ALL (C)OVER: Townes Van Zandt's 'If I Needed You'
An exploration of special songs and the cover versions they inspired.
I believe that good ideas are meant to be shared, adapted, perpetuated - and yes, in some cases, copied and reproduced, if done so with respect and credit due. Like for example, as I told you in its first edition, written when it wasn’t supposed to be a regular thing yet, our recent feature 13 Underrated was originally inspired by a Metal Injection article. So now I have to give credit to my old friend Emanuel Ferreira, an extraordinary Portuguese writer, photographer and broadcaster, who had a really cool run on the LOUD! website with a feature called “Aquela Versão”, which in Portuguese means “That Version”. I had the idea to do something like this when I was doing a little spontaneous roundup of the several versions that exist of the very song we’re covering on this inaugural edition, and immediately thought of Emanuel’s past work that was in a similar vein, so all kudos to him first of all.
Now then, let us get this thing going and dive deep into the many interpretations of ‘If I Needed You’.
First of all, let’s start with the original, of course. Townes himself recorded a few different versions of the song, including live recordings, but this is the one that appeared originally on the ‘If I Needed You / Sunshine Boy’ promotional single and ‘The Late Great Townes Van Zandt’ album, both from 1972.
It’s an achingly beautiful song. According to legend, and to producer Kevin Eggers, it was written about his wife Anne. In typical Townes style, the language is simple and clear, but his unmistakable turn of phrase makes it all his own. The line “You will miss sunrise if you close your eyes / That would break my heart in two” really does break my heart in two, erm, too. Townes revealed a few times in interviews that he wrote this song while under the effect of codeine cough syrup. While suffering from a flu, he had vivid fever dreams caused by the effects of the codeine, and in one of those dreams, he dreamt he was performing in front of a crowd, and this was the song he was playing. He woke up, wrote down the song, and went back to sleep. Reportedly, everything remained unchanged apart from one lyric - apparently, “the lady’s with me now” was originally “she lowed like a cow”, which, you know, really supports the fever dream story. Glad the record company kinda forced Townes to change it, honestly. Here’s a live version of the song where he tells that story himself in the beginning:
It’s hard to pick favourites with Townes’ overwhelmingly rich catalogue, but I’d say this one is in my top three at least. Imagine my joy, then, when a slightly shorter version of this song was performed by actors Terry O’Quinn and Michael Dorman on the pilot episode of what ended up becoming my favourite TV series ever, ‘Patriot’ (seriously, I have a tattoo of it and all). I think it was in that moment that I realised the show was something special. The whole show revolves a lot aroundmusic (in a very reductive nutshell, it’s about an undercover intelligence agent, whose handler is his own dad, who writes folk songs he plays in open mic nights at bars to alleviate the guilt he feels for the atrocities he has to commit during the course of his job - just go watch it!), and this is the first hint we get of it. It’s a really sweet moment between father and son(s), before it turns a bit darker.
It’s just an example, the coolest one, of the dimension this song has taken. Unfortunately, it wasn’t entirely due to Townes’ initial performance of it. As it happens infuriatingly often, it was a recording by other artists that greatly contributed to its enduring overall popularity, namely a duet between Emmylou Harris and Don Williams, released in September 1981 as the first single from Harris' album ‘Cimarron’. It charted #3 in the US and #1 in Canada and it was a whole thing. I have to say I am not a fan. It’s much too clean, much too polished country-ballad kind of thing, and I think it greatly removes the melancholic subtlety and the emotional weight of the original. Therefore making it great for mass consumption, which is what happened, right? Anyway, you decide:
So deep was the way this song hit that another legend among Townes’ peers also picked up on it - Lyle Lovett, who included it in his covers album ‘Step Inside This House’, released in 1998, a year after Townes passed away. It’s also a bit more embellished and “country-fied”, but still much more in tune with the sombre melancholy of the original.
I thought the duo format was one of the things that bothered me about that Harris/Williams version too, but as it turns out, it’s not. It’s just that particular duo that does. You see, Andrew Bird, a singer/songwriter that I much appreciate, has also done a version of ‘If I Needed You’ on his 2012 album ‘Hands Of Glory’, and you can see it here and it’s wonderful, but then he went and got Tift Merritt to join him live a few times (the first of which was on Letterman, the night hurricane Sandy hit New York, David Byrne was the initial guest but they replaced him last minute and sort of improvised it, it’s a great story and you can see that performance here), and it actually turns out to be an extraordinary version and one of my favourites. Andrew’s violin gives it an extra layer of poignancy and Tift is just gorgeous in the way she shapes her voice to the song. This is my favourite performance of the song by the duo, it’s a Live from The Great Room session and it’s the last song of the six they did at the session. It starts at 37:10, but hey, if you have time, I’d listen to the whole thing anyway.
