{"id":2284,"date":"2021-08-20T22:07:30","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T22:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2284"},"modified":"2021-10-07T00:51:08","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T00:51:08","slug":"from-the-vaults-by-george","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2284","title":{"rendered":"From the Vaults: By George!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At Christmas of 1970, you could have held my accumulated knowledge of George Harrison in a thimble.\u00a0 My brother Ron came home from his first year teaching job in downstate Chesaning bearing a boxed set of cassettes and a music book for Harrison\u2019s massive <\/span>All Things Must Pass<\/span><\/i> triple album.\u00a0 It would have been a better Christmas present if it hadn\u2019t coincided with him getting his own present from Uncle Sam – a notice of his imminent induction into the Army at the conclusion of his first (and last) year teaching high school biology.\u00a0 With medical affidavits to prove he had (and still has) a severe allergy to certain kinds of fish, the Army still took him with the last group of draftees to come out of Marquette County, Michigan.\u00a0 Someone must have considered this a potential medical problem.\u00a0 After doing his basic training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, he finished his two year stint at Fort Dix, New Jersey and not in a country where one of the dietary staples is fish, fish, and more fish.\u00a0 I enjoyed the box set immensely but am still somewhat angry that I loaned the songbook to a keyboard player when we were trying to get a band together.\u00a0 Keyboard guy and I ended up auditioning together for the band Cloudy \u2018n Cool (later to be renamed Knockdown), so even though he got my <\/span>ATMP <\/span><\/i>songbook, I got the better end of the deal – I got a band gig that lasted two years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the wake of the unexpected and surprising success of Harrison\u2019s triple LP solo effort, George decided to do something very unlike The Beatle George most people were used to seeing.\u00a0 According to David Hepworth\u2019s account given in his book <\/span>Never A Dull Moment – 1971 – The Year Rock Exploded<\/span><\/i> (2016 – St. Martin\u2019s Press), George learned that the father of his friend and teacher, Ravi Shankar, had been born in Bengal.\u00a0 Soon after East Bengal declared the formation of the state of Bangladesh in March of 1971, a combination of the nine-month Bangladesh Liberation War, famine, poverty, and natural disasters had killed thousands.\u00a0 With millions of displaced people now facing starvation, George wrote a song called <\/span>Bangla Desh<\/span><\/i> to help raise awareness of the unfolding crisis.\u00a0 With his new album selling three million copies and the lead single, <\/span>My Sweet Lord<\/span><\/i>, ringing in everyone\u2019s ears, Harrison seemed well placed to use his influence to organize the first true humanitarian fund raising effort set to rock music.\u00a0 Folk musicians already had a long history of staging such events for various causes, but that is another story for another day.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The idea of The Concert for Bangladesh originated with Shankar, but when Harrison got involved, it became a fundraising rock concert.\u00a0 The involvement of a former Beatle could only mean it would be a big event.\u00a0 One of the first musicians to offer his services was George\u2019s old pal Ringo Starr even though he was, at the time, engaged shooting a spaghetti western (<\/span>Blindman<\/span><\/i>) in Spain. \u00a0 Thoughts of TWO Beatles together on stage naturally put a hum in the air and rumours in the mill.\u00a0 Mainstream media outlets really didn\u2019t care that much about covering rock music but they were more than happy to talk about anything involving The Beatles (or even A Beatle).\u00a0 When The Beatles old Hamburg pal Klaus Voormann was the second to sign on, hearts went pit-a-pat.\u00a0 After all, with the animosities created by Paul suing his bandmates to get out from under the thumb of the manager three fourths of The Beatles agreed to hire (Alan Klein), Voormann was being pitched as Paul\u2019s replacement if and when the big Beatles\u2019 reunion happened.\u00a0 John Lennon had no kind words for Harrison\u2019s new album and with his various Lennon-Yoko Ono projects in the works, the odds were pretty good he would not have been interested in anything that remotely sounded \u2018Beatle-ish\u2019.\u00a0 Had John been interested, he no doubt would have insisted on Yoko being in the mix and all these years later, speculation is what passed for her \u2018singing\u2019 in those days would not have been a good fit.