Emerging out of 2-Tone in the late ‘70s, Brummie ska revivalists The Beat made some of the finest pop songs of the era before splintering off in different directions in the mid-80s. They managed success further afield than some of their counterparts, too, having hits in the US with their classic song March Of The Swivel Heads soundtracking the frenzied race-home at the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
It’s one of the best-selling tracks in their arsenal that songwriter and frontman Dave Wakeling thinks might have been slyly half-inched by Pearl Jam and turned into Better Man, with Wakeling reckoning the Vitalogy track bears more than a passing resemblance to The Beat’s Save It For Later. “Save It For Later ended up being the biggest earning song in the catalogue, none of us expected that,” Wakeling told The New Cue last year. “It’s been covered by Pete Townshend and Pearl Jam, who kind of wrote Better Man off the back of it, if you ask my opinion.”
