Dark Horse (song) - Other Versions

Other Versions

As well as performing the song throughout both the 1974 tour and his 1991 Japanese tour with Eric Clapton, his only other tour as a solo artist, Harrison recorded "Dark Horse" a number of times before and after the officially released studio version. The "laidback" original take, from the November 1973 sessions at FPSHOT, is available unofficially on the Harri-Spector Show bootleg compilation, along with the other selections sent to David Geffen and outtakes from Harrison and Phil Spector's February 1971 sessions for Ronnie Spector.

In October 1974, shortly before leaving for Los Angeles, Harrison performed a solo acoustic version of "Dark Horse" during an interview with veteran BBC disc jockey Alan Freeman. The location has been identified as either Apple's offices on St James's Street, London, or in front of a fire at Friar Park. During the candid interview, Harrison enthused about Eric Clapton and Ravi Shankar, jokingly referred to John Lennon as "a saint – and a bastard", and claimed that Paul McCartney had "ruined" him as a guitar player. This version of "Dark Horse" is available unofficially on bootlegs such as Pirate Songs.

Late in October, days before the band left for the first show in Vancouver, an abridged live performance of the song was recorded and filmed for promotional purposes at the A&M sound stage where Harrison and his musicians were rehearsing. Later in the tour, Harrison would find a way to alter his vocal pitch to better cope with the effects of laryngitis, but Simon Leng writes of this performance: "It gives a candid glimpse of the pain Harrison's need to sing was inflicting on him." At the end of the 1974 tour, Harrison and the tour band filmed another performance of "Dark Horse", intended for inclusion in the debut series of Saturday Night Live. The filming took place at NBC TV Studios in New York on 19 December, but the network decided to delay the show for a year and the Harrison segment was never aired.

In November 1976, while promoting his first album on Dark Horse Records, Thirty Three & 1/3, Harrison finally appeared on Saturday Night Live, performing a number of songs with Paul Simon, as well as a solo version of "Dark Horse". Although the song does not appear on lists of the tracks taped on 19 November at NBC, Alan Clayson writes of Harrison singing "Dark Horse", "hunched over a hollow-body Gretsch", in a blue-lit studio. Harrison and Simon's duet on "Homeward Bound" later appeared on the Olivia Harrison-inspired charity album Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal in 1990, but nothing else from this 1976 performance has been officially released.

In his "safe" setlist for the 1991 Japanese tour, Harrison's inclusion of "Dark Horse" was a rare example of a song from his post-All Things Must Pass work from the 1970s, along with the Living in the Material World hit "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)". "Dark Horse" appears on the Live in Japan album, released in July 1992. Elliot Huntley has written that it was "a joy" to hear this live version, since it brought out the song's "true potential in a much more evident way" than the 1974 original. The performance on Live in Japan was recorded at Osaka's Castle Hall on 11 December 1991.