Idris Elba, Paul McCartney and the mutation of chord memory

Idris Elba playing guitar, Paul McCartney not looking
~ Jeremy Kahn

I came across this rather lovely clip where, at 2:34, Idris Elba plays a guitar and gets Paul McCartney to guess some chords without looking. Paul says “This could be embarrassing”, meaning for himself, and Idris, thinking Paul meant embarrassing for Idris, says “Yeah, do you remember the time you pulled out a guitar in front of Paul McCartney.” My take is that it ended up embarrassing for both of them, and full credit to both of them for publishing it.

Em is no problem for Paul and C takes a moment. But then Idris plays D6 and Paul can’t get it, so sneaks a look.

I was a little surprised and so was Idris, I suspect, because D6 is the opening chord of Paul’s composition Fool On The Hill. I’ve played that song since it came out 55 years ago. I can remember being shown how to play D6 by a mate at school. I’m pretty sure that Idris thought this would be obvious to Paul.

In my (guitarist’s) mind the song starts like this:

Notation and Tab. Piano notes D4, A4, B4. F sharp 3. Tab: open d, fret 2 on g, open b and fret 2 on e.

But listening to the original it’s played on piano and it’s more like this:

Notation and Tab. Piano notes D4, B4, F sharp 3, A3. Tab: fret 4 on d, fret 4 on g, fret 7 on b and fret 5 on e.

So the voicing Idris played is not utterly obvious, in the way Idris (and I) thought. The Fool On The Hill is the only place I would use this shape outside of jazz music. So it’s hardly surprising that Paul didn’t recognise the chord shape, since he probably never used it, as he played piano on the song, not guitar. That’s my guess, anyway.