Ahead of the album’s release, one of its standout moments arrives via streaming platforms on June 12th: Weller’s striking version of the Bee Gees’ haunting classic “I Started a Joke.” First released as a single in 1968 (though not in the UK), Weller didn’t actually hear the Bee Gees’ version until after he had already recorded several albums of his own. Now, it becomes a centrepiece of Find El Dorado – a song he not only admires, but wishes he had written himself.
“It’s one of those tracks that almost makes you re-think your own writing,” Weller says. “It reinforces the value of a great melody. And perhaps with someone like Robin Gibb, who didn’t play any instruments, that’s doubly important. Because that – along with the words you’ve written for it – is all you can really communicate to the musicians and the arranger. So everything is hanging off that.”
FIND EL DORADO RELEASED 25TH JULY ON PARLOPHONE RECORDS
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Find El Dorado track list – and the artists that originally recorded them in brackets
- Handouts in the Rain (Richie Havens)
- Small Town Talk (Bobby Charles)
- El Dorado (Eamon Friel)
- White Line Fever (The Flying Burrito Brothers)
- One Last Cold Kiss (Christy Moore)
- When you are a King (White Plains)
- Pinball (Brian Protheroe)
- Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire (Willie Griffin)
- I Started a Joke (Bee Gees)
- Never the Same (Lal and Mike Waterson)
- Lawdy Rolla (The Guerrillas)
- Nobody’s Fool (The Kinks)
- Journey (Duncan Browne)
- Daltry Street (Jake Fletcher / PP Arnold)
- Clive’s Song (Hamish Imlach)
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