Earlier entries of this series can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3065&p=45337&hilit=archive#p45337
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“And I’m just about to lose my mind”
30. The Slits – I Heard It Through the Grapevine
The facts:
Year: 1979.
Genre: Post-punk.
Country: United Kingdom.
From the album: Cut (as a bonus track).
Acclaimed Music ranking: #5954.
Song ranking on Acclaimed Music in the artist’s discography: 2nd.
Ranks higher than Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega, but lower than Don’t Look Any Further by Dennis Edwards.
Place in the Acclaimed Music Song Poll 2015: Unranked.
The people:
Produced by Dennis Bovell.
Lyrics by Barrett Strong & Norman Whitfield.
Lead vocals by Ari Up.
Guitar by Viv Albertine
Bass by Tessa Pollitt.
Drums by Budgie.
The opinion:
Again? I talked about I Heard It Through the Grapevine just a little over a month ago, through the version by Gladys Knight and the Pips (see: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3596&p=52541&hilit= ... ugh#p52541). In that review I already made a positive mention of the cover by The Slits. So all I could do was laugh when Random.org challenged all mathematical likeliness and selected this version of the song for my weekly song essay.
Luckily, it is also a great opportunity to take a closer look at how artists with a very unique voice can make a familiar song sound new again. Because, make no mistake, The Slits had a unique voice. Their album Cut is now considered a stand-out in the post-punk scene and the live performances the band did in the years prior to the recording are now the stuff of legend. Yet at the same time they weren’t completely accepted in their day. Their initial total lack of talent caused the band much derision and Cut wasn’t exactly unanimously well received.
It’s easy to see why. I imagine that there are still a lot of people around who find the album hard to embrace, because, let’s face it, it is a mess. Yet if you ask me, it is a glorious, proud mess. If The Sex Pistols compensated for their lack of musical skills with pure aggression, The Slits do so with a sort of uninhibitedness. The cover of the album, on which the three female band members stand bare-breasted, covered in mud, like a bunch of Neanderthals, is a very accurate visualisation of the music. They even use tribal rhythms, immensely helped by drummer Budgie, the only man and only truly professional musician in the band at the time (though he only appeared with them on this one album).
About that album cover I learned a fact that kind of shocked me: lead singer Ari Up is actually only 17 years old there. In contemporary Netherlands that would be considered under-aged. What’s more, she had already been playing with The Slits for two years. They made a name for themselves during live concerts playing as an opening act for The Clash in 1977. That means that Ari Up was 15 when doing all these tours in the darkest clubs of the British music scene. Try to make that happen in this day and age.
Yet Ari Up had been the only constant member of The Slits up till her death in 2010 (aged only 48). As much as Budgie’s drumming kept the whole thing together musically, it is Ari Up’s vocals that stand out the most. Nobody sang like she did. Her decision to become a musician was a spur-of-the-moment thing, when lady friend Palmolive (gotta love those artist names; the band also briefly had a bass guitar player nicknamed Suzy Gutsy) asked her to be the vocalist of a new band. Ari Up never trained her voice professionally and if her weird, bouncy delivery could be called the equivalent of vocal free jazz, than that is a coincidence. It should be said that in the early days of the band all members where that unprofessional. Mick Jones of The Clash had to the tune the guitars before their opening gigs, because the girls still had to learn to do it.
The great thing is that the impulsive decision to form a band (which unsurprisingly had a lot of revolving members) seems to be reflected in the music. Their songs seem spur-of-the-moment too and that is where their appeal lies. We also see it in their cover of I Heard It Through the Grapevine.
I think one of the reasons why Marvin Gaye’s interpretation of this classic became the standard is not just because it is musically the best (though it is), but also because he gets the emotional load of the lyrics across like no other. As amazing as the version of Gladys Knight and the Pips is, it is also strangely jubilant for someone who might have been cheated on. The wacky ways of The Slits do not reek of deep emotions and yet it seems to be a plausible reaction from someone who believes the gossip he or she heard. The Slits sound like they just have to vent their frustrations. Ari Up seems fed up with her man (or woman?) and it is as if she asked her best friends to come over for a night of all-out rage. After too much booze has been consumed they start a karaoke of Marvin Gaye’s soul classic and the band work their way through the song in the most ramshackle way possible. And this karaoke version is what we got.
At least, that is what it sounds like. I don’t know why The Slits chose this particular song for a cover and it is completely in the style of other tracks on Cut. But admit that it sounds plausible. Just listen to the way Ari Up warbles her way through the song. She mispronounces words (grapevine once becomes gracevine for example) and sometimes she simply stops in the middle of a sentence only to burst out in the chorus all of a sudden. I think even if a singer actually tried to be more spontaneous than Ari Up here, they couldn’t manage it as well.
Budgie is the only one who keeps the thing relatively together with his drumming, but he knows not to play too perfectly. What’s most amazing to me is that it all rings completely true. It could have been childish or have sounded too self-consciously weird, but the whole gives me the feeling of a woman who is “just about to lose my mind” as she puts it and just has this song left to vent off her raging emotions. If I ever hear through the grapevine that my lover might be cheating on me I would probably turn to this version to sing along to instead of the ones by Marvin Gaye or Gladys Knight. Those two are musical masterpieces. This is a masterpiece of the reckless abandon of emotions.
I should add that this is also achieved because the song is also great fun. The idea to replace the famous bass of the Marvin Gaye version with humming is a comic masterstroke. I also like that they kept Gaye’s version of the lyrics intact. There was already a female variation of the lyrics of course, but Ari Up still calls herself a man and her lover leaves her for a guy. This creates all kinds of possible storylines in my head. Does Ari Up here identify as transgender and does she have a female lover or a gay man? Whatever, when you’re just trying to shake off these pesky frustrations your lover gave you, you can’t be picky with the lyrics. You want to at least pretend to have a good time. And that’s what this song sounds like. It is perhaps no surprise that when Ari Up ends the song with the line “I’m just about to lose my mind”, we hear someone laugh.
9/10
Other versions:
Well, since I take it that in the last five weeks no significant cover of this song has been released I simply direct you to my examination of the many covers of I Heard It Through the Grapevine in my Gladys Knight-topic.
The playlist:
It’s the same playlist as a couple of weeks ago, but now with The Slits on top. Because it is boring to give you the same list twice I always added the album Cut. Because you should hear it!