‘Oh Susannah’ is the first video available from Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s upcoming album ‘Americana’ scheduled for June 5, and I bet you’ll not recognize the old Stephen Foster’s standard,.. is it really a cover? Young kept the lyrics but let’s say he took some liberty with the melody and all the rest?
The first time I listened to it, I thought it sounded strangely familiar, like an old song of the 80s revisited by Young and his Crazy Horse. Honestly, I thought about Bananaram’s ‘Venus’ covered by Santana! Just listen at 1:20 when he sings oh-oh-oh-Susanna,….Don’t you cry for me’, and when the Bananarama girls sing ‘She’s got it’!
Then I stumbled upon this on a Neil Young website:
‘The campy Bananarama cover of ‘Venus’ which is a cult classic YouTube video by Shocking Blue which is based off of the Americana tune ‘Oh! Susannah’ and its riffs. ‘Venus’ was written by Robbie van Leeuwen and originally recorded by Shocking Blue for their 1969 album, ‘At Home’.’
That’s awesome, so the old ‘Oh Susannah’ song was in fact the inspiration for the song ‘Venus’, originally sung by Shocking Blues in the 60s, then covered in the 80s by Bananarama, and now Young is reinterpreting the song in 2012 in a version that sounds more like ‘Venus’ than the old original. I don’t know if you have followed.
Anyway, Neil Young and Crazy Horse sound great on this damn good jam, the folks are odd looking, ‘Deliverance’-style, and the kids are great. The orchestration reminds the good old times, which could explain the old footage chosen for the video, yes, the good old times when 7-year-old kids were allowed to smoke! You have to wonder whether the old film was partially chosen for its chock value in these so-politically correct times?
‘Americana’, Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s first album together since 2003 ‘Greendale’, will contain 11 standard folk songs and Young described it to Rolling Stone as a collection of ‘songs we all know from kindergarden, but Crazy Horse has rearranged them, and they now belong to us’. Yes, bring back this B-A-N-J-O on my knees!