Join Together

There are cover songs that tip a hat, and then there are cover songs that grab the original by the collar and drag it back onto a stage that still smells like tube amps and spilled beer. Join Together, as cut by The Dead Daisies and parked on Locked and Loaded, belongs in the second category. Pete Townshend wrote it. The Who released it as a non-album single on June 16, 1972, with a live Baby Don't You Do It on the flip. It climbed to number 9 in Britain and number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100, the second of three singles left over from the abandoned Lifehouse project, sitting between Let's See Action and Relay. Roger Daltrey sang it and blew harmonica. Townshend layered guitar, synthesizer, and jaw harp. The Daisies heard all of that and decided the song did not need a keyboard to feel like a rally.

The version you are hearing first showed up as the closing track on Make Some Noise, the band's third studio album, released August 5, 2016, on Spitfire. Marti Frederiksen produced it at Sienna Recording Studios. Anthony Focx mixed. Ross Hogarth engineered. The lineup on that record was John Corabi on lead vocals, Doug Aldrich and David Lowy on guitars, Marco Mendoza on bass and backing vocals, and Brian Tichy on drums. Suzie McNeil added harmonica and extra vocals, which is the secret weapon. The Who's original leaned on synth stabs and a jew's harp. The Daisies swap the keys for a second guitar and a mouth harp, and the whole thing turns into a fist-in-the-air stomp. Corabi later said he wanted the song because of the power of the guitar and bass when the heavy riff kicks in on the second verse, and because the vocal was easy to get a crowd singing. They knew the minute they started jamming that it was going to sound great. He called it a tip of the hat to a legendary band, from a group of musicians who still think of themselves as fans first.

Locked and Loaded, subtitled The Covers Album, landed on August 23, 2019, again through Spitfire Music and SPV. It is not a new studio session so much as a cleaned-up scrapbook. All the tracks were remastered for the project. Join Together sits at track four, between Fortunate Son and Helter Skelter. The running order reads like a jukebox somebody built after closing time: Midnight Moses from the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Evil from Howlin' Wolf, Fortunate Son from Creedence Clearwater Revival, this Who song, Helter Skelter from the Beatles, Bitch from the Rolling Stones, a live We're an American Band from Grand Funk Railroad, Revolution, a live Rockin' in the Free World from Neil Young, and a live Highway Star from Deep Purple. The last two live cuts had never been released before. Musicians scattered across the album include Aldrich, Jackie Barnes, Deen Castronovo, Corabi, Richard Fortus, Lowy, Mendoza, Dizzy Reed, Jon Stevens, and Tichy. Different songs, different lineups, same dirt under the fingernails. Aldrich put it plain: big guitars, big vocals, and always a bit of dirt. Corabi called the whole record a tip of the hat to the heroes whose records they bought as teenagers.

That is the Daisies method in one sentence. They are not a band in the old sense of four guys who grew up on the same block. They are a revolving rock collective built around Australian guitarist David Lowy, who started the thing in Sydney in 2012 with singer Jon Stevens, formerly of Noiseworks and INXS. The name nods to the old phrase about pushing up daisies and to the Day of the Dead, which explains the skull-and-flower artwork that has followed them ever since. The self-titled debut arrived in August 2013, produced by John Fields, with a lead single called Lock 'n' Load that Slash co-wrote and played on. From there the guest list reads like a backstage pass at a festival that never ends. Richard Fortus and Dizzy Reed came over from Guns N' Roses. Darryl Jones, the Stones bassist, passed through. Brian Tichy and Marco Mendoza anchored the rhythm section. John Corabi, the man who sang on the 1994 Mötley Crüe album, took the microphone in 2015 after Stevens stepped aside. Aldrich, the Whitesnake and Dio guitarist, arrived in 2016 when Fortus and Reed went back out with Guns N' Roses. Deen Castronovo, the Journey drummer, joined later. Glenn Hughes, the Voice of Rock from Deep Purple and Black Country Communion, took vocals and bass from 2019 into the Holy Ground and Radiance years. Tommy Clufetos and Michael Devin have held down the current chairs alongside Lowy and Aldrich. The door stays open. The volume does not come down.

Join Together was already a crowd song before it ever sat on a covers album. The official video, shot around the Make Some Noise touring cycle, catches the band in front of a festival crowd that treated the chorus like a contact sport. Setlist tallies put the Who cover near a hundred performances, behind only a handful of other borrowed tunes such as Midnight Moses, Helter Skelter, and Fortunate Son. That last one had already been Daisified for Make Some Noise in 2016 and stayed in the set. Helter Skelter on Locked and Loaded reaches further back, with Stevens on the vocal from the 2014 Face I Love EP. The band has a running habit of dropping two covers into a show, and the audiences go with them because the arrangements do not sand the originals down. They rough them up. A German write-up of Locked and Loaded noted that Daltrey, who liked the song in 1972 but thought Townshend's synthesizer was unnecessary, would probably have enjoyed the Daisies take. No keys in the house. Second guitar and harmonica instead. Corabi brings a similar wildness to the vocal. The chorus still does what Townshend wrote it to do. It asks a room full of strangers to act like they already know each other.

The Lifehouse backstory is worth a minute if you like your trivia with a side of almost. Townshend had planned Join Together for that unfinished concept album, then parked it on another canceled project called Rock Is Dead — Long Live Rock. Recorded at Olympic Studios in London on May 22, 1972, with Glyn Johns as associate producer, it became one of those singles that outlived the album it was supposed to live on. The Who have kept it in the set for decades, including the Hits 50 tour. The Daisies version does not try to out-Who the Who. It just plays the riff like a band that still buys records and still cares who wrote them. Frederiksen's production on the 2016 cut keeps the drums forward and the guitars a little mean. The remaster on Locked and Loaded gives it a little more air without polishing the scuffs off.

If you want the long view, the catalog runs from that 2013 debut through Revolución, Make Some Noise, Live & Louder, Burn It Down, the covers set, Holy Ground, Radiance, Light 'Em Up, and on into live records such as Live at Stonedead and Live Plus Five. They have opened for and shared bills with ZZ Top, Aerosmith, KISS, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and they have played Download, Graspop, Sweden Rock, Hellfest, and Rock Fest Barcelona. In 2017 they did a Concert for Freedom at Woodstock Festival Poland with the Gorzów Philharmonic, in front of a crowd counted in the hundreds of thousands. None of that changes what Join Together is doing in the middle of Locked and Loaded. It is four minutes of a supergroup remembering it is still a garage band, covering a song about standing in the same room and meaning it.

You can dig the rest of the story with the band at thedeaddaisies.com, on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Discographies and pressing notes live at Discogs, and the full band history is parked at Wikipedia. And when you want the deep cuts, the airchecks, and the station that still plays album rock like it matters, you are already in the right place with THE ZOO. Turn it up. Join in. That is the whole assignment.