Thursday 19 January 2017

You Can Have Her (Only Time Performed Live)

Elvis Presley appeared four times at The Forum of Inglewood in Los Angeles in the 1970’s over two days ,three years apart. The first in 1970 on 14 November during just his second tour and the second on 11 May 1974.
The 1974 shows were attended by British rock group Led Zeppellin and both the afternoon and evening shows had very little difference in terms of the setlist .
Of the 37,000 who attended those two shows the half which made their way into the Forum for the afternoon show had no idea that within that show would be two and a half minutes which would set this show apart and the treat that awaited them.
Both shows were excellent with Elvis in good voice and mood – a combination which always proved to be a winner. During the afternoon show between ‘Love Me Tender’ and ‘Steamroller Blues’ something magical and quite wonderful happened. In a moment of pure Elvis spontaneity he started to sing Ray Hamilton’s 1961 hit ‘You Can Have Her’.
The song seems to progress in stages with the passing of each verse firstly Elvis shouts the songs title then Elvis and pianist Glen D. Hardin start of before Ronnie Tutt joins in with the cymbals but at the start of the next verse it’s full blown drums. At the beginning of the next verse it’s the turn of the guitars which then become more prominent next turn around. Joining next time around are the backing vocalists and then it just becomes singing for fun. By this stage you can hear the clapping along as everyone seems to be playing and singing with a smile on their face and it’s almost just like they never want it to end but eventually Elvis does just that by bringing the song to a close.
A studio version could never have caught this fun in quite the same way and the audience recording seems to add to the ‘fly on the wall’ feel to this recording. I doubt if anyone in the crowd that afternoon had any inclination as to how special a moment they were witnessing. In a cruel twist of fate the Evening show was recorded at the mixing board and the subsequent soundboard recording was released by Sony on the FTD label in 2007 but it appears that the same cannot be said of the afternoon show. This suspicion is strengthened further by the fact that Sony actually bought the audience recording of ‘You Can Have Her’ and included it as a bonus track on the aforementioned ‘Live in L.A.’ album. It is however lucky for us that the performance was captured at all and that in spite of it being recorded by an audience member it is of good quality.

Listen to "You Can Have Her" here

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