Hear AC/DC’s ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ Covered as a Waltz by Mike Errico: Exclusive Premiere
The AC/DC classic "You Shook Me All Night Long" gets a unique cover treatment courtesy of singer/songwriter Mike Errico, who's offering it here as an exclusive premiere ahead of his latest album, Minor Fits.
Although he doesn't usually work in the same hard-rock vein mined by AC/DC, Errico tells Ultimate Classic Rock that his long-standing love for the song is real — and his clever approach to playing it has its roots in his years as a young musician making ends meet by performing covers at a dive bar on Bleecker Street in New York City.
"I didn’t want to be a human jukebox," explains Errico. "To me, if you want to hear a song done 'right,' go to the original and listen to it. But I was so confused about how to start out in music that I decided maybe I could tolerate doing covers if I twisted up a bunch of songs I liked and injected my own personality into the gig."
The result, he says now, was "maybe the worst, most confusing, set in the world" — one that spanned reinvented versions of everything from Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" to musical numbers, Sinatra songs, and Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train." "Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing," he admits. "I just knew I wanted to play."
Listen to Mike Errico Perform AC/DC's 'You Shook Me All Night Long'
He also knew he wanted to play "You Shook Me All Night Long," although there were a number of natural obstacles in the way. Getting around them required coming up with a new arrangement — one that, years later, evolved into the cover embedded above.
"I’ve always felt the star of the song is the lyric, but my voice does not do what Brian Johnson’s does, so I tried slowing it down to highlight the words," Errico said. "But when I did, it took too long to get to the next line. To shorten the timing, I put it in a waltz time, and just started laughing, so I had to keep it. I also learned the solo note-for-note in that new time signature. I mean, why mess with perfection, even when you’re messing with perfection?"
Minor Fits, Errico's eighth studio release, was funded by a successful PledgeMusic campaign that's still offering an array of exclusive merchandise in addition to downloads and CDs of the new LP. Visit the campaign page for details, and check out Errico's website for even more information.
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