There can't be many artists who have realised that one of their songs has been plagiarised - or "liberally borrowed from" - by standing in a room opposite the offending band playing it, but that is exactly what happened to Dave Wakeling, leader of Brummie ska revivalists The Beat.
His band, who emerged out of Two-Tone in the late 70s, had splintered off in different directions by the mid-80s but not before they had achieved success further afield than many of their peers. In songs such as Can't Get Used To Losing You, Hands Off... She's Mine and their jubilant cover of Tears Of A Clown, The Beat had a number of US hits with their bouncing instrumental March Of The Swivel Heads also soundtracking the frenzied race-home at the end of blockbuster teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
But it was another of their songs, Save It For Later, that had significant radio play in the US and caught the ear of young San Diego-based singer and guitarist Eddie Vedder. He was such a fan of the chord sequence that he co-opted fit or a song of his own.
The track that Vedder wrote was titled Better Man, the yearning mid-tempo anthem that has become a Pearl Jam classic. Vedder, who originally played the song with his pre-Pearl Jam group Bad Radio, was reluctant to introduce it into the band's catalogue, wary that it was exactly the sort of radio catnip he was trying to steer his multi-million-selling band away from. He'd already nixed it for inclusion on Vs. and looked set to practically give it away as thoughts turned to the album that became 1994's Vitalogy.
Ahead of that record, Pearl Jam were slated to record a song for Alternative NRG, a compilation album from Greenpeace designed to raise awareness of environmentally-friendly alternate sources of energy. Vedder wanted to donate Better Man to the record, with the idea that The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde would take lead vocals on the recording. As the band went into the studio to get the backing track down, who should be in the studio but The Beat's Dave Wakeling, who was working as the head of Greenpeace Records at the time!
Talking to Essentially Pop, Wakeling recalled the moment he was watching the group record and realised that the song they were playing was heavily influenced by Save It For Later. "We're recording the song in this really fancy ranch place in Northern California, and I’m looking at the guitarist Stone Goddard and the line he’s playing, and he nods at me," he said. "I watch him again and he nods at me again and then they took a break and he said, 'Yeah, you’re right, it’s the same song,” and I went, 'What! I thought it might be!'"
The Beat man was told that Vedder used to work as an intern at 91X, a radio station in the San Diego area, and Save It For Later was his favourite song when he worked there. "It is the same song and I think the association is so nice that I’ve never bothered to chase any money on it," a very charitable Wakeling said, noting that Pearl Jam had a habit of sometimes segueing into Save It For Later during the jam that invariably happens during Better Man's live outro. "They fit together perfectly so when I’m in Seattle I always do a verse of Better Man in the middle of Save It For Later to give them the honour back."
Perhaps Wakeling's relaxed demeanour about the whole thing comes back to his experience of working with the group for the Greenpeace record. Despite the fact he says the group got down a "great version" of Better Man for Alternative NRG, it never ended up featuring on the record.
Hynde never got round to laying down a vocal and when Pearl Jam's label found out the band were sitting on a would-be classic and Vedder was about to discard it, they convinced him to record a version with his own group. Wakeling was initially crestfallen, having spent in the region of £10,000 on the studio sessions for a song that never materialised. "Then Pearl Jam's money sent all the money back," Wakeling marvelled. "He didn’t ask for a receipt or nothing, he just sent a cheque for ten grand and said, 'Sorry about that'. That was lovely, wasn’t it? Which is what I think you get with Pearl Jam; they always have this sense of decency about them."
In an interview with The New Cue a few years ago, Wakeling revealed that it was a surprise Save It For Later had become one of The Beat's most successful songs. "Save It For Later ended up being the biggest earning song in the catalogue, none of us expected that,” Wakeling said.
The whole story came full circle last year when Eddie Vedder released a stripped-down cover of Save It For Later for use in season three of chef drama The Bear, although unfortunately he eschewed the chance to stick a chorus from Better Man on the end. Put on your musicologist hat and judge the resemblances between the two tunes below for yourself:
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