Many may remember John Lennon’s cocksure commentary when the Beatles played their Royal Command performance in 1963:
But Queen Elizabeth wasn’t in attendance that evening, That’s the Queen Mother in the audience, reacting to John.
The Beatles were mostly silent about the Queen for the rest of their career. It was only in the final piece for their last fully recorded “studio” album, Abbey Road, that Paul in 1969 gave an offhand, chummy tribute to Queen Elizabeth. The song, “Her Majesty” seemed like a throwaway. According to author Ian McDonald the song was originally put earlier in the “medley” section between “Mean Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam,” but:
McCartney rightly judged that it didn’t fit and told second engineer John Kurlander to cut it out and throw it away. Kurlander, who had been instructed never to discard anything The Beatles recorded, instead edited it, for convenience’s sake, to the end of the Medley … When McCartney heard this the following day, he liked the random effect.
That was 53 years ago.
He finally played the song for the Queen herself in 2002. From the Paul McCartney Project:
Paul performed the song live at the Party at the Palace concert from the Garden at Buckingham Palace in 2002, as part of the celebrations of the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II. “I had to do it“, he joked.
I did once perform this song for the queen. I don’t know how to break this to you, but she didn’t have a lot to say.
And this is it:
From norselandsrock.com:
In 2002, McCartney was due to headline the ‘Party At The Palace’ concert celebrating the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Before the band came on, Paul appeared alone with an acoustic guitar and played Her Majesty. It had rarely been performed before so this was a surprising, if somewhat fitting, occasion. “I’m sorry, but I just had to do it” he said, addressing the Queen from stage.
Paul and Queen Elizabeth got along quite well.
Macca and the Queen have met several times and seem to have a good rapport. During one of their meets, the Queen famously once said “We have many Beatles records at home.” Paul responded “That’s great! I have many Queen records at home too!” The Queen laughed quite heartily at this.
Rest in piece, Queen Elizabeth. The world will miss you.