Who did smallscreen covers?
Let us answer your nagging questions and illuminate the obscure corners of rock enquiry.
Alamy, Getty, Shutterstock
Me and some friends were talking about the late Terry Hall covering the Miss Marple theme Murder She Said in Fun Boy Three. This led to discussion of Wings’ cover of Tony Hatch’s theme to soap Crossroads, the Manic Street Preachers’ Theme From M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless) and The James Taylor Quartet’s Theme From Starsky & Hutch. Who else from pop and rock covered random TV themes like this?
John Dixon, via e-mail
MOJO says: Though Ron Goodwin’s Murder She Says was a Miss Marple movie theme, not the TV version (which was penned by Joe Meek writers Howard and Blaikley, as it happens), let’s stick to TV music. As it seeped into rockers’ subconscious minds week after week as they stared at the box, ’60s and ’70s TV sounds provided much inspiration: for younger viewers, the Batman Theme was covered by The Who, The Kinks and The Jam, Frank Zappa played the theme to Bonanza live (intro’d with “how about this ugly son of a bitch”) and Gladys Knight & The Pips sang the Sesame Street Theme on the show in 1988. Spies and crime, meanwhile, seem to whet the TV tastebuds in a reggae style, with Jah Wobble covering the theme to The Sweeney, The Selecter skanking up The Avengers and Madness doing the intro music for Danger Man. Space and science fiction also gets them going: see The Manhattan Transfer’s disco’fied Twilight Zone, Orbital’s rave-energised Doctor Who (in 2010 they played this live at Glastonbury with then Doctor Matt Smith) and, a bloopy oddity on Stax in ’75, the Star Trek theme re-envisaged by Terry Manning’s alter-ego Warp Nine. We could go on, but let’s leave it with Bob Dylan and The Band playing the shanty Johnny Todd in 1967: the tune’s also the title music to vintage British cop show Z-Cars (as we know, Bob’s also an avowed Coronation Street viewer). Anyway, we’re sure you have some prime examples, so let us know.