The Beatles<\/a> and their creative leader and sometimes terrible person, John Lennon, it\u2019s no surprise that some of music\u2019s biggest names have tried their hand at covering the group\u2019s most iconic tracks.<\/p>\nPaul McCartney himself has often spoken about the surreal fact that Beatles songs have been officially covered more than 3,000 times, putting them among the most reinterpreted bands in history. One track that seems to pull in artists from every corner, though, is the suitably sultry Lennon-penned \u2018Come Together\u2019.<\/p>\n
Originally released in 1969 as the opening song on Abbey Road, Lennon had written the material with the intention of supporting Timothy Leary\u2019s political campaign for governor of California. But when Leary was imprisoned for possession of marijuana, the campaign fizzled before eventually being stubbed out, and Lennon\u2019s song was left hanging in the smoke-filled air.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing was created in the studio. It\u2019s gobbledygook,\u201d Lennon once said. \u201c\u2018Come Together\u2019 was an expression Leary had come up with for his attempt at being president or whatever he wanted to be, and he asked me to write a campaign song. I tried and tried, but I couldn\u2019t come up with one. But I came up with this, \u2018Come Together\u2019, which would\u2019ve been no good to him \u2013 you couldn\u2019t have a campaign song like that, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
What began as a throwaway quickly became one of the group\u2019s definitive statements. Lennon\u2019s genius for melody and abstraction was front and centre once again, and over time, the song became a staple for ambitious cover versions. Kate Bush, Arctic Monkeys, Soundgarden, Ike and Tina Turner and plenty of other admirers tried to put their spin on it, with varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n
Not all attempts have been graceful, though, and one nightmarish performance stands out for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s rare you can say Bruce Springsteen was part of something truly fucking awful. But throw Axl Rose into the mix, and even the Mona Lisa starts to look a bit shite. That\u2019s precisely what happened at the 1994 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. Rose was on hand to present Elton John with an award, and at the same time, an earthquake in Los Angeles threw the entire evening into chaos.<\/p>\n
Originally, Rod Stewart and Elton John were meant to perform \u2018Come Together\u2019 in tribute to Lennon, who was being inducted posthumously as a solo artist. But when Stewart was grounded on the West Coast, organisers needed to improvise.<\/p>\n
They tried to rope in Springsteen first, shoving a lyric sheet in front of him repeatedly, but The Boss wanted absolutely sod all to do with it. Panicking, scraping the barrel and begging just about anybody in the room to bail them out, organisers were still left with nothing. Someone, somewhere down the line, had clearly lost the plot and suggested turning to Axl Rose, who managed to charm or bulldoze his way into convincing poor ol\u2019 Bruce to join him on stage. From beyond the bottom of the barrel itself, a nightmare unfolded.<\/p>\n
What followed was a painfully unrehearsed tribute to one of music\u2019s most revered artists. Rose, clapping like a man possessed and belting his lines with no regard for timing or tone, looked like he\u2019d been jolted by the moment. Springsteen, strumming awkwardly in the background, looked like he was wondering how he\u2019d ended up in a Beatles karaoke catastrophe. At points, his guitar playing veered dangerously close to something out of a dub reggae bar band.<\/p>\n
Frankly, if Lennon had been watching from the afterlife, he\u2019d have probably faked his own death a second time just to crawl back and pull the plug on the amp. You could practically hear the ghost of George Harrison muttering, \u201cbloody hell,\u201d somewhere offstage. It had all the polish of a school assembly, minus the vocals. Between Rose\u2019s interpretive flailing and Springsteen\u2019s visible existential crisis, the whole thing felt less like a tribute and more like community service.<\/p>\n
Thank goodness for the backing musicians holding it together. Rose didn\u2019t appear on a stage again for six years. Says it all, really.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Related Topics<\/p>\n
Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Mon 2 June 2025 17:39, UK Given the colossal legacy of The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[65126,7627,77,269,4162,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-152886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-axl-rose","9":"tag-bruce-springsteen","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-the-beatles","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Remembering](\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/static\/uploads\/1\/2025\/06\/Remembering-when-Axl-Rose-and-Bruce-Springsteen-absolutely-butchered-The-Beatles-song-\u2018Come-Together-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n