Скачать или смотреть Tom Tom Club - "L’Éléphant" Instrumental Cover

Tom Tom Club's self titled debut album was released 40 years ago this month!

Although I was not even born until just over two decades later, once I discovered their music, I very quickly became a big admirer of the immense creativity and talent that existed in the world of Talking Heads.

It was lovely to read about how some of these songs came together in drummer Chris Frantz's awesome book, Remain in Love, in which he describes the creation of the album with great detail.

I thought it would be a lot of fun, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, to do an instrumental cover of one of the songs from the brilliant album, and I ultimately decided on "L’Éléphant".

The lyrics of the song were written entirely in French (Tina Weymouth also translated the lyrics to English), which depicts two large animals, an elephant and a hippopotamus, witnessing the pain and suffering of villagers during armed warfare between men. Although the vocals are not featured in this instrumental cover, I firmly believe the message of this song is still relevant today, women and children are still suffering badly from the consequences of violence in conflict zones.

It took a while to record all the parts due to my complete lack of skill in playing these instruments, but I very much enjoyed studying the layers of this composition, it allows you to have a greater appreciation of the hard, precise work the musicians, producers and engineers put into these recordings. It was tons of fun!

I am eternally thankful to all the members of the Tom Tom Club who created these awesome songs and brought so much joy and fun to our lives!

L’Éléphant - Tom Tom Club (1981)
Songwriters (as registered on ascap.com) - Adrian Belew, Chris Frantz, Steven Stanley, Lani Weymouth, Laura Weymouth and Tina Weymouth

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Drums & Percussion - While working on this cover, I realized how important a drummer's role is to really push a project forward, and even more so on songs from this album, which are wonderfully rhythmic. I do not have the ability to play drums, so I tried recreating Chris Frantz's pulsating drums on an app called Garageband, which has several virtual instruments and a beat sequencer that can be controlled with the touch screen. I combined the two features for the drum track, so it's a hybrid of the precise timing of the sequencer-controlled hi-hat and percussion, and the not-so-precise timing of my fingers tapping on the virtual drum kit!

Bass - I really, really admire the incredible bass playing of Tina Weymouth! Tina is a very versatile, innovative player who utilized many different instruments throughout her carrer. I think she used her iconic Höfner Club bass on the debut album, and recorded a very deep, large-sounding, rhythmic bassline, which I think brilliantly suits the theme of large mammals. It is played in a manner which resembles that of a percussive instrument. I played her ostinato (is this the right term?) bass part for the whole duration, which is how I think the basic tracks were recorded at the time. Tina's awesome basslines are always so much fun to play!

Guitar - Extraordinary guitar hero Adrian Belew, who toured with Frank Zappa, David Bowie and Talking Heads, joined Tina and Chris after the end of the Remain in Light tour to add his unique guitar texture on six of the eight tracks. For this song, he developed a brilliant technique of using what I believe was a slide bar held with an angle, and plenty of distortion, to masterfully mimic the trumpeting of a massive elephant!! Adrian is well known for his innovative animal sounds, which he also utilized on songs like "Elephant Talk" from the King Crimson album "Discipline".

Keyboards - Tyrone Downie, formerly of Bob Marley and the Wailers and later a touring member of Tom Tom Club (I think Grace Jones' song "My Jamaican Guy" was written about Tyrone!), brilliantly played incredible jazzy, bluesy chords on the Grand Piano. You can hear his great playing a bit more clearly on the instrumental single version of the song. I bounced the occasional synthesizer parts between the left and right channels, which sounds really fun on headphones.

Gear used

Höfner Contemporary Series HCT 500/1
Fender Stratocaster '57 RI
Roland JV-80
Dunlop Jimi Hendrix FFM3
Valeton Coral Mod
Marshall MG15CFR
Orange Crush 25BX