The Queen is not Amused...but I am.

pressrewindmusic:

Eddie Vedder - ‘Hard Sun’ (live from Water on the Road DVD, 2011)

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Eddie Vedder recorded ‘Hard Sun’ for the soundtrack to Into The Wild. While it was ‘Guaranteed’, taken from the same album, that was the award-winner, ‘Hard Sun’ was also released with a video and managed to reach #13 on the US Modern Rock chart. 

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‘Hard Sun’ was one of two cover versions on the album (the other being ‘Society’, originally by Jerry Hannan) and is actually very faithful to the original, by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Peterson.

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Peterson released the song under the name of Indio on 1989 album, Big Harvest. While the album was a bit of a flop, it’s notable that some pretty significant musicans played on it—including Joni Mitchell providing backing vocals on ‘Hard Sun’. Peterson faded back into obscurity and became a bit of a recluse after being dropped by his label, but came back into the public eye recently to bring a court case against Eddie Vedder for changing the lyrics to ‘Hard Sun’:

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In a Manhattan federal-court suit, Peterson alleges that “Vedder altered certain key lyrics of ‘Hard Sun’ … eroding the integrity of the composition.”
(NYPost)

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Let’s take a look at those lyrics changes then…

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Vedder sings:

“When she comes to greet me
She is mercy at my feet
I see her inner charm
She just throws it back at me”

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Peterson sings:

“When she comes to greet me
She is mercy at my feet
When I stay to pillage her
She just throws it back at me”

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…and that is it. Has that eroded the integrity of the song? I’m not convinced.

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Either way, have a listen to the song. It’s big, it has beautiful harmonies, it bounds and it exudes the heat of the big, hard sun it describes. It’s great!

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KS