Hugh Jones
Melbourne Cricket Ground, September 30, 2017

Everybody seemed to benefit from Jack Riewoldt’s impromptu duet with The Killers after this year’s AFL Grand Final.

Big Jack, caught up in the excitement of celebrating Richmond’s premiership, revealed a hitherto unseen skill while The Killers forever endeared themselves to a large proportion of the Australian football fan base, particularly Richmond supporters, the numbers of which are multiplying like field mice in a Wimmera grain silo.

The AFL would have been delighted with the media coverage that Jack’s cameo received across the globe.

Williamstown sports writer Anthony Colangelo was there and dutifully reported the episode for his employer, The Age. In doing so, he ‘fessed up to being a shameless fan. The song Jack sang, Mr Brightside, was – according to Colangelo – “one of the most seminal pieces of music of this century”. Yup, that’s what he wrote.

The band sings the song at every concert it plays, reported Colangelo. So they probably enjoyed the change-up provided by sweaty Jack. Indeed, Colangelo described this version as “one of the most rousing renditions of Mr Brightside ever”.

Having a “seminal piece of music” in your repertoire must, at times, weary hard-working concert bands. Cold Chisel must perform Khe Sanh every time, Springsteen can’t leave before playing Born To Run and John Farnham only gets on stage these days to sing You’re the Voice.

So what would one consider to be the “seminal” pieces of music from The Beatles? Which songs would they just have to include? If, by some miracle, they staged a 21st century concert tour, what would their setlist look like? Maybe this …

House lights go down on an empty stage; crowd shrieks; the instant the noise drops, the stadium (because it would be a stadium) is filled with a huge F chord, with a G on top from George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker … the unmistakeable opening to A Hard Day’s Night.

With the crowd in instant frenzy, they’d roll straight into I Saw Her Standing There, then Back in the USSR. All three tunes stretched from their original length to about eight minutes each so it would be almost half an hour in before John would pause to say “hello, nice to be here. Do you remember this one?” and flip straight into She Loves You.

 Happily the band would rattle through some of their earliest love songs: I Wanna Be Your Man (with Ringo on vocals), Can’t Buy Me Love, Please Mr Postman and You’re Gonna Lose