A Pleasant Victory for George Harrison

 

A Pleasant Victory for George Harrison

By Jonathan Takiff

The Philadelphia News

December 18, 1974

    Preceded by reams of negative reviews. Dark Horse George Harrison pulled off a surprisingly pleasant victory at the Spectrum last night. No friends, it was not Nirvana personified, nor even the Inner Light revealed. Especially dampening the fire were the strained and often an often oft- keyed qualities of Harrison's vocals, showing off the fabled rock hero is just another mere mortal among men. His features creased and weathered by time. 

    But this concert was not the disorganized self-serving venture portrayed by the national music press on the occasion of the tour opening on November 2 in Vancouver. Harrison, it would seem, has taken heed of his critics. The show now moves at a speedy, entertaining pace. Harrison's lean portions, leaving you hungry for more, now concentrate on established hits. Those reluctant to dwell on his past glories, the former Beatle now designs to throw us a bone or four from the halcyon days, including a curiously suitable jazz-up rendering of John Lennon's "In My Life." 

    Some mid-tour, beefing up of his band, the addition of second drummer Jim Keltner and flutist Jim Horn has also had salutary effects, it would appear.

     In the midst of wailing reeds and brass arranged by Tom Scott and the super tight rhythm section, Harrison could hide his pipes' distress, talking his way through "Something" in a burlesque-ish Bob Dylan style, or more sincerely, in the testifying treatment of "My Sweet Lord" the concert single encore,

     Harrison makes the most points with the trademark sound of his sweetly weeping guitars riding the high end of the neck in a glissando of spare single notes or bluesy staccato attacks.

     In the fashion of his last public appearances, the monumental concerts for Bangladesh held on August 1, 1970 [sic] at Madison Square Garden, George Harrison's current venture strives for an electric variety show approach. As much as not the humble (and uncharismatic) Harrison falls into the shadows to play side man or cheerleader for his friends, Billy Preston, Tom Scott, and the Shankar family of Indian musicians. 

Showman supreme Billy Preston actually pulled the most enthusiastic response from the near capacity crowd, first early on in the proceedings, with "Will It Go Round in Circles", then nearing the final lap, with a gospel-tinged "Nothing from Nothing", and his hit instrumental "Outta Space." The latter is boosted by a bit of Rockettes terpsichord by Preston and Harrison.

 Aesthetically, the evening's zenith came in the East Meets West fusions of the 16-member Shankar ensemble, led by Lakshmi Shankar, in the absence of her ailing brother-in-law, Ravi Shankar. 

Big sound in a small state

 

December 11, 1974 - Providence, Rhode Island 

Silent George Harrison Should Have Stayed Quiet

 

'Silent' George Harrison Should Have Stayed Quiet

By Jim Smith (who obviously dislikes George!)

The Hamilton Spectator

December 7, 1974

    10 years ago, George Harrison, as one of the Beatles, spent 40 minutes on the stage at  Maple Leaf Gardens while 19,000 kids drowned out all the music with screams. Last night, Harrison was back at the Gardens, the first of the Beatles to return as a solo artist for two virtually sold out performances, and for the most part, those kids of a decade ago had come to listen, which was George's major problem of the evening,

    Harrison spent a lot of time praising the Lord and giving thanks to a higher power.  Better, he should have spent a bit more time praising Billy Preston, for without Preston, the Gardens would have been quiet as a tomb.

     But taking the performers in the order of their billing, we should start with Harrison George. George was always known as the "silent" Beatle—the one who never counted for much with the group. John and Paul wrote, of course, and Ringer [sic] had that eccentric charm, but George never made it to the top of the class. 

    Later, after the group disbanded, he was the first after Lennon's disastrous solo efforts to release his own albums.  But they weren't the kind of product that would have attracted much attention if they hadn't been released by a former Beatle. Basically, the same analysis could be made of Harrison's concerts last evening, as applies to his albums. If Horace Nobody had stood on the Garden stage, hoarse of voice and shy of melodies, and offered what Harrison offered, he had been playing to an empty house.

     In a sense, Harrison's show is a very personal matter. Little of the repertoire is widely familiar, having been composed only in recent years, long after the Beatles lost the sales power they had enjoyed collectively. Moreover, it clearly bears the mark of Indian musical tradition because of the enormous influence Ravi Shankar has exerted on Harrison, and Indian music is considerably less extgroverted [sic] than the rock and roll on which the Beatles base their reputation.

     So immediately, Harrison faced the mammoth problem of presenting a personal show in an impersonal setting. Maple Leaf Gardens is not a place for soft-sell, nor is it a place for a sound system that, like Harrison's, washes out the vocals. You take that into account, Harrison clearly didn't have a chance of walking off the stage a winner.

     However, Harrison's basic problem of style was compounded by his vocal state:  horse.  He was so hoarse, in fact, that he was even having trouble speaking, let alone singing. So all the lyrics were sung in a brusk, Dylan-ish style. Above all, he bent over backwards to devote much of his show to an art form that had no business on the Maple Leaf Gardens stage.

