I'm 38 and knew it... and I'm not even a fan of The Animals. That it's in the top 500 suggests it's not that obtuse anyway!
I guess the counterargument is that variety is good - and not everyone wants to hear the same songs at every pub gig.
Ignore the "wedding" part of the above - it was meant to just be a discussion on whether you always play the recorded part or not.
FWIW we play Sunshine as per the original, but not Bye Bye Johnny...
The counter-argument isn't a great argument.
Example - one night I was invited out to hear the band of a guy I knew through the Pearl Drummer's Forum - just a standard pub gig. I got there right after they'd started and I could tell from the first minute that these guys were good. They were all good players and they played very well together. Unfortunately, they played a whole list of great, but semi-obscure classic rock songs. The musician in me appreciated it, but looking around the room, the whole crowd was checked out, most likely because the band wasn't playing anything they knew. It didn't matter that they were slaying the tunes musically. If they'd have stuck to some tried and true classics, they could have lit the place up. Even I got tired of listening to them, although every once in a while they would play something I was semi-familiar with.
Trust me - if 80% of the crowd doesn't know it, it's a loser of a tune that should be stricken from the band's set lists. No one wants to go out to be educated musically - no one wants wants to have to think that hard. They'd rather hear something they know, or at least a different arrangement on something they know, than to hear something they don't, even if it's done well. Why do SO many cover bands have such a hard time understanding this?
Getting back to the subject of the drum groove for that particular song, I'm not sure why it wouldn't work - it's pretty straight forward, even if it isn't a typical backbeat groove. My guess is that someone else isn't covering their part like they should be.
On the subject of playing the recorded part or not, with the band I'm with, we tend to stick pretty closely to the original arrangements, but with that in mind, it doesn't mean I can't apply some of my own feel to the lines, even if I can't change the lines themselves.