaking song with a heartbreaking idea: if I could reach you all I would do is comfort you. He’s thinking of a girl, probably. I’m thinking of my child. And that’s what’s truly translated, what a singer was feeling during the singing of a song. That’s the magic of music.
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And that’s why people cover songs, because certain songs keep producing that magic through different versions.
To be honest, I don’t even really like the word “cover.” I know we like to define everything. But think of the time before Bob Dylan, when there weren’t really covers in that sense. There were songs that were written by songwriters, and then singers sang them. I guess you can’t go back. But again, to me, the division is nonsense. It doesn’t matter if I wrote it or not. There’s something about the word “cover,” though, that depreciates the process.
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Ben Harper produced this record. Did he help to pick the songs? Did you come in with a long list of songs you wanted and the two of you narrowed it down?
What Ben did, what I allowed to have happen, is that he controlled the recording and kept me focussed in a certain direction. The reason that I like that is that I recognize that I have too many ideas and can go in limitless directions. I need someone to tell me I can keep going in one direction. Often I haven’t had anybody to help me do that. For example, we recorded a Laura Nyro song, and it just didn’t work with the rest of the record. It was too dramatic or something. What I think this record has, as a result of his production, his guidance, is a certain kind of feeling. On my own, I might have interrupted that. I am always reacting to what I’ve just done. If I do a soft song, I want to do a harder one. If I do a kind and tender one, I might want to do a mean one. He’s the one who recognized that there was nothing wrong with keeping on in the same line for a little while.
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So is it about trusting the process more?
This is new, and it’s part of my age. I fantasize what singers were like in the fifties and sixties: they just show up, sing the song, and go home. The producer sorts out the rest. It’s something I’ve never done. I’ve usually been involved with the whole process. And it’s so satisfying to let other people do what they do, to believe that they can see some aspect of me particularly well and that that they’re not serving themselves. They have something to teach me that I cannot do myself.
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You’ve also done a record, “Naked Songs,” where you went back and reinterpreted your own songs. Was that strange?
It’s hard to say now. At the time it felt like it was the end of a certain chapter of my career, and I wanted to revisit those songs and see if they held up as songs. I do sometimes think about the fact that few other singers have recorded my work. I remember years ago listening to Paul Simon on Muzak. I thought, wow, that’s how I’ll know when I’ve made it. I have since heard some of my songs on Muzak, but I also think it would be great for others people to cover my songs. A song like “Last Chance Texaco,” that was written with a certain kind of country singer in mind. It would be interesting, and nice, if one day one of those kinds of singers recorded a version of it.
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On your long mental list of songs you want to sing, are there any you look at with extreme suspicion, or with the thought that if you tried to sing them they would go completely haywire?
The only way it goes haywire is that, in the eyes of someone, I don’t have the right to do that song. And in that case, I might do it just to defy them. I mentioned the Laura Nyro song before. It was “Been On a Train,” and when I did that, I didn’t know all the chords. I fudged my way through it. It just sounded wrong. But the song was so vivid to me. I have these feelings when I hear it. It’s not only that I see the room, but I know everybody in the room. That’s where you come to this question again. Is your job to play a song as written or to reinterpret it? Are these songs classical or jazz?
Photograph by Myriam Santos.
