"Real" rock songs/bands that actually use uke?

Hey all,

Just wondering what rock songs and or bands actually originally used ukulele (as opposed to being later adapted for uke)?
Classic, modern, or indie.

A few examples come immediately to mind:
The Who - Blue, Red, and Gray
Paul McCartney - Ram On
Gorillaz - Revolving Doors
and, of course, Mr. Vedder.

...but there must be others.

Any thoughts? (Oh, yeah, I know...Beirut and Train...but they don't really appeal to me, so we can leave them out. Not slagging. Just personal taste.)

Thanks,
Keggy

How about this one...Into the Wild by LP

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pse641zHpP8

Can't leave out Queen.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XJgfvp59ExQ

'Cousin Earth' (formerly Ukulelien) has NO guitars and is an AWeSOMe NY/NJ area indie band

'Fun While You Wait', is also a NJ local uke-focused indie band

Jason Mraz performs with uke often as do Sarah Mclachlan, Louden Wainwright, Jim Boggia

Jan Laurenz has a lot of cool vids on YT

as there's TONs of solo/duo artists, but few of them are 'mainstream rock' as what you'd find on analog FM radio

You want to look more at FOLK or BLUEGRASS and some new country and you will see TONS of ukulele as well.

Check out the official YT channel of The Grand Ole Opry, or official YT channel of NPR Tiny Desk Concerts, as well as uketoob.com

I've not seen Maroon 5 playing uke, but Chester Bennington from Linkin Park has been known to play the uke, but not sure if he's performed live with it yet.

Noah and the Whale - Five Years' Time.

George Harrison- Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5CkIniOcqs

Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards, on lots of songs.

The Stink - While You Were Out

In addition to bass, IIRC Lyle Ritz played ukulele on a couple songs on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.

Hellogoodbye ukes in many of their songs. Just saw Van Morrison playing a tenor uke.

janeray1940 said:

In addition to bass, IIRC Lyle Ritz played ukulele on a couple songs on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.

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Really? Never knew that. And it's my favorite album. I'll have to listen closer. The arrangements do get very dense making it hard to hear I would imagine.

Recstar24 said:

Really? Never knew that. And it's my favorite album. I'll have to listen closer. The arrangements do get very dense making it hard to hear I would imagine.

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Definitely at the top of my favorites list too, although I'm incapable of picking a single favorite I don't recall where I first read that but there are a few online "liner notes" sites that say he played uke on Caroline, No and I'm Waiting for the Day. I'm listening to it now and it does indeed sound like really subtle arpeggiated uke picking at times on Caroline, and on Waiting there are a few uke fills. Give it a listen and let me know what you think!

Mumford and Sons.

http://youtu.be/toDkIU7gSY8

Laura Marling.

http://youtu.be/7VXMC79twnA

Recstar24 said:

Really? Never knew that. And it's my favorite album. I'll have to listen closer. The arrangements do get very dense making it hard to hear I would imagine.

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On 'I'm waiting for the day' and 'Caroline, No'. And yes, you're right: it's heard to hear in Brian Wilson's busy arrangement (strings, sound effects, stacked vocals).

There's loads of popular groups using the ukulele today in non-traditional music, but I wouldn't call it rock: it's more often poppy, quirky, sometimes ballad-like music, not hard-driving dance music with steady 1 and 3 beats. The problem is that rock emerged in the 1970s when the ukulele his a low tide. Hence rock is not often associated with ukuleles

A lot of British rockers of that era did however have their first musical paces on ukuleles, and subsequently reached out to them on recordings, but not always on their rock songs.

- Brian May on Good Company (1975, more of a dixieland style song with Formby playing on a Japanese Aloha ukulele) and on Bring Back That Leroy Brown (1974, more of a vaudeville song, recorded on a Formby banjo-ukulele, later played on tour on a Sheltone banjo-ukulele). So played by a rocker, but basically dixieland tin-pan alley kind of songs.
- Pete Townshend on Blue, Red and Grey (1975, a 'light' song with positive lyrics, a simple arrangement of just vocals, ukulele and horns, and included as a kind of 'demo track' by producer Glyn Johns, much to the embarrasment of Townshend himself)

Note that on none of the above recordings, the regular singers/frontmen of Queen or The Who were featured - so not as 'rock' as you think.

Take the Beatles. The string-instrument playing beatles were heavily uke-addicted (anecdotes about them abound), but they barely recorded with the instrument
- McCartney played it on the title song of Ram On (1971)
- Harrison only included it on his posthumous album (2002), in a tin pan alley song, the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. But he did play a bit at the end of the collage-song Free as a Bird (composed 1977, finished and released in 1995)

Booli said:

'Cousin Earth' (formerly Ukulelien) has NO guitars and is an AWeSOMe NY/NJ area indie band.

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I've got their new album and it's lots of fun.

Dave Matthews doing "Sweet"

A couple of years ago, he did this regularly in concert; probably still does.

ukulelekarcsi said:

- Harrison only included it on his posthumous album (2002), in a tin pan alley song, the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. But he did play a bit at the end of the collage-song Free as a Bird (composed 1977, finished and released in 1995)

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Oh and one more - on Any Road there's a little bit of banjo uke at the very end.

Wow!
Thanks for the replies. Plenty to listen to!

Train - Hey Soul Sister