\u00a0 It is a rather moot point because John didn\u2019t inquire and George didn\u2019t ask.\u00a0 Still, TWO Beatles on stage along with a Beatle pal…pit-a-pat went the heart\u2019s of Beatle fans.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One person who George specifically asked to participate was Leon Russell.\u00a0 Russell turned his talents as a studio musician into one of the most enigmatic careers;\u00a0 he always seemed to be lingering in the background of big events when he was in truth pulling the strings.\u00a0 As one example, he served as the musical director of the widely praised Joe Cocker\u2019s <\/span>Mad Dogs and Englishmen<\/span><\/i> Tour.\u00a0 All of Russell\u2019s influences are on full display of this epic 1970s travelling concert extravaganza from the<\/span> barrelhouse piano arrangements to the near Pentecostal line of tambourine-toting background singers.\u00a0 If one is not familiar with Russell\u2019s style, a quick listen to Elton John\u2019s <\/span>Tumbleweed Connection <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Madman Across the Water <\/span><\/i>LPs will bring you up to speed.\u00a0 Both were no doubt influenced by Leon\u2019s work and would eventually bring John to, and over, the top, musically speaking.\u00a0 The next high profile musician George wanted involved was Eric Clapton who was, for a variety of reasons, laying low.\u00a0 It would take a team dispatched by George to visit Clapton in person and make certain assurances to get him to Madison Square Garden for the concert.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Despite the \u2018Clapton is God\u2019 graffiti that had adjourned London\u2019s walls in Cream\u2019s hayday, Clapton was anything but God-like in 1971 and his life was a mess.\u00a0 Harrison knew what was going on because part of Eric\u2019s messy existence involved the pursuit of Patti Boyd, George\u2019s wife.\u00a0 When she refused to leave George for him, Clapton sequestered himself at his Hurtwood Edge estate and tried to dull the pain by snorting heroin.\u00a0 Besides trying to dull his pain with drugs, Clapton was having simultaneous affairs with Pattie Boyd\u2019s older sister, Paula, and Alice Ormsby-Gore, Lord Harlech\u2019s teenage daughter.\u00a0 Ormsby-Gore held her junk habit at bay by downing two bottles of vodka a day as there wasn\u2019t enough smack to go around.\u00a0 When his 1970 <\/span>Layla<\/span><\/i> album sold poorly, Clapton felt rejected twice, although the record buying public wasn\u2019t clear at this point who Derek and the Dominos were.\u00a0 Ironically, it was Harrison who had suggested the band\u2019s tongue firmly planted in cheek name.\u00a0 Who is to say if George felt any guilt considering Clapton\u2019s open pursuit of his wife.\u00a0 George sent a posse to round up Clapton for the Bangladesh concert anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of course, the public didn\u2019t know the depths of Clapton\u2019s addiction or that he agreed to come to New York only if he was guaranteed access to White Elephant, his favored type of junk.\u00a0 One wonders what George thought while facing the press to talk \u2018peace, love, and brotherhood\u2019 while he had minions scouring seedier parts of the city as Hepworth says so unapologetically, \u201cto make sure that the aristocratic teenage girlfriend of his overprivileged English guitar player would be able to secure his supply of drugs.\u201d\u00a0 Harrison\u2019s insurance against a nonappearance by Clapton was Peter Frampton who, at the time, had recently left Humble Pie.\u00a0 Frampton was blissfully unaware of why he was asked to be involved until much later in his life.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0George filled out key band positions for the concert with members of the first band signed to Apple Records, Badfinger.\u00a0 Badfinger\u2019s Pete Hamm even had a striking resemblance to John Lennon, but that wasn\u2019t why they were included on the bill.\u00a0 Badfinger filled in the banks of acoustic guitars and background vocals to replicate the <\/span>All Things Must Pass<\/span><\/i> sound along with Jim Keltner backing up Ringo on drums, Billy Preston on organ, plus members of Leon Russell\u2019s band and Frampton.\u00a0 Harrison had never even fronted a combo, so assembling this massive array of talent and coordinating all of the egos involved must have been a daunting task for him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The story circulated at the time was that a mystic had picked the August 1 concert date because it was a \u2018propitious date\u2019.