Bernstein was never a snob about pop / rock music...
Yes, as I said in the first four or five words of my original post.
But I'm just curious if he ever said anything in particular about this version. I don't think that there were many rock versions of "West Side Story" songs at that tine.
One of my favorite covers of a LB tune is Tom Waits' rendition of "Somewhere."
I'll never forget the first time I played it, 78 or 79. A friend of mine was over and after he heard it he laughed and said, "I feel like I'm the last person left on Earth--that's how lonely this version makes me feel
I love that Tom Waits version of "Somewhere". What really made it stick in my mind was its use in Alan Rudolph's 1997 film AFTERGOW. The movie on the whole is very uneven, but it has long stretches of brilliance, and the climactic scene - which is a "reconciliation" of sorts between Nick Nolte and Julie Christie (both superb, especially Christie) - is made all the more potent by Waits' heartrending vocals. I think that THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM is playing on the telly in the background just prior to the song ("Your wife an adulteress, your mother an adulteress, your uncle an adulterer, your closest friend and adulterer..." - that's Barbara Steele taunting Vincent Price), and the end result is really quite devastating.
By the way, although the song isn't on the CD release of the score (which I don't have), I do recall that in the credits of the film it says something like "Music performed by the Afterglow...Quartet"???, although it was much more than a quartet, featuring as it did composer Mark Isham on trumpet along witjh the likes of Gary Burton, Billy Higgins and Charles Lloyd. Actually, if it were only the four of them then it would obviously be a quartet, but I'm sure I'm forgetting some names.
Brings to mind Aaron Copland upon hearing Emerson Lake and Palmer's cover of Fanfare For The Common Man. Not only did he like it, he declared it the best interpretation of the piece he'd yet heard.
