2024 – 50 Thanksgivings Ago Tonight: John Lennon’s Last Public Performance (with Elton John at MSG)
(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on November 28, 2024)
And that 1974 Thanksgiving was also on November 28.
Yeah, I was there and it was one of my favorite nights ever. You’ll see why as you read these pieces that I’ve stolen from my site’s writeup about it.
NOT on my site is this part of my old Madison Square Garden seating chart that shows the orchestra (floor) seating sections:
As you can see, the closest-to-the-stage sections were O, R, A and C and each section had 24 rows. My tickets were for the first two seats in O, Row 11 (where the red X is):
Yoko Ono was seated in the Section R aisle seat a few feet away, right across the aisle from me.
By the way, I just dug up that ticket that I haven’t seen in years. I had forgotten what was on the back:
Yoko signed both my and my date’s ticket stubs.
An odd thing happened before the show started. Everyone in Section O moved their seats a few feet to the right so that they sat right next to the people in the aisle seats in Section R, which suddenly got wider.
That put me right next to Yoko.
I made small talk with her and then asked her what everyone in the building was sure would happen: was John here to perform with Elton? She calmly said “yes” and then signed our tickets.
Before the show, I noticed a few celebrities in the audience, so I walked around and took some pictures. I just found the half-century-old slides and they’re horrible, so I’ll tell you who I had photographed: Bette Midler, Andy Warhol, Billie Jean King and – of course – Yoko.
I worked extremely hard to make the Yoko ones visible, but they’re still pretty bad. Here’s the “best” one (note: I originally posted the horrible one on the left. After Bob Kunath got rid of the grain with an AI program, I got rid of the bad color…..and lost a bit of sharpness). Thanks, Bob(s):
She was holding a balloon that you can see the top of.
I’m not sure why I took this one, but it shows more of the balloon:
Obviously, I had to take extreme measures to get it to be only this bad, but it says, “99X Stereo”, so I guess some AM station was involved in promotion for the show:
Do you know why John agreed to show up and perform? He lost a bet with Elton.
They had recorded a single (“Whatever Gets You Through The Night”) that John wasn’t crazy about. Elton proclaimed that it would go to #1. John laughed and said that if it DID get to #1, he would join him onstage at Elton’s Thanksgiving Day show on November 28.
Of course, it went to #1. Welcome, Dr. Winston O’Boogie!
The show started off normally with Elton playing his hits (pic is from my site):
And then he introduced Lennon. The crown went insane!
I’ll let my site talk for a while…………..
Elton and John even did a little “Dancing With The Stars”:
And then Lennon exited to HUGE applause
At that point, Yoko left her seat to reunite with her husband backstage, as I mentioned earlier.
Oh yeah – remember that “scrap of paper” that she found on the floor that she wrote her name and address on?
I found that too:
(The reddish writing on it appears to be mine)
Elton also played MSG the next night. Too bad Lennon didn’t perform that night. Why? I had second row seats. Here’s a peek:
SO………….Elton John Lennon played THREE songs:
“Whatever Gets You Through The Night”
“Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”
“I Saw Her Standing There”
You can hear all three songs on Elton’s “Here and There” CD AND on YouTube. BOTH include many Elton songs from that same 1974 Madison Square Garden show:
Watch out for something else found on YouTube: a supposed video from that night (there is NO video from that night):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKFBtrkljwE
It starts out with the real audio introduction of Lennon, but they try to show an out-of-sync video of “Elton” lip-syncing it (watch his mouth closely). They also show Elton at times wearing a black hat (he did no such thing that night) and then they repeatedly show someone who you’re supposed to believe is Yoko. She’s wearing a black hat (Yoko had a white hat on that night).
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They’re also zooming in on this seated “Yoko” and you can see one arm of an enthusiastic music hand clapper to the right. That’s where I was sitting and I’m not a big music hand clapper – especially when I’m trying to shoot a show. That ain’t me, babe.
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Lots of comments with this video mention that the video part was taken from the film “John & Yoko: a Love Story”, so no one that you see in this video is the real deal.
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They’re all fakes………um, I mean “actors”, from “Elton”, “Lennon”, the “band”, and even “Yoko” (or was that supposed to be May Pang?).
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I read comments that said that Yoko was pissed off that night because May got seated in the front and Yoko wound up WAY back in the orchestra. I KNOW that ain’t true.
Most of the other comments were from people who either couldn’t believe that this happened or wished they had been there…………or both. The rest were stunned that no video was shot that night.
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Then this “video creator” finishes off his “show” by stealing every decent picture he could find from the photographers who shot that night, including three of mine right off my site (actually, TWO of mine and one that Yoko took with my camera – it’s even got the 45º slant that she used to distinguish her shots from mine).
This was all done by this person without permission or compensation for the usages.
I know a certain copyright lawyer who might enjoy sinking his teeth into this one.
Oh yeah…………….Happy Thanksgiving!!
Great memories Bob. Thanks and have a Happy Thanksgiving.
My sister Annemarie was there as well and I will be forever jealous!
Best $8.50 I ever spent!
Happy Thanksgiving Bob!