Originally published at: Watch this clip of Paul McCartney recording Blackbird in 1968 | Boing Boing
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Simply lovely. Thanks Sir Paul.
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Hearing Blackbird nearly 50 years ago is the reason I wanted to play guitar.
Thing is, I saw Kenny Rankin play it on the Tonight Show, several times, and I had no Idea McCartney wrote it until many years later.
Much like I saw Jose Feliciano do Light My Fire on the Tonight Show. But that one, I quickly discovered the Doors version, because it was all over the radio. I may have been 8 years old, but I wasn’t THAT clueless!
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Paul is playing a right-handed guitar left-handed. I’m assuming it was restrung to be left-handed, otherwise it would melt my brain.
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A similar discovery for me was that just last year I learned that Otis Redding originally wrote “Hard to Handle.” I first heard it via the Black Crowes in the early 90s and had no idea that they weren’t the original… Bananas.
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Blackbird, Landslide, and Southern Cross were the Big Three for me. It turned out, though, that I had absolutely no talent for the guitar. None. In fact my talent was so vacuous, when I played it actually caused other people to lose their own innate talent.
Later in life I’ve picked up the harmonica, which it turns out I can play well enough to accompany quite a few songs. No solos, though.
Was the control booth to his left? Near the end he keeps looking up to his left as if waiting for a signal. Having no studio recording experience I thought the artist faced the booth.
That’s how I feel watching Elizabeth Cotton play guitar. It’s really hard to wrap my head around what she’s doing because she’s a lefty playing a right-handed guitar that hasn’t been restrung.
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This is two separate recordings - audio from a demo or take and video of him just practicing the song.
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AFAIK his guitars have been re-strung. Jimi played his upside down, though.
I saw Paul perform last week and he performed Blackbird while standing on a platform rising up some 30’.
It was something else.
For being nearly 80, he put on a hell of a show — playing for some two and a half hours and keeping the crowd red hot the entire time. His voice isn’t what it once was, but he still looked and sounded better than he had any business being.
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I bought the white album the day it was released and had listened to the song hundreds of times over many years before I found out it was really about the civil rights movement and the struggle of the young black girls who were trying to enter unsegregated schooling in Little Rock. I guess the sign of a great song is when it can have many shades of meaning, all valid, all profound.
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Hmm, then they must have cut two recordings in because he makes a mistake in the song and stops and restarts in both the audio and video. Then he explains to Brian Epstein (?) what happened and their conversation is synced on the audio and video.
Sir Paul played this at the Oakland show on Sunday and gave that same explanation. His voice was not as strong and clear as this old recording but he sang it with feeling and the show was tremendous anyways. If his tour is coming anywhere near you find a way to go.
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I saw him in Seattle a few days before the Oakland show and he was great. The caveat is that tickets, even for the “cheap” seats, are shockingly expensive. But if you have the means and he’s in your area, it’s well worth it.
He puts on a hell of a show playing for some two and a half hours, and seems genuinely happy to be out there touring (which you can’t say for everybody). You definitely get your money’s worth.
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