RKO General Radio Network Special of the Month (Interview with George & John 1974)

RKO General Radio Network Special of the Month Interview

December 1974

New York City

May/June 1975 Harrison Alliance

Transcribed by Angela Stellato

    The dark Beatle, the mystical Beatle, the slender guitarist who went to India with three other young musicians and came home with Hari Krishna; the Eastern Beatle, who staged a concert for Bangla Desh and raised a fortune for a country in despair. This is our special of the month. An hour with George Harrison and his surprise guest, John Lennon.

 The Tour. 

GH:     I felt, probably for three years, that this tour, you know, subconsciously, I felt it, the presence of this tour, in my subconscious, and it's been like bubbled deep down, and it's slowly been bubbled up to the surface. It's like a lot of forces and energies, you know? I don't really know.

     I mean, in a way, I decided to go on tour. I suppose you could say that, but in reality, it was like just outside energies and maybe subconscious desires, or, I don't know, but whatever it was, I felt it was coming for three years, and when it finally came, I thought, 'What am I doing? What am I doing?' It's mad, really mad. Such a big tour, because I didn't want to do the same thing. Like, you know, those hectic, really crazy tours, like in the old days, where you'd be left in a room for eight hours and they'd throw you a Hershey bar occasionally, when they remembered. I thought we'd do a tour play, maybe 10 cities, and take a lot of time to go to those 10 cities, maybe take two or three days off in between each city, so I could see a little bit of America. Maybe would go by camper or by train or something like that.

     Instead, it just got to the point where I thought, 'Well, if I'm doing it, I might as well do it', you know, in one shot, because once you get into motion, might as well do as many as possible. I have no idea who wants to see me and who doesn't want to see me. Which cities to play, what cities not to play. I just have a lot of concepts which I want to get rid of and which I'm getting rid of.

     Like one was when we went to Dallas or Houston, Texas, on the old Beatle tour. I remember both years, the first year we went to Dallas, we almost got killed. The second year, when we went to Houston, we almost got killed. So my concept of Texas has been wherever I go, I'm not going to Texas because it's so mad. You know?  I just remembered what happened there. And so I played, where was it I played? Oh, Fort Worth and Houston. And it was amazing. The change in five or six years in people's consciousness. It's incredible. I mean, it's like, say, four years ago, five years ago in San Francisco or Los Angeles. It's like that now in Texas; the feeling of the people, their appearance, and their behavior. It's great. You know, it was one of the really nicest shows. Fort Worth was really nice. And Houston, I really-- they're just--- I didn't have any of that old fear that I thought I might have.

     About what my feelings were about the tour, which I can relate the same answer to this thing about before, and that is that it just didn't have enough time. I've been so busy working this year that if I'd sat back and thought about it, I would have been petrified. I wouldn't have been able to do it. There have been moments where I thought, you know, a little bit of negativity has crept in and I have to try and squash it immediately because, well, you know, it's like Lord Buckley. He said, I don't know if you know Lord Buckley, but he said, (This is relating to what I'm talking about), but he's talking about love. He says it's like a beautiful garden. When you use it, it just grows and blooms, but when you don't, it recedes. So positive and negative is like that. It's like when you use a positive thought, it just blossoms, and it seems to uphold. And when you get negative and down, it just comes like creepers to strangle you.

 The First Family. 

GH:      We were just playing Salt Lake City, and during intermission, or between the two shows, somebody said, 'President Ford's son is here, and is it okay to bring him backstage and meet you?' And I said, 'Sure, sure'. I mean, I'll meet anybody. You know? They don't have to be the president's son, because I don't have any idea of the First Family or anything about President Ford. The only impression I had of him was that he was a person who was put in a job which he didn't particularly want, and maybe he really didn't need it all. In fact, he probably-- like the saying-- he needed it like a hole in the head. So I met his son, and his son was just fantastic. His son was just really, really nice and a very good guy. In fact, I got a really good feeling from him the first time I met him.

     I got a good feeling from Gerald Ford. I met him like I'm looking at you. I could look him in the eyes and felt that he was a decent human being. And it gave me hope. You know, it gave me hope because, I mean, not only is America like one of the heaviest places around this planet, but I mean, America has such influence on the rest of the world.  It's like you take it, just to  say a radio station. Now, who's ever's running the radio station-- if he's a guy giving off orders or giving a feeling to the member of the staff, it comes from the top. You know? If the Secretary is unhappy about the way things are going, you usually can trace it back to the top. If there's a good spirit in an organization or a business, it's usually because, from the top, the feeling is coming through. So that's what gave me hope --for America and for the world, because the world is influenced a lot by America.

 Current Records

GH:     I must say, there are so many records that I don't ever hear, Uh not because I don't like them, but because  I don't either hear them, or I don't have time. I'm so busy making records. I recently bought the new Maria Muldaur record because I liked something about her on her first album, the Reprise album. Maybe it wasn't her first overnight success, but the one I bought was the new album. I just got stuck on a track called "Cool River." And if you're listening, Maria, I love it. It's just makes me want to cry. "Cool River." I don't know if you've heard that. It's on her new album. But I read somewhere in the review of the album that she never wrote the song herself. Somebody else wrote the song. But I just love that song, except for one line in the second bridge, she says, 'I have tried praying to God and His saints on high, but they don't hear me.' The only thing was, if I did a cover version, I'd have to change that line to 'I've tried praying to God and His saints on high and I know they hear me.'

