Live Version
On 1 August 1971, Harrison performed "Wah-Wah" as the opening song for the rock-music portion of the two Concert for Bangladesh shows, held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was therefore the first song he ever played live as a solo artist and, given the humanitarian cause behind the event, Alan Clayson writes, the New York audience "loved him ... before he'd even plucked a string". Of the reordered setlist for the second show that day (reflected in the running order on the Concert for Bangladesh live album), Joshua Greene has remarked on the "logical chronology" in Harrison's three-song opening segment: "Wah-Wah" "declared his independence from the Beatles, followed by 'My Sweet Lord,' which declared his internal discovery of God and spirit, and then 'Awaiting on You All,' which projected his message to the world." The recording of "Wah-Wah" that appeared on the live album was a composite of the audio from both the afternoon and evening shows – one of the few examples of studio manipulation on an otherwise faithful record of the concert. Due to technical problems with the film footage, the "Wah-Wah" segment in Saul Swimmer's concert documentary was created through a series of edits and cuts between visuals from the first and second shows.
In his glowing review of the Concert for Bangladesh album, Jon Landau of Rolling Stone described this live version as "a simple statement by a musician who knows who he is and what he wants to play". Author Robert Rodriguez opines that "Wah-Wah" "truly into its own" that day, the performance representing "one of rock's transcendental moments". With a powerful vocal from Harrison, backed by a 24-piece band that again included Clapton, Starr, Preston, Klaus Voormann and the whole of Badfinger, as in 1970, this live reading "teeters even closer to destruction" than the All Things Must Pass original, writes Bill Janovitz.
Read more about this topic: Wah-Wah (George Harrison Song)
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