I’m going to get into a bit of obscure stuff with music. If it’s of no interest to you, close this page and find something else to do. I always like digging into areas of music where I find out so much that I tend to get lost. One rabbit hole is a Beatles song that has, in recent times, been covered in a fresh way.
Now, look, I wasn’t a great Beatles fan growing up with rock in my saurian ’70s. But I still respected them, and later on I got to enjoy a lot of their songs. I suppose it was learning to appreciate what they were actually doing — especially their studio work.
But the one song I want to talk about is Come Together. I’ll get to the history of this song just now.
I was in the Striped Horse in Muizenberg about a year and a half ago. It was my first encounter with a Cape Town band called Uncle Righteous. Their lead singer and guitarist is Jude Burger. Anyway, I was standing there enjoying their music when they played a song — and I just couldn’t believe the heaviness of it, the sheer rock of it. It turned out it was actually Come Together, but an amazing heavy rock, wild version of Come Together.
And this is what I thought to myself: imagine if the Beatles had heard their song played like this. They would have been astounded. It was at such a high tempo, just wild. And it’s a pity, in a way, that they never played it with such fury and vigour. But, you know, the Beatles had their style and their audience. This would maybe have rocked the boat. Nevertheless, I’ll come to a few other versions in a moment.
I must say — and I’m a great believer in this — that rock music, or any music for that matter, played live is the best I can ever experience. There’s nothing like it. Nothing to compare. No CD, no radio, no car radio, no sound system. It just doesn’t compare with live music.
So when I’d heard this version of Come Together by Uncle Righteous, I searched over the next few days for versions in a similar vein. The only one I could find was by an Australian band called Godsmack. I’m not going to get into it here or describe it in detail, but it is absolutely amazing.
Forget trippy, hippie vibes. Godsmack’s version is the original song fed through a factory press. It trades the Beatles’ cryptic, swinging groove for a menacing, industrial stomp — all down-tuned, chugging guitars and a piston-like rhythm. Sully Erna’s guttural snarl replaces Lennon’s drawl like a command shouted through a megaphone. This isn’t a cover; it’s a hostile takeover, rebuilding the classic from steel and concrete for the arena-rock era.
The main point in raising it is that it will give you a taste of the Uncle Righteous version I heard live at the Striped Horse in Muizenberg.
Now, it was quite interesting: the other night I happened to see the leader, guitarist, and singer of Uncle Righteous, Jude Burger. We were watching The Uninvited Guests, the fantastic local band originally from Limpopo. But anyway, getting back to the story — I told Jude that about a year and a half ago I had absolutely loved their version of Come Together. He thanked me, and I said I’d found a version by some obscure Australian band that sounded similar to his band’s take.
Anyway, he then gave me the name of another artist who’s covered it. I listened to that version and it’s also fantastic — not as heavy as the Australian band, and not as heavy as Uncle Righteous perform it — but nevertheless very good.
The musician is Gary Clark Jr., and he recorded the song for the Justice League movie. He’s said that he never even considered covering Come Together until he was asked, and that recording it felt like being in a garage band again.
That comment is the key to understanding his version.
Gary Clark Jr.’s take is a raw, blues-drenched resurrection of the song. He strips it back to its swampy, rhythmic core, turning it into a gritty, improvised jam. Dirty, overdriven guitar riffs snarl and wail over a primal, hypnotic groove. It feels instinctual and live — that garage-band energy where a classic is ripped apart and reassembled with smoke, sweat, and soul. He doesn’t just cover it; he reclaims it for the blues.
And just for a bit of background: Come Together started life as a campaign song request from Timothy Leary during John Lennon’s 1969 bed-in for peace. Lennon later reworked it entirely for Abbey Road, slowing it down into that strange, funky blues track we all know.
And I want to leave you with this. Just imagine a full heavy rock band starting out with a massive instrumental intro — drums, bass, lead guitar — before breaking into those surreal, half-nonsense, half-psychedelic opening lines about a strange, swaggering character drifting into view.
What a crazy song. Psychedelic, playful, slightly unhinged — wrapped up in the era of Tim Leary and acid experiments. And yet today it’s just as fresh as ever, especially when rock musicians pick it up, pound it hard, and squeeze every last drop of juice out of it.