In fact, the duo format - surely because of the popularity of the Harris/Williams version - is very common when artists decide to cover this song. While no one comes close to the Bird/Merritt version in that regard, I want to include in this selection another one, purely because of it’s strangely pleasing alienness. Swedish country legend Alf Robertson decided to cover the song on his 1982 album ‘Emily’s Foto’, singing it in a duet with Carina Wessman, and get this, it’s all in Swedish, including the title. So here’s ‘Om Jag Saknar Dej’ for you. And if you’re one of those who thinks lyrics don’t matter, just notice how it feels like a completely different song.
Speaking of Sweden, by the way, one of my all-time favourite Swedish musicians, Christian Kjellvander, is a big Townes Van Zandt fan. He’s put out an album of Townes covers in 2018 called ‘An Evening Of Townes Van Zandt’, and the ‘If I Needed You’ version on that one is fantastic too. However, since songs from that release seem impossible to find online, here is him playing the same song but with an earlier version (2008) taken from a compilation called ‘Mission Hall Sessions’ put out by Bad Taste Records.
To finish this little international round-up, illustrating the universal appeal of this song, here’s a cute little version by The Broken Circle Breakdown Bluegrass Band, which is actually taken from a Belgian film called ‘The Broken Circle Breakdown’, featuring known actors Johan Heldenbergh and Veerle Baetens as singers and really doing a great job of it. Strangely, the line “Loop and Lill agree” is changed to “who would not agree”, for some reason.
From superstar peers to amateur YouTube musicians, from movies to TV shows, and with constant covers versions appearing with every new decade, ‘If I Needed You’ really has become a universally loved song. Codeine might not exactly have been “the nicest thing I ever seen”, as Townes sings on the bitter ‘Waitin’ Around To Die’, but goddamnit it if it didn’t help out raise the genius level on this one. Of course, of the hundreds of versions that you can find - trust me, this little tightly-curated selection does not cover a drop of the ocean of ‘If I Needed You’s out there -, very few do any kind of justice to the original. Fortunately, when one does, it hits really hard. I really like the Christian Kjellvander and Andrew Bird versions, but my favourite by far, about which I would commit the blasphemy of saying almost reaches the emotional heights of the original itself, is by none other than Steve Von Till, whom we recently covered on our Discography Deep Dive feature. The first volume of the ‘Songs Of Townes Van Zandt’ compilation was single-handedly responsible for bringing Townes’ music not only to a new generation, but to a heavy/alternative music audience that might not have come into contact with it otherwise, and Steve’s version of ‘If I Needed You’ in particular (he also does ‘Black Crow Blues’ and ‘The Snake Song’ on that volume, and there’s also ‘The Spider Song’ on his ‘A Grave Is A Grim Horse’ album) is quietly, darkly devastating.
And hey, even when trawling through YouTube, sometimes a gem does pop up too. To close out this bunch I picked for you guys, here’s the White Horse Guitar Club, which you might have come across on the internet at some point. Eleven dudes with guitars playing Irish-rooted Americana, and some of their covers (and the videos with them playing in some amazing locations too) are really nice. Including this one.
I think one of the things that has helped this song remain fascinating and appealing is its adaptative quality. In fact, that could be said of Townes’ songwriting in general, of course, but this song in particular seems to have been tailor-made to be played by people in pubs, living rooms, campfires, small stages and quirky TV shows for all eternity. I’ll leave you with two different live interpretations of it by Townes himself, one of them shortly after the release of the song, in 1975, very close to the album version, and the other one much later, during a show in Texas in 1990, with an older, more mature, subtler Townes performing it. So different, and yet, so close. Thank you, Townes. We miss you.
Bonus song:
It’s not a cover per se (or at all, really), but just as a fun addition to everything discussed about ‘If I Needed You’, and yet another signal of its reach within contemporary songwriting, there’s a really cool reference to it on Grace Cummings’ latest album, the awesome ‘Ramona’. On its best song, ‘Without You’, she sings at one point “Loop and Lil agree, of course”. That is of course a nod to the Loop and Lil of ‘If I Needed You’, who, in case you’re wondering, were actually Townes’ pet parakeets. That’s a good bit of trivia for parties.
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