“Set me free, why don’t you babe?”

The Supremes’ You Keep Me Hangin’ On was only a year old when Vanilla Fudge got their psychedelic hands on it for this fantastic take on the Motown hit. One of the first songs the band recorded, The Fudge’s 1967 cover You Keep Me Hanging On is the most famous example of the band’s groovy, symphonic rock interpretations of popular songs. It was originally a bouncy, proto-disco classic but the New Yorkers slow it down and stretch it out with loud/quiet dynamics, swirling Hammond organ and a hard-hitting rhythm section combining to create the feeling of a loud, powerful orchestra.

Practically recorded in one take (organist/singer Mark Stein called it the “seven and a half minutes that changed my life”), there’s a real feeling of the band inhabiting and exploring all the possibilities of the song: most notably the reworking of the original’s funky rhythm pattern into an emphatic Morse Code-like hook. And it’s extremely soulful too: the slower tempo allowing Stein to express the song’s lyrical heartbreak with a flamboyantly emotional performance. The Fudge’s use of extended structure, theatrical bombast, harmonies and Hammond would be influential on bands like Yes, Uriah Heep and Deep Purple (who in their initial phase very much styled themselves as a British Vanilla Fudge) and you can hear it all on this track. The goal of any cover is to make a song your own and Vanilla Fudge deliver a masterclass in doing just that with You Keep Me Hanging On.