January 31, 2002

Publication title: Rolling Stone, vol. -, Iss. 888, pg. 52
Place: New York
Writer: Barry Walters

I Am Sam

Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper and others cover Beatles songs a little too closely

COVERING A BEATLES TUNE IS nearly guaranteed to yield both success and failure. The songs are so well-crafted that ruining them is virtually impossible. Yet their original arrangements and renderings are so definitive that no one in pop’s history has ever improved them. Hollywood has largely avoided the Beatles’ catalog since the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton and George Burns trampled Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in r978, but it’s making up for lost time with I Am Sam.

The soundtrack album of the Sean Penn-Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle boasts seventeen Lennon-McCartney compositions covered mostly by musicians who weren’t born when these oldies were new. Even so, it’s hard to imagine a more reverent collection. Eddie Vedder reproduces nearly every strum, jingle jangle and John Lennon-esque plea of “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and Ben Harper’s “Strawberry Fields Forever” proves the folly of a realist mimicking an escapist anthem. More rewarding are Sarah McLachlan, who reaffirms her beguiling cry on “Blackbird,” and Rufus Wainwright, who has never sounded better than he does on “Across the Universe.” Yet it’s a chillingly understated Nick Cave who provides the most personality.

How ironic that he lends it to one of Paul McCartney’s most straightforward songs, “Let It Be.” Thankfully, he doesn’t.