Bill Murray was on Late Night with Conan O’Brien last night. I’m a bit disappointed that, 11 hours later, no one has yet posted a YouTube clip of his appearance, but I did find another clip that will do the job of illustrating my concern. Go to around the 3:53 mark (or watch the excruciating if occasionally funny intro, if you want to hate white folks at Blooz festivals).
Conan must have been hipped to this performance. He brought up the fact that Murray can only play “Gloria” on guitar and asked if he would perform it with the Max Weinberg 7. Murray, ever the showman, readily complied. He kicked off the song playing at least one totally wrong-sounding chord. After about two rotations through the progression, Conan’s guitarist covered for him, and they pulled down Murray’s guitar in the mix. As is the case in this Blooz fest clip the second chord in the progression seemed to be the culprit. This has raised at least two questions:
1) Isn’t the chord progression to “Gloria” E-D-A? That’s how I’ve played it for the last 30 years.
2) If so, does Murray have no idea where to fret a D chord? I know his guitar at the Blooz fest isn’t perfectly tuned, but it can’t be that two different guitars have intonation problems around the D chord only.
A third question might be, Does anyone in the entertainment industry break the news to Bill that he doesn’t even know this one song on guitar?
Not being able to play Gloria correctly is just another part of what makes Murray infinitely better than Aykroyd and the Belushis.
Doesn’t Murray deserve a few extra points for not only knowing how to holster a guitar but also for sustaining the holstering to the point of parody?
I think I see what’s going on here. Murray is playing the form of a D chord, but the whole thing is one half-step flat — i.e., he’s playing it one fret too low. So what he’s actually playing is a D dim maj7 — in laymen’s term’s a cacophonous mess.
Glad to have been of service.
HVB
Yes, Hrrundi, that’s what it looked like on Conan as well. Thanks for confirming.