\u00a0 The truth is, August 1 was the only date available at Madison Square Garden before <\/span>Disney on Parade <\/span><\/i>opened on August 2.\u00a0 It was not yet the era of global telecasts of important events so there were no plans to broadcast either the afternoon or evening shows live on radio or to record them for TV.\u00a0 A meager three camera setup was used to shoot the event with an eye toward a later theatrical release, but two of the camera angles were virtually useless.\u00a0 The shots one sees from time to time came from the one camera that had been set up in the orchestra pit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Bob Dylan\u2019s involvement wasn\u2019t a sure thing until he actually walked on stage.\u00a0 He had confessed to George that he was nervous about performing in front of twenty thousand people.\u00a0 Harrison countered that he had never been the front man in The Beatles and the few steps toward the center stage microphone was going to be a very difficult journey for him to make.\u00a0 Dylan had his own ups and downs in the five years before the Bangladesh concert, but it would prove to be a watershed moment for him as well as for George.\u00a0 The Bangladesh concert would mark Dylan\u2019s reappearance after having holed up in Woodstock for five years.\u00a0 When he walked on stage to a thunderous ovation, one of the MSG security guards told the <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i> he had to ask if this was one of The Beatles he did not recognize.\u00a0 After Harrison introduced, \u201ca friend\u201d, Dylan came on, did a half hour of his usual fare from <\/span>Blowing in the Wind <\/span><\/i>to <\/span>A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 His appearance not only stamped the concert as being a success, it gave Dylan a glimpse how he would be able to carry on in, as Hepworth describes it, \u201cIn the new world of enormous halls and crowds that stretched to the horizon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Was the <\/span>Concert for Bangladesh<\/span><\/i> a success?\u00a0 It depends who you ask.\u00a0 It certainly raised the profile of some of the artists who appeared (like Dylan) but it was also followed by the \u2018thump\u2019 of some whose careers never rose to that level again.\u00a0 Badfinger continued to struggle with little help from their manager who was skimming more profits from their work than they were.\u00a0 It cost Pete Hamm his life when after a night of heavy drinking, he wrote a caustic note about what an S.O.B. their manager was and then took his own life.\u00a0 Shankar had hoped to raise $25,000 and the take from the two concerts actually pulled in ten times that amount.\u00a0 George\u2019s grand money making plans for the album release went south when the record companies proved reluctant to endorse a product that would cost them money to help Harrison raise money.\u00a0 The suits were certainly not keen to market an album with the image of an emaciated Bangladeshi child on the cover, the image George wished to use.\u00a0 It was a short-sighted business view, but mostly forgotten as the album (and now DVDs of the concert) are being celebrated this past summer, fifty years on.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the IRS decided it was a taxable event because the charity in question wasn\u2019t picked until after the concert (which seems to fly in the face of all logic when the name from inception to end was <\/span>The Concert for Bangladesh<\/span><\/i>).\u00a0 The British Treasury could see no way to waive the purchase tax just because a Beatle asked them to.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a total bust, however, as Shankar would say, \u201cIn one day, the whole world knew the name of Bangladesh.\u00a0 It was a fantastic occasion.\u201d\u00a0 In the end, it also did pretty well as a fundraiser.\u00a0 By 1985, sales from the live album and film did send $12 million to Bangladesh and revenues since then continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF.\u00a0 How could Harrison have seen farther down the road when <\/span>The Concert for Bangladesh<\/span><\/i> would be the template for future fundraising efforts like <\/span>Live Aid <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Farm Aid?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Looking back in 1992, Harrison gave his account of the concert:\u00a0 \u201cThe money we raised was secondary.\u00a0 The main thing was, we spread the word and helped get the war ended . . . What we did show was that musicians and people are more humane than politicians.\u201d\u00a0 George may have been a reluctant leader at the start, but he learned his lessons well.