Bad Cover Versions: Rod Stewart: Downtown Train

Tom Waits is a great songwriter, a talented performer and one of pop music's most gifted lyricists, up there with Bob Dylan and Mark E. Smith. Over a period of over 30 years, Tom Waits has been developing musically over a diverse yet remarkably consistent recording career. He has never been afraid to take risks, puts his muse first and almost always comes out on top, musically anyway. Rod Stewart is a pratt. So guess whose version of Waits' classic 'Downtown Train' became a Top Ten hit. You might have guessed it; due to the sacrifices he has made for his art, Tom Waits does not sell records, whereas due to his crass lowest common denominator pub rock cum balladeer shtick, Rod Stewart does. In fact, that they both did versions of this song might be the only thing the guys have in common. It's certainly hard to tell from Rod Stewart's horrific mauling of it that 'Downtown Train' is, in its original form, an excellent song. The gorgeous emotional climax of 1985's 'Rain Dogs' album, 'Downtown Train' is a song about alienation in the big city, made special through Waits' beat poetry and way with a tune. Opening with the striking 'Outside the yellow moon /Has punched a hole in the nighttime, yes', to his description of the downtown girls ('They're just thorns without the rose'), 'Downtown Train' is Waits at his most romantic, set in stark contrast the song's squalid setting. With just bass, guitar and keyboards, the song rises from a controlled, quiet beginning to a storm of passion by the chorus. He sings the chorus with controlled passion, full of yearning and longing, the girl of his desire painfully out of his reach. Delivered in Waits' trademark growl, the effect is incredibly moving.
Now for Rod Stewart's version. The song's original tasteful arrangement is replaced with over-ripe, schmaltzy orchestration, and as he starts singing, it becomes woefully clear that Stewart just isn't up to the task. His voice is lacking in the rich and weather-beaten quality that Waits effortlessly possesses, and he replaces Waits' original heartfelt delivery with horrifically misjudged melodrama, especially when he lets rip on the chorus. The combination of Rod's over-the-top yodelling and the sweeping orchestration are genuinely cringe-worthy. As the song goes hurtling towards its over-orchestrated climax, you can hardly bear to listen as something special is desecrated into horrendously formulaic and unimaginative soft-rock sludge. And to make matters worse there's a pointless meandering piano outro just when you think that the pain is finally over. The poor song is hardly recognisable after Rod Stewart has had his evil way with it. The only possible good that could have come from the song is that the royalties must have kept Tom Waits off the street for a couple of years. I just hope to God he didn't have to hear what monstrous atrocities had been wrought with his song.