Harrison and Co. Come Together at the End

 

George performing during the evening show in Chicago on November 30, 1974

Harrison and Co. Come Together at the End But It's Just Too Late

By Lynn Van Matre

The Chicago Tribune

December 2, 1974 

    This has been a year, folks for rock reincarnations.  As 1974 opened, Bob Dylan came back from the recording dead. This summer saw Crosley Stills, Nash, and Young reunited, and Eric Clapton creeped back. And as the year drew to a close, singer-songwriter-guitarist George Harrison, set out on the road, the first of the Beatles to do so, and the first of the once Fab Four to perform in Chicago since the middle 1960s and so on. Blah, blah, blah

   And blah, it was pretty much how expectations regarding George's two Saturday shows at the Chicago Stadium had been running for anyone who'd been keeping track of his tour progress along the way. Harrison was hoarse, the reviews had run; reportedly, keyboard man Billy Preston had more than once stolen the show, and Harrison was unhappy about it. 

    But Saturday night at the stadium, Harrison seemed happy enough to have Preston at his side, show-stealing and all. And he should have been, for it was only during the last half hour of the show after Preston had rocked things up and danced up a mild storm that Harrison himself finally took off, and the whole thing came together in a finale that saved the evening and almost made up for what had gone before. And that took some doing.

     After Harrison and a heavyweight backup group that included Preston on keyboards and a dynamite horn section headed by Tom (LA Express), Scott finished "My Sweet Lord."  In fact, there wasn't an unlighted match in the place. A predictable enough response, of course, given Harrison's credentials. In fact, for a lot of people, just seeing some ex-Beetle in the rather wooden and wan flesh was enough. But the tribute was not wholly undeserved because the show's last few numbers really cooked, despite Harrison throwing a big dose of religion ranting before that, things scarcely simmered. 

    Harrison has long been an admirer of sitar player Ravi Shankar, and most of the first half of the show consisted of Shankar leading his percussive Indian orchestra in ragas and religious paeans while Harrison served as little more than side man. One of the hymns to Krishna, "I am Missing You," was intriguing, but after a while, the music began to merge into dreary sameness and became merely something to sit through while waiting for Harrison himself to step out.

     But Harrison never proved to be much of a showman dressed in a white shirt and upgraded bib overalls with picture buttons of gurus pinned on (like all the big rock stars turned religious fanatics favor); he looked tired and sounded it. He also sounded painfully, ruinously hoarse. Harrison may very well have been tired, having gone through the same show only hours earlier, but the double workout didn't seem to have affected Preston at all. He was even able to dance, which brought one of the biggest hands of the evening. The applause signs weren't even needed.

     Yes, the applause signs throughout the show as Harrison and crew slogged through selections from his forthcoming Dark Horse album and such oldies as John Lennon's "In My Life," some kids kept busy skittering around backstage holding corny hand-lettered signs along the lines of "Bless Billy Preston," "What a horn section" and the ever popular "applause." Apparently, someone thought George could use a little help. A case of throat lozenges and some judicial pruning of the Shankar portion of the concert might have been a more practical panacea for the proceedings.