Jubilee Concert

Community Hub 🗨 Just Chatting
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Anyone watch the Queen’s 70th Jubilee Concert last night?
George Ezra was one of the performers. He played a song with a capo on fret 1 but the song consisted of barre chords. What was the reason for the capo?

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He may have been playing in a flat key. Capo 1 open G chord is Ab. If the song was in Bb capo 1 Open A. Also if he was using a capo to move the song up 1/2 a step it wouldn’t change the chord shapes.
If you know what song he played it would be easier to answer.

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I heard he got that capo from the queen a few years ago and wanted to show her he still uses it…

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Haven’t seen the performance but could be that some songs he had in Eb tuning and some in standard E and rather than tuning strings over and over again he used the capo. Why he played barres only? Maybe capo remained after previous song in standard E so he didn’t bother taking it down, who knows :smiley:

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I think the point is, if you are only playing barre chords, the capo doesn’t do anything at all.

Actually, when he plays F he just uses 3 fingers to form the E shape and relies on the capo in place of barring with the index finger. I wonder why he does that?

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You’re right, I didn’t see that at the time. Studying the video now I can see that. Strange!

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Can I add a comment about the lyrics for which I take no credit seen it mentioned elsewhere, part of the lyrics are below, if you listen he does not sing anything after “throw a party”. Given the circumstance with the age of the queen you can perhaps see why he left it out

Green green grass, blue blue sky
You better throw a party on the day that I die
Green green grass, blue blue sky
You better throw a party on the day that I die

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F is very common key is swing and jazz with brass instruments.
F is less common with guitar players. He probably plays the song in E when not playing with Brass instruments so capo 1 he doesn’t need to think of the chords. Muscle memory from open E kicks in. A good singer sings in the key the band is playing in so changing keys to sing would come into play.

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ROFLMAO I wonder who picked the song?

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@stitch
Never mind who chose the song it would be interesting know who decided to edit the song.

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My first thoughts were: maybe his action is a tad high and he’s using that old put a capo on the 1st fret trick :rofl:
I like @stitch’s thinking re the brass.
Tbh, I don’t think it makes much of a difference what he did, as I don’t think the guitar was being amplified at all. There’s no change in the sound whether he’s playing or stopping to wave at the audience and if you go to 1.04 he’s strumming away with no music at all apart from vocals.
Nice pick up on the death omission :laughing:

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Thanks for that insight Rick. I’ve been following @Richard_close2u’s capo ‘mini series’ and thought I had a good understanding of its uses. As ever with guitar there is always something else to learn. :smiley:

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I have not seen it at all.
I know he used to use a baritone guitar.
Was it that or a standard tuned one?

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Standard tune Tele

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I’m not sure on this one as I didn’t watch the concert but there are some early performances from Katy Perry on Youtube where she uses a capo but plays mainly barre chords but she was letting open strings ring out , check Thinking Of You and One Of The Boys, maybe George Ezra does a similar thing.