So I’m at a wedding with a pretty kick-ass band — horn section, multiple vocalists, the kind of $10,000-a-gig wedding band that can cover anything and sound good doing it. Like any good wedding band, their repertoire spans decades, so I was surprised when the front man introduced this as a song by the Mavericks.
Yeah, sure, the Mavericks managed to reach the charts with it in 1999. But all the older people there knew it as a hit for the Tremeloes, British popsters who, like many British Invasion bands, evaporated when taste turned to harder blues-rock over the next few years. (To be clear, they kept on playing and remained popular in the UK, but they never had another American hit).
As anyone who watched “Rushmore” knows, the song was also recorded about the same time (early 1967) by its composer, Cat Stevens. His softer version appeared on his album “Matthew and Son.” Note that it includes a third verse that all the covers dispense with.
The contrast between the lovelorn lyrics and the jaunty music has proved catnip to several bands over the years. British New Wavers the Jags punked it up in 1981:
Yo La Tengo gave it an acoustic treatment in 1990.
Finally, in 1999, the year after “Rushmore” was released, the Mavericks kicked it up the final notch by giving the song’s signature lick, played on guitar by the Tremeloes, to the brass-heavy horn section (harking back to the single sax that plays it on Stevens’ recording) producing a Tex-Mex effect that the wedding band nailed. You couldn’t squeeze onto the dance floor.
One odd thing you’ll notice if you listen to all these versions: In the original Cat Stevens lyric, the first couplet reads
In the midnight moonlight I’ll
Be walking a long and lonely mile
Every cover changes the first line to “in the midnight moonlight hour.” One of those times that the misheard lyric supplants the original.