The big deal about this show is that John Lennon only performed two full concerts as a solo artist after leaving the Beatles, and both of them were on this day, an early show and a late show. His portion of the early show was eventually officially released as the album "Live in New York City." However, none of the other musical artists - Stevie Wonder, Roberta Flack, and Sha Na Na - have seen any of their performances officially released, and none of Lennon's late show performance has been released. This is a shame, because the late show was widely considered the better show. That was so much the case that there was a lot of criticism for releasing Lennon's portion of the early show instead.
I've put this together from multiple sources. Portions of the late show were played on the radio, and other portions were broadcast on TV. By combining sources, I was able to avoid or edit out annoying emcee voice-overs. Generally speaking, the sound quality is very good - what you'd expect from TV or radio at the time - although there is some variability. However, some songs are missing altogether. I don't know if there are songs missing from the Sha Na Na or Roberta Flack sets, but I'd assume there are some missing ones at least from Flack's set, since she was a big star at the time and there are only two songs here. I also know that while I have three Stevie Wonder songs, I'm missing three others: "For Once in My Life," "If You Really Love Me," and "Heaven Help Us All."
The biggest challenge, however, was putting together the set for the headliner, John Lennon. The following songs are still missing: "Power to the People," "New York City," "It's So Hard," "Woman Is the Nigger of the World," and "Well, Well, Well." The ones I found are in the correct order, except I switched "Instant Karma" and "Sisters O Sisters" so his set would start with one of his songs instead one by his wife, Yoko Ono. (The early and late show set lists were identical, except there were less Ono songs in the late show.)
Speaking of Ono, I have included two songs she wrote and sang: "Sisters O Sisters" and "We're All Water." When I recently posted Lennon's rehearsals for this concert, I didn't include her songs, and I commented that I'm not a fan of her screaming style. That's still true, but these two songs are pretty decent, with Ono singing instead of screaming for nearly all of them. There were a few bits here and there where she did her weird screaming thing, but I generally edited those out. Before you get upset though, consider that Ono was in charge of the release of the "Live in New York City" album for the early show, and not only did she not include any of her own songs, she edited out her screaming from Lennon's songs. There were a few screams I couldn't remove though, since the audio editing program UVR5 couldn't pull them apart from the music, including on the song "Hound Dog."
If any of you have any of the missing songs, please let me know and I'll add them in. As it is, with the help of the inclusion of the two Ono songs, Lennon's set is 42 minutes long. That makes it the same length as he "Live in New York City" album.
As an interesting aside, apparently Paul McCartney came close to performing a surprise set. However, he was having legal disputes with Allen Klein, who was the financial manager of the Beatles (minus McCartney) at the end of their time together, and who continued to manage Lennon. There were public rumors that some or all of the money wouldn't actually make it to charity, so McCartney bowed out at the last minute due to his concerns about Klein (who had a notorious reputation for being greedy - just ask the Rolling Stones) and how exactly the money would be handled. One can only imagine what might have happened in an alternate future if Lennon and McCartney had put aside some of their differences and appeared on stage together!
By the way, McCartney may have had good reason not to take part. George Harrison became livid at Klein's mishandling of the money from Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" in 1971. The millions raised didn't actually get to help anyone in Bangladesh for many years, long after the immediate crisis was over, mainly due to Klein making some legal errors that resulted in protracted lawsuits. By early 1973, both Harrison and Lennon dropped their dealings with Klein and got involved in lawsuits against him as well. Around that time, Lennon was quoted as saying about Klein, "Let's say possibly Paul's suspicions were right."
The entire concert is an hour and 14 minutes long.
01 Yakety Yak (Sha Na Na)
02 Tears on My Pillow (Sha Na Na)
03 Tell Laura I Love Her (Sha Na Na)
04 talk (Sha Na Na)
05 Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay (Sha Na Na)
06 Rama Lama Ding Dong (Sha Na Na)
07 Reverend Lee (Roberta Flack)
08 Somewhere (Roberta Flack)
09 Superwoman (Stevie Wonder)
10 Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
11 Keep On Running (Stevie Wonder)
12 Instant Karma [We All Shine On] (John Lennon)
13 Sisters O Sisters (Yoko Ono & John Lennon)
14 talk (John Lennon)
15 Mother (John Lennon)
16 We're All Water (Yoko Ono & John Lennon)
17 talk (John Lennon)
18 Come Together (John Lennon)
19 Imagine (John Lennon)
20 Cold Turkey (John Lennon)
21 Hound Dog (John Lennon)
22 Give Peace a Chance (John Lennon)
The cover photo is taken from this exact date (though I don't know if it's from the early or late show).
Very cool. I've heard bits and pieces of this, but probably not the whole thing and certainly not the opening acts.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, the versions of "Cold Turkey", "Hound Dog", and the excerpt of "Give Peace A Chance" on the 1986 release are actually from the evening show. ("Hound Dog" has the spoken introduction from the afternoon show, but the performance is from the evening show.)
Thanks for this, haven't heard it before and wasn't aware of all the history.
ReplyDeletei can't believe how little of this concert and rehearsals is available... i seem to recall a bootleg VHS of the concert as broadcast on ABC-TV; but at the moment, i can't place my hands on it! Thanks for sharing!!!
ReplyDelete