The Zutons’ Dave McCabe on how Amy Winehouse telling him to “fuck off” led to her covering ‘Valerie’
nme.comThe Zutons‘ Dave McCabe has recounted how Amy Winehouse telling him to “fuck off” led to her iconic cover of their song ‘Valerie’.In NME‘s latest series of Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?!, in which we quiz musicians on their own career to see how much they can remember, the Zutons frontman opened up about how the cover came to be.“I met Amy three times in my life,” he recalled. “Once at the Mercury Prize, once in the Camden boozer The Hawley Arms, and once when I was hanging around with this Brummie lad called Boo, who was a tit.“He spent all night comparing me to her, saying: ‘If you’re a 1, she’s a 10’.
I thought: ‘OK, I get it, she’s good’. Eventually, I said ‘Look Boo, fuck off being a wanker. You’ve done this for hours and it’s pissing me off’, and Amy turned round and said: ‘Well, you fuck off then!’ to me, because he was her mate.“So, I walked out of the house in the strop, and she followed me and pleaded: ‘Please come back.
I’m sorry I told you to fuck off,” he continued. “I really like that song’ [‘Valerie’]. We went back in and carried on drinking.”McCabe went on to say he had “a lot to thank Amy Winehouse for”, but also thanked his friend Boo: “If he wasn’t being a wanker, we wouldn’t have got talking about the song and I don’t think she would have covered it.
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