Stanley Frank - Cold Turkey/ Hey Stupid

Label: Polydor

Year of Release: 1977

I find it hard to believe that this is the second cover version of "Cold Turkey" I've uploaded to this site (the first was by David Byron of Uriah Heep, who contributed his vocal intepretation to a budget covers EP). My amazement largely stems from the fact that the original John Lennon single was an ignoble flop by the Beatle standards of the day, reaching a mere number 14 in the UK charts, and is very seldom heard at all these days. 

Nonetheless, a rocker from Canada called Stanley Frank took the song under his wing in 1977 and really upped the ante with it, taking the pulsing and tortured original and turning into a slice of Hard Rock. It buzzsaws its way through the Lennon tune and shoves the needles into the red, screeching its way to the inevitable climax. While no amount of reworking can disguise the fact that the original song always was a little disappointing, this to me has more energy and a greater sense of dynamics than the original - not something I would ever claim lightly. Frank makes it sound as if it was always born to be a seventies rock track and Lennon's version was just a demo.

As for our Stanley, he was from Montreal and relocated himself to the UK at the height of punk in the late seventies, too early for a revived Heavy Metal circuit, and too late for the mid-seventies rock heyday. He briefly had dealings with the Power Exchange label who tried to hype him as a "New Wave" artist, but it's doubtful that the ruse fooled more than a few people. He eventually settled on to A&M records where he issued the LP "Play It Till It Hurts" in 1980.

He remains active as a songwriter to this day, and has a website where you can sample his tunes. One of them in particular, "Run To The Sun", is a piece of West Coast soaked power pop goodness.