\u00a0 Before organizing the initial <\/span>Live Aid<\/span><\/i> concert, Bob Geldof came to Harrison for advice.\u00a0 George told him, \u201cDo your homework.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This year marks another fiftieth anniversary – the one for the release of <\/span>All Things Must Pass<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in the day, much of the press surrounding the album was the plagiarism suit stirred up by the close resemblance to the lead single <\/span>My Sweet Lord<\/span><\/i> to the Chiffon\u2019s 1962 hit <\/span>He\u2019s So Fine. <\/span><\/i>\u00a0With only so many chords to play and the number of songs that share the same chord patterns, it is the songwriter\u2019s equivalent to a sand trap in golf.\u00a0 Songwriters will often cite \u2018unconscious plagiarism\u2019 when a snippet of a familiar tune finds its way into a new song.\u00a0 When he was composing <\/span>My Sweet Lord<\/span><\/i> in 1970, George was touring with Delaney & Bonnie.\u00a0 Delaney Bramlett worked with Harrison on the song (expecting but not getting a share of the songwriting credit) and he even pointed out the similarity of the two tunes.\u00a0 Working with Phil Spector, the king maker of 1960s girl groups, it would be difficult to believe it did not come up in conversation.\u00a0 Harrison pressed on and all was well, at least until it became a hit.\u00a0 As the old saw says, \u201cWhere there is a hit, there\u2019s a writ\u201d, and thus began years of legal wranglings between Bright Tunes Music, the owners of <\/span>He\u2019s So Fine <\/span><\/i>and the Harrison camp.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Being less an argument about \u2018artistry\u2019 and more about \u2018money\u2019, Allen Klein tried to work things out by organizing the purchase of Bright Tunes Music for Harrison.\u00a0 There was less incentive for the label to sell when the song kept racking up big sales numbers.\u00a0 The case finally came to court in 1975 but was not finally settled until 1998.\u00a0 Harrison had long since cut ties with Klein, but business man that he was, the former Beatles manager secretly bought Bright Tunes Music for himself.\u00a0 Who was in a better position to know how much the song had earned than Klein?\u00a0 Certainly George never saw this coming back when he cast one of the three votes that brought Klein on board, the act that proved to be the final straw for The Beatles.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0George\u2019s son, Dhani, took on the massive task of remastering <\/span>All Things Must Pass<\/span><\/i> for the album\u2019s 50th-anniversary release.\u00a0 One wonders what \u2018the quiet Beatle\u2019 would think of the various packages being offered, including a whopping 47 demos and outtakes.\u00a0 The package can be purchased digitally, as eight LPs, five CDs or in what is called the \u2018Uber Deluxe edition\u2019 that comes in a 50-pound wooden crate which also contains two books, small models of the garden gnomes from the original album cover and a host of other trinkets.\u00a0 Lennon\u2019s <\/span>Plastic Ono Band<\/span><\/i> and McCartney\u2019s <\/span>McCartney <\/span><\/i>albums were originally released in 1970 and there was some ado made to mark their 50 years out of the gate, but nothing to the scale of what is being done with <\/span>ATMP.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0George himself has been in the grave for twenty years, but <\/span>ATMP <\/span><\/i>is still seen as his legacy.\u00a0 Many have said the music he wrote after 1971 was never as good, but it seems to me George found himself in a winning position.\u00a0 His future albums and collaborations with his musical buddies in <\/span>The Traveling Wilburys<\/span><\/i> were for him to enjoy.\u00a0 If the rest of the world came along and enjoyed his music too, then that was alright by him, by George.<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video – George and The Traveling Wilburies – HANDLE WITH CARE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At Christmas of 1970, you could have held my accumulated knowledge of George Harrison in a thimble.\u00a0 My brother Ron came home from his first year teaching job in downstate Chesaning bearing a boxed set of cassettes and a music book for Harrison\u2019s massive All Things Must Pass triple album.\u00a0 It would have been a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-new-music","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2284"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2333,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2284\/revisions\/2333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}