 Sue Me, Sue You Blues

GH:     It's taken a long time being sued over that song, "My Sweet Lord". I'll tell you how I wrote the song. I went up to see Delaney and Bonnie and friends, which was with Eric Clapton. He was one of the friends playing at the Albert Hall in London. Sometimes you go to a show. I don't know. I feel this as a musician. I go to a show, and I know this must be going on while I'm doing the show now in America, sometimes I go to a show and I think, 'Wow,' you know, 'I'd just love to be up there playing with them. This is really nice.'  And other times I think, 'Ooh, I'm glad I'm not in that band.' 

    But Delaney and Bonnie and friends with Eric, it was so good, you know? It was like coming home. All that was their first album when they had everybody. They had Jim Gordon and  Carl Radle, and they had Bobby Keys and it was a good band. It was a really good band at that time, Delaney and Bonnie -- it was great. They played really well.

     And I sat there with the Ringo in a box at the Albert Hall. I just thought, 'Wow', you know, 'I'd really-- that band's great. I'd really like that.' And the next day, they just pulled a bus up outside my house and said, 'Come on.' I got my guitar and went and did a tour of England, and then I went around Europe to places, and I remember Eric and Delaney and Bonnie were doing interviews with somebody, and I think it was either Copenhagen or Gothenburg. It was somewhere in Sweden. I was so thrilled with it, with "Oh Happy Day", it really just knocked me out, you know, that idea, that song, and I felt a really great feeling of the Lord, you know? And I was thinking, 'Oh, I'm gonna write an 'Oh Happy Day' song.'  "My Sweet Lord."

     So they're suing me over a song written by a guy who died a while back, who I'd never even heard of anyway, although I knew the song. I'd heard the song, and the problem being that I wrote "My Sweet Lord" in the dressing room while Delaney and Bonnie were being interviewed. It turned out to be not an "Oh  Happy Day" after all, it turned out to be more like a song that the Chiffons did-- "He's So Fine." --"It takes so long, my Lord,."

    That was the quickest thing I ever wrote. No "Ding Dong Ding Dong" was the quickest song I ever wrote. It took me three minutes, except for it took me four years of looking for a thing, "ring out the old ring in the new ring out the false ring in the true" before I realized it was a hit song. And I'm being a bit, precocious saying "a hit song", because it is so-- I mean, it makes me laugh. You know, it's just so simple -- which reminds me again of Lord Buckley. He says it was just like a jitterbug. It's so simple, it evaded me. Well, that song evaded me for four years.

 Enter John

GH:  Let me introduce you to the one and only. John Lennon. You're just coming in here  to shout things, talking about the Beatles.

JL: What's that? 

GH: Anyway, we remember now. I remember this. I remember this. Now we made a record, and John wrote a song which was quite similar, and we did it as an album track and avaded or avoided making it into the next single. In fact, he gave it to some people who no one's ever heard of. That song was, "There's a Place". Remember? (singing)  'There's a place. La, la, la.'

JL:  I never heard it that way! (laughs) 

GH: But somebody else did it as a single but we just played it on the album.  But it was like the one before it, the mouth organ and the bit.

JL: Yeah, I did one about when you change, you know. They attacked the Stones who've  just made one of the greatest albums that they ever made, mixing in, like the beauty, and saying it's the same old stuff. It isn't the same old stuff. It's great Stones. And if you do change it, then you attack the change in it, right?

GH: Yeah.

JL: And all the audiences have been to all his shows (because I have a lot of good spies), and the critics don't like it because he's changed it. If he did it the same, he wouldn't have been attacked. 

GH: Yeah.

JL: But he changed it.

GH: There's lots that I  really thought were pretty good, and there's ones which were sensational. To try and put them into, you know, quickly to say which ones I really enjoy. I enjoyed things like 'Strawberry Fields.' I enjoyed the ones which were inventive and which were new. You know? Like I enjoyed 'Norwegian Wood' because I felt where it was  coming from. I remember, you know, I was alongside John or Paul as they were writing things. Occasionally, they might have said a line or a word, like my mother would say a line or a word which I used. But that, you know, I can think of a million times when I wrote a few lines or verses to "Eleanor Rigby" or something else too. They didn't really help me that much. John helped me as much as he said; he gave me a tip, which wasn't a real tip. It was just, you know, he was being observant, and that is what once you get in the motion of starting it, it's handy to try and finish it, complete it. 

    I remember the day when John did an interview with a certain magazine and said some things. And then I remember the day when he disagreed with what he said. But the man who interviewed him denied him the right to change his mind. Even though it was two and a half years later, he still went ahead and published something which John said he no longer agreed with himself on. Which means, the dream was over; yet certain people wouldn't allow him to have his dream over. 

JL: In other words, imagine if somebody-- if you accidentally banged your head and you shouted "OW!" And that's the end of it. Or you can go on for the next five years. And we all do that.

GH: We're all alone. Every one of us. There may be a million of us all in the same room having a party. Elton John, Duane Eddy, Duane Allman, John Lennon, and the rest. They can all be clustered in the room thinking they're all together. But there's 1000 alone people together,  and that's why  I thank the Beatles for taking me through 10 years of bad reviews in order to appreciate that it's not the reviews that count, it's the response. So at the end, it's really-- if you face yourself, you can face anything.