Pink Floyd’s Drummer Produced a Hit Cover of The Monkees’ ‘I’m a Believer’
The Monkees and Pink Floyd made very different music. Despite this, a member of Pink Floyd served as producer for a hit cover of The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer.” Notably, the artist who performed the cover initially intended to record another song by the Prefab Four.
Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason produced a Monkees cover for a rock star who loved pop music
Robert Wyatt is a rock musician who released a cover of The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” in 1974. Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason produced the record. During a 2017 interview with Uncut, Wyatt discussed the origin of the cover.
“I’d said in NME or Melody Maker that I really liked pop music — to me, it’s the folk music of the industrial age, it’s what people sing and dance to on a Saturday night,” Wyatt said. “Simon Draper at Virgin, he saw this and he called my bluff, saying ‘Would you do a pop song?’ I’d intended to do ‘Last Train to Clarksville,’ ’cause I like that, but I got muddled up.”
Robert Wyatt compared The Monkees’ ‘I’m a Believer’ to paintings of monkeys
Wyatt revealed what he thought of The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer.” “One of my friends said, ‘But Robert, is it a great song?'” he recalled. “In one exhibition, Peter Blake had a lot of paintings by monkeys, and somebody said to him, ‘Oh, they’re not very good paintings.’ He said, ‘Well, they’re pretty good for monkeys!'”
“So for a Monkees song, it’s a pretty good song,” he opined. “I don’t feel the need for any hierarchies [in music] and there was a slight statement I was making about that.” Wyatt revealed he was not concerned whether the song would become a hit when he recorded it. After all, many of his favorite jazz songs did not sell well.
How ‘I’m a Believer’ and Robert Wyatt’s cover of it performed on the pop charts in the United Kingdom
The Official Charts Company reports The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” became the group’s only No. 1 single in the United Kingdom. The tune was No. 1 for four weeks, staying on the chart for 18 weeks in total. The track appeared on the album More of the Monkees. The album peaked at No. 1 in the U.K. for two weeks, remaining on the chart for 25 weeks in total.
According to The Official Charts Company, Wyatt’s cover hit No. 29 in the U.K. and lasted five weeks on the chart. None of Wyatt’s songs charted higher there. A version of Wyatt’s “I’m a Believer” appeared on the album Eps, which never charted in the U.K.
The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” was a hit and Wyatt proved it could be popular in the hands of another artist.
