ABSTRACT
Davies would doubtless respond that rock musicians and fans talk of covers as if they are new performances of old songs. A comparison with film is helpful here. Films occasionally get “remade”: a new film is produced that shares many important properties with a preexisting film. The plot, the way the plot is presented, and the title are the most commonly transferred properties, but much can be altered. The action can be moved from the Midlands to the Midwest, from the 1960s to the 1990s, the dialogue can be completely rewritten, so long as it presents broadly the same story. But even here, relatively major changes can be made. For instance, in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair (dir. Norman Jewison, 1968), what was a happy ending only for Steve McQueen’s womanizing Thomas Crown becomes a happy-couple ending for Pierce Brosnan’s more sensitive Crown and Rene Russo’s Catherine Banning with the addition of a new final scene (dir. John McTiernan, 1999).
