"Sometimes, I think about how John specifically chose to sing ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ onstage with Elton at the Madison Square Garden concert, and chose to introduce the song as being by an old estranged fiancé of his named Paul, all the while wondering what Paul would think about it, and I’m left speechless.
“On that flight back to New York, John and Elton were both excited about the show. ‘We’ll have to rehearse,’ Elton said, and we discussed which songs it would be best to play. ‘Imagine’ was suggested, but John said he didn’t want to do just the greatest hits, and because Elton was already performing ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, it made sense not to play it. John proposed ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. There was something about performing a Paul McCartney number that got him going. He knew no one would expect him to do that.”
Tony King (The Tastemaker, 2023)
“We tried to think of a number to finish off with so I can get out of here and be sick, and we thought we’d do a number of an old, estranged fiancé of mine, called Paul. This is one I never sang. It’s an old Beatle number, and we just about know it.”
John introducing “I Saw Her Standing There” at Madison Square Garden, November 1974.
ALAN: I wondered exactly how you might be feeling when you closed the set with Elton, singing ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, and your jamming with Elton John and the fellas, that you never had the other three illustrious gentlemen around you. Did you feel anything strange about that?
JOHN: Well it was double strange because I used to sing a third-part harmony underneath Paul on ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. So I never actually sang the lead vocal. It was a really strange experience singing an early Beatle song that I never really sang, and singing it with somebody else. I was actually thinking, ‘Oh, I wonder what Paul will think of this’ (laughs)."
John Lennon interviewed by Alan Freeman, January 1975.
Elton and John I Saw Her Standing There (live at Madison Square garden 1974
note NOT the actual footage
I was looking at the clip at the top from the sixties and marvelling at its restoration and tweaking. Check out the interplay between them all. We often don’t mention the two guitarists of John and George in harmony and their playing together but it bears constant and close scrutiny IMHO. The need to always talk about John and Paul writing together so often minimises not only George's central position as lead guitarist but also John's takes on the guitar as so often dismissed as a mere rhythm guitar . . . . . . the article clip I found somewhere else and found it funny if a trifle sad being from the ‘brothers’ sibling rivalry! post Beatles break up is neither artists golden moment but hey, watcha gonna do? It's there now and the main thing is being so incredibly close they made up as brothers and siblings before either John being murdered and George’s passing from cancer because as so often brothers will because of course Love is All You Need!
Check the interplay between George and John here (below) . . . .with John taking the opening riff we associate with George (well I did!) and then later George tuning as he lets John just take the pace
The interplay between the two is like two rhythm guitarists or two leads ( neither really) but the interplay is from hour upon hour of practice and all those gigs in Germany although here in Munich not the legendary escapes in Hamburg!
Fab! Gear! SWINGING! It’s THE FABS!
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