Susanna Hoffs & Elvis Costello Share Cover Of The Rolling Stones “Connection”
Today, Keith Richards turns 81. It’s a hopeless cliche to talk about all the stuff that Richards has survived, so I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to say that Keith Richards is now 81 years old. He is one year younger than Joe Biden and three years older than Donald Trump. To celebrate Richards’ big day, Susanna Hoffs and Elvis Costello have gotten together to cover “Connection,” a song from the Rolling Stones’ 1967 album Between The Buttons.
Susanna Hoffs and Elvis Costello have both been busy lately. Hoffs recently released The Lost Record, which she recorded in her garage in 1989, and she covered Jesse Malin’s “High Lonesome” on the tribute album Silver Patron Saints. Her novel This Bird Has Flown is still being adapted into a movie. Costello was also on that Malin tribute. He and T Bone Burnett just released their Coward Brothers album. Next year, he’ll do an Early Songs tour, as well as another with longtime keyboardist Steve Nieve, and he’ll take part in a 50th-anniversary tribute to Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks.
The Rolling Stones’ “Connection” is a country-rock rave-up about spending too much time in airports, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards shared the lead vocals. Hoffs and Costello’s version is gentle and cute. In a press release, Hoffs has this to say:
I did the Keith part. We both wanted to do the Keith part, but I won! I had the great honor of singing with Elvis at a couple of his shows, and it was a lifelong dream to record a song together.
I love Keith — his smile, his swagger, his songwriting — the way he moves on stage, as if his guitar is a part of his body and together they meld with the music and the emotion of the song.
Below, listen to the Susanna Hoffs/Elvis Costello cover of “Connection,” as well as the original Stones version.
Read our We’ve Got A File On You interview with Susanna Hoffs here.