“You might recognise this song as performed by the Jefferson Airplane in a little documentary called Gimme Shelter about the Rolling Stones and their nightmare at Altamont,” Jim Carrey says, his finger poised above the buttons of a karaoke machine. “That night, the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels had their way. Tonight… it’s my turn.”
Never mind that Gimme Shelter didn’t actually feature the song that Carrey sings, “Somebody to Love”; what follows — from the film The Cable Guy— is an oddly defining performance. Carrey, playing a stalker, hams everything up, adding preposterous vibrato, writhing and gurning. He highlights both the strange, disorienting nature of the song (“When the truth is found to be lies/And all the joy within you dies”), and its status as a period piece, a time machine travelling to a world of acid trips and guns spiked with flowers.
“Somebody to Love” wasn’t actually a Jefferson Airplane song. It was written by Darby Slick and recorded as “Someone to Love” by another San Francisco group, The Great Society, in 1966 (produced by Sly Stone, when he was still Sylvester Stewart). When The Great Society’s singer, Darby’s sister-in-law Grace Slick, split the band and decamped to the Airplane, she took the song with her, along with “White Rabbit”, which became the other great early Airplane single.
The move improved “Somebody to Love”. The Great Society’s version is generic folk-rock,chugging along in search of a spark; the Airplane provide the spark.They play it faster, harder and cleaner, introducing space — the pause before the chorus that kicks the whole song forward. And their arrangement suits Grace Slick’s strident, declamatory voice so much better than the original.
Though it was a US top 10 hit in summer 1967, “Somebody to Love” didn’t spawn an instant rash of copycat versions, perhaps because US rock was now valuing self-expression above all else. Instead, a couple of foreign artists had bashes at it — the Japanese psychedelic band The Mops;Yugoslav singer Seka Kojadinovic, whose recording of it as “Niko Te Nece Zavoleti” is surprisingly wild, with fuzz-toned guitar wailing through it.
Nor was there the usual rash of soul versions, which was unsurprising given the song’s faintly apocalyptic timbre. The idea of having somebody to love is one of pop’s constants: Solomon Burke advised that “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”; Freddie Mercury pleaded: “Can anybody find me somebody to love?” The Bee Gees were so dedicated that “You don’t know how it feels to love somebody the way I love you.” But Darby Slick’s lyrics, accompanied by the foreboding chords of the song, sounded more like a warning: “You better find somebody to love.” Still, that didn’t prevent a lovely, soulful version by the session musicians Barbara and Erniein 1971. The mod revival band The Lambrettastried a new romantic-styled version in 1982, and fell flat on their faces.
Instead, “Somebody to Love” has become a staple of bands emerging from punk and metal, though usually in fairly prosaic form. The Southern California band Agent Orangecovered it in 1983, though one wonders why they bothered. The Ramonesfared a little better on their 1994 covers album, Acid Eaters, largely by removing some chords. Turbowolf’s 2012 versionwas far better: preposterously heavy and overdriven, both cartoonish and menacing.
The only time “Somebody to Love” became a big hit again, though, was in a version that was entirely cartoonish: the German dance music duo Boogie Pimpsreached number three in the UK in 2004 with a version entirely devoid of charm.
For charm, try instead two contrasting readings that make the song sound like a party in the best holiday bar: The Salsoul Orchestra,as they did with so many unlikely songs, made it glorious, Technicolored disco in 1979; then KT Tunstallsupplied the voice to a lovely version by Cuban musicians on the Rhythms Del Mundo album Revival in 2010, with all the darkness replaced by dappled sunlight.
Back in 1966, Grace Slick’s then husband Jerry said of The Great Society: “We hope to keep having a good time and not make a business out of it.” They ended up having a short time rather than a good time, and “Somebody to Love” became a business of its own. Oh, for the hippy dream.
What are your memories of ‘Somebody to Love’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Rhino; Universal Digital Enterprises; Salvo; Ryko/Rhino; Parlophone UK; Hassle Records; Superstar Recordings; Salsoul Records; Transmission Recordings
Picture credit: David Fenton/Getty Images