Unplugged Prime Minister

October 5, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Canada, Music, Politics, Popular Culture | Leave a Comment 

Last night in Ottawa, the Prime Minister of Canada — the Right Honorable Stephen Joseph Harper, PC, MP, MA— surprised (actually surprised is a mild word for it) the audience at a National Arts Center gala when he walked on stage with Yo Yo Ma and proceeded to play the piano and sing the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

“…he isn’t Joe Cocker but he hits less bum notes than Ringo Starr”:  Canadian Prime Minister and Cellist Yo Yo Ma acknowledging the ovation after their performance last night in Ottawa.

The gig represented a considerable risk for the Conservative PM, who created a major controversy last year by dissing galas as plutocratic wastes of time, and whose personality is widely considered only to palely reflect the warmth and charm of wood.   As explained by John Ivison in the National Post in brutally comprehensible language, if Mr. Harper had flopped, he could have replaced William Shatner’s cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” as the universal go-to example of an already bad idea gone terribly wrong.

The consensus in Ottawa last night at the National Arts Centre, including among some Liberal MPs, was that Mr. Harper’s surprise appearance at the annual NAC gala was a political masterstroke….

The surprise to those Canadians who see Mr. Harper as the arch-political tactician was that it was Mrs Harper who pushed an idea, which caused much chewing of fingernails among political advisors. Everyone could see the potential upside of neutering the impression that the Prime Ministers is a cultural cro-magnon. But they could also see the massive downside if his version of “With a Little Help From My Friends” supplanted William Shatner’s Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds as the worst Beatles cover of all time and became a Youtube classic. That opposition is said to have melted once they heard the Prime Minister sing and tinkle the ivories – he isn’t Joe Cocker but he hits less bum notes than Ringo Starr. Mrs. Harper said she knew she had her man when he said “maybe” to the idea.