George Harrison: Lumbering in the Material World

Holy Krishna! What kind of an opening night for George Harrison is this? Ravi Shankar asks for silence and no smoking during his music. Silence is very important, he says, because music is eternal, and out of the silence comes the music. Something like that. But, instead, out of the audience comes this piercing death cry, followed by a rain of war whoops. After a few numbers, people start shouting, “Get funky!” and “Rock and roll!”

In the press box at PNE Coliseum in Vancouver, one reporter is guessing that the Sanskrit letter for Om, illuminated in shadowboxes at either end of the stage, is actually the Indian dollar sign. Another insists it means “No Smoking.”

Harrison, meantime, is hoarse from the beginning and strains through each song. Billy Preston eventually perks up the show with two numbers in the second half, but the night sputters to a conclusion with more Indian music, more cries for rock and roll and, in the end, Harrison receiving a perfunctory encore call. He performs “My Sweet Lord,” and out of the silence comes the silence — a still and seated audience with only the front section clapping along.

“I hated it,” said Pat Luce the next morning. Pat Luce wasn’t a paying customer. She’s a publicist with A&M Records, on the tour for Harrison’s Dark Horse label, which A&M distributes. “We had a lot of conferences after the show,” she said. “They’re having a rehearsal today. George has to rest. He’s been rehearsing every day and recording every night to get the single out. Last night everyone was — they weren’t down; in the framework of the show, there is a fabulous show; they know it’s a good band.

“But, one, it’s too long; two, Ravi’s got to be one set. And three, George has to shut up.”

In San Francisco, producer Bill Graham gazed through an office window at the unceasing rain and shook his head very slowly. On the wall behind him hung memorabilia from his two other big tours of 1974 — Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. He fingered the felt-tip pen dangling from his necklace and worried about anything he might say.

He’d been up till four that morning, in fact, agonizing about what to tell the press. He was clearly upset with the tour; he had a sheaf of notes on his desk covering the shows in Vancouver, Seattle, and now, last night, in San Francisco. But he should be talking to George, not the press, he said, and so far he’d only spoken with Tom Scott, Harrison’s saxophonist and musical sounding board, and Denis O’Brien, Harrison’s business manager. Ordinarily, explained Graham, he talks freely with Harrison, “except on things artistic.” He wasn’t sure he should step out of line, as technical producer of the tour, and criticize the artistic and musical structure of the show.

So specific thoughts were off the record. But if he was going to talk at all, it had to be straight. “I could say to you, ‘We’re working on things,’ you know. ‘George is in great spirits!’ It’s like the football team that’s lost 43 games in a row, and you say, ‘How do you feel, coach?’ ‘Well, my spirits are up and we’re still in there!'” Graham smiled vaguely at the metaphor. “But we all know that the plays ain’t working, and we’re looking for a new quarterback.”

He recalled the return of Dylan and the reunion of CSNY. Their audiences. Graham has a sense for audiences. “At the beginning of each show, I think the public has the same feeling — yes, that wonderful aura. I think with Bob Dylan the public loved what they got. With CSNY they got three-and-a-half hours of music and were pretty well satisfied. With George Harrison, they would definitely have wanted more of George Harrison.

“That’s my criticism of George, out of deep respect for his great talent and great ability. I think what the public leaves with is a continuing respect and reverence for what he has done, and a. . .” Here Graham chose his words carefully. “. . .perhaps a feeling of bittersweetness about not having gotten just a bit closer to what their expectations were. I don’t know. They didn’t get to go back in the time machine enough.”

On the Dylan tour, Graham, the backstage showman, had lit up a fancy Cuban cigar for every show well done. I asked him whether he’d smoked any so far on this tour.

His eyebrows perked up. “Ah, but that’s the point. There’s no cigars!”

I realize the Beatles did fill a space in the Sixties, and all the people who the Beatles meant something to have grown up. It’s like with anything. You grow up with it and you get attached to it. That’s one of the problems in our lives, becoming too attached to things. But I understand the Beatles in many ways did nice things, and it’s appreciated, the people still like them. The problem comes when they want to live in the past, and they want to hold onto something and are afraid of change. — George Harrison at his Los Angeles, press conference, October 23rd, 1974

The last time I saw George Harrison in the flesh as a Beatle, he was a standout. The group was on a stage covering second base at Candlestick Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, the night of August 29th, 1966. San Francisco was the last stop of a 19-city American tour. JPG&R, all in lacy white shirts and mod green jackets that matched the outfield grass, had strolled out of the first-base dugout, waving casually at a mad crowd of 26,000, and laughed through 11 songs in 30 minutes flat.

And I remember how George stood out from the other three that evening. He wore white socks.

As things turned out, the Candlestick Park show was the last concert the Beatles ever did. “We got in a rut,” Harrison told Hunter Davies, the biographer, years later. “It was just a bloody big row. Nobody could hear. We got worse as musicians, playing the same old junk every day. There was no satisfaction at all.”

The next month, George and his wife, Patti, were off to India. Having idly picked up a strange, twin-bowled instrument called a sitar on the set of Help!, he was interested in studying under the great Indian composer and sitarist, Ravi Shankar.

It was five more years before Harrison returned to the stage, at the behest of Shankar and for the benefit of the people of Bangladesh, East Pakistan. He was the host, dressed all in white, gathering friends like Billy Preston, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell and Bob Dylan around him.

And it was there, at Madison Square Garden, that Harrison tasted the desire to tour again.

“He was definitely inspired after Bangladesh,” said Billy Preston. “He wanted to do it again, right away. But it took some time. Bangladesh was an exceptional show because everybody was there. He had to do a lot of thinking on this one, because he had to get out there and be the one.”

There were other delays for Harrison: the fusses over the profits from the Bangladesh benefit and album; the McCartney-sue-me, we-sue-Allen Klein blues; various sessions with friends like Harry Nilsson, Preston and Starr; the Living in the Material World album and the creation of Dark Horse Records. One of Dark Horse’s first releases was Shankar Family and Friends, which featured Shankar conducting a 15-piece Indian orchestra, sometimes joined by rock and jazz instruments. Ravi Shankar, it turned out, was a major reason for Harrison’s return to the stage.

“I have always been very eager to bring out such a number of good musicians from India,” said Shankar, who has composed music for small orchestras for some 30 years. “George heard a few tapes I had of things with groups and he was impressed and was telling me for almost seven years that I should bring something like this over. And I said, ‘Well, you must also take part in it.’ And it’s only last year we became more confident.”

Last February Harrison visited Shankar in India to plan the tour. In the spring he began to gather his backup. First he chose Tom Scott, saxophone player behind Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Billy Preston and John Lennon, and in front of his own band, the L.A. Express. Having studied Indian music at UCLA with a Shankar disciple, Harihar Rao, Scott was invited to play on the Shankar Family album last year. When his L.A. Express accompanied Joni Mitchell to London this spring, Harrison called and asked him to join the tour.