Harrison in Frail Voice -- The Fuse Goes Out

 

Harrison in Frail Voice - The Fuse Goes Out

By Philip Elwood

The San Francisco Examiner

November 7, 1974

    It happens even to the best of Beatles. George Harrison's Cow Palace show last night was a fizzle, not a bomb, not an artistic catastrophe, rather more like a smoldering fuse of a potential earth-rocking electric music experience that sputtered along for a short time and then, with "My Sweet Lord", died out.

     Never a strong singer but a moving one, Harrison found that he had virtually no voice left after only two concerts out of the 50 in the nationwide tour and had to croak his way through even the delicate "Something" and such fine numbers as John Lennon's "In My Life." With the strong jazz and blues rock tip behind him, Harrison's vocals usually went unheard when the amplification was turned up for Harrison's voice, and mixing problems developed. Indeed, there was never a time in the 80-minutes that Harrison and his band were on stage that the sound system was properly balanced. Harrison participated, one way or another, in 17 tunes, three of them specialties for organist vocalist Billy Preston and one instrumental featuring feature for reedman Tom Scott.

     The evening's biggest roar from the approximately 13000 in the audience came for Preston, especially on "Nothing From Nothing," and "Let it Go Around in Circles." Harrison was cordial but nervous. He frequently alluded to "Me bad throat tonight" or said, "My voice's really shattered." After the latter, he performed "Give Me Love" later, saying quite apologetically, "We're not sure what you expect to hear, what you want us to play, but what we want to do most is make people happy."

     The orchestra looked good and played marvelously. Preston, as an organist, singer, dancer, and charismatic focal point, was sparkling all evening. Backup guitarist with the solo here and there was Ukiah's own Robben Ford, exuberant as always, swinging and swaying, working one end of the center stage instrumental teeter-totter as whom fulcrum was. Harrison's drummer, Andy Newark, the steady, rich-toned bassist Willie Weeks, and percussionist Emile Richards played everything from vibes to chimes to bells and bongos. Scott was joined by the suburb Jim Horn, also on reeds, and Chuck Findley on brasses, on "Darkhorse." Findley also played flute, making it a three-man flute accompaniment for Harrison's wheezy vocal.

     Besides the two mentioned, there were a couple of other Beatles, numbers "For You Blue" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "What Is Life?" "Sound State of Mind" and "Sue You, Sue Me" were newer tunes included .

The Ravi Shankar family, a 15-member Indian instrumental and vocal ensemble, took over for 50 minutes of the program. Scott remained with Shankar playing flute, and others of Harrison's band played the first and last of the Indian music presentations, one called "The Dentist Song Zum Zum", and the other "Disputes and Violence", a jazz-style arrangement with solo inserts. Shankar led the ensemble much of the time, playing sitar only sparingly. What might have been a relaxing interlude of Indian music turned out, in the light of the lackluster Harrison rock presentation, to be a directionless sequence. 

    When the tour began, Harrison said, "As long as I'm into the motion, I may well cover as many places as I can." He had originally contemplated only eight or 10 shows, rather than 50. I hope he doesn't ultimately regret his decision.