     The art form was the Ravi Shankar orchestra of Indian instruments, 16 in all, under the direction of presumably Mrs. Ravi Shankar. Until yesterday, Shankar himself had been conducting the orchestra on the Harrison tour, but he was waylaid in Chicago with an unspecified ailment and failed to make the Toronto engagement.

     Now, Shankar, like his orchestra, is an impeccable musician in his milieu. The milieu, unfortunately, is an intimate theater with a knowledgeable and appreciative audience. Harrison's audience of young swingers is far from knowledgeable and even farther from appreciative. They paid their $10 a head for a rock and roll concert, and that's what they wanted. 

    Shankar had bowed to the demands of his concert schedule, too. His delicate acoustic music remains acoustic but has been amplified and rearranged to underscore the beat and downplay the melodies. I guess it was inevitable that Indian music, having shaped the form of Western pop music, should find itself being altered by that Western music in return.

    Candidly, I have to admit that I enjoyed some of the bouncy passages. At no time, though, did music and singing from Shankar's ensemble fit the format most ticket holders had expected.  Out of two hours of playing time, Shanker's group was given 45 minutes. That seemed excessive. It also thinned the audience.

     Whatever Harrison's weaknesses are, the inability to pick good sidemen is not one. On guitar, he had Robben Ford, who is young but competent, just the kind of guy to cover up when George got tired of playing lead guitar himself.  On drums, Andy Newmark of Sly and the Family Stone. Tom Scott on a variety of saxes and woodwinds, giving just the right melodic touch to everything and others, not the least of them being Billy Preston.

     Preston doesn't worry much about art forms. He's a natural entertainer out of the gospel training ground. He plays all the keyboards, starting with piano and finishing with an assortment of synthesizers, better than anyone should. He sings with a heartfelt drama. He dances, and he can make even the deadest audience come to life. 

    For the first two hours, Preston stuck to the supporting role with Harrison, filling in marvelous keyboard riffs with ultimate reliability. Then, 10 minutes before the end of the show, Harrison set Preston loose, and Preston responded with a rousing "Nothing From Nothing" before following up with "Out a Space" that had everyone, including Preston, on their feet and dancing. In Preston's case, the dancing took him across the stage and back several times. Before anyone had a chance to sit down and recover from Preston, Harrison slammed into his best-known contemporary piece, "What Is Life," and capitalized on Preston's store of goodwill.

    For this sense of using the Preston created enthusiasm to his own advantage, Harrison deserves the greatest respect as a professional. But at the same time, the ease with which Preston shook the audience from its lethargically and brought it to its feet contrasts vividly with Harrison's own lack of character.

     I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out what Harrison had contributed to the evening. Then I asked a friend what he thought of the show without a moment of hesitation; he replied, "Preston's incredible," and that pretty well sums it up. A pretty fair concert that would have been disastrous with feels Billy Preston to pull George Harrison's fat out of the fire.

 Billy Preston, incidentally, headlined a concert of his own at Toronto's Matching Hall earlier this fall. It drew less than 1/10 the number of people who turned out for Harrison, but Preston, of course, isn't an ex-Beatle.

An Insider's View of George Harrison's Tour

 

An Insider's View of George Harrison's Tour

By Jon Bream

The Minneapolis Star

December 24, 1974

    George Harrison's just completed seven weeks 27 city concert tour, the first by a former member of The Beatles, earned an estimated $4 million.  A modest figure by superstar standards. It was neverless a first-class tour, according to bass guitarist Willie Weeks, who played in a couple of Twin Cities bands in the late '60s before working with well-known artists like Donnie Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, Ron Wood, and Harrison.

 "It was a gas. The best tour I've ever been on," Weeks reflected this weekend, "a private jet, and it was plush. You walked off the jet, and they handed you a hotel key and room list. They picked up your luggage for you. You just took care of your personal needs and had to be in the right place at the right time."

"They" was the 40-member staff of San Francisco rock impresario Bill Graham's FM productions, which produced the Harrison tour, as well as the more ambitious tours of Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills Nash, and Young earlier this year.  "There was a camper that rushed us out to a gig and took us to the gig," Weeks continued. "After the gig, we went to the hospitality room, where they had dinners set up and anything else you wanted."

 Weeks, once accustomed to "lugging my own luggage, taking commercial flights and dealing with uptight commercial people," attributed his comparatively luxurious circumstances to Graham's style and experience with big-name rock stars and to Harrison's insistence on first-class conditions.

 Despite the comfortable working situation, Weeks did not feel that it was a superstar tour like the record-setting ten million Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young extravaganza last summer.  "We just got on stage and played as a bunch of great musicians. It certainly wasn't the Beatles. George is George. He's into being himself. I think he wants to remember the Beatles as ex-Beatles."

 Weeks was one of a handful of session musicians Harrison enlisted last summer to help him record his recent release album, Dark Horse. Most of the musicians were later invited to join Harrison on the tour.

 "We rehearsed for two weeks, but it was more goofing around than rehearsal." Weeks recalled.  "A lot of the learning came as we went along on the tour." Unlike other groups composed of sidemen, Harrison's band, Weeks noted, achieved a family feeling. "It seems like we all fell in love with each other. It felt like a band. George, as frontman certainly, with an incredible bunch of musicians. I was no longer the Willie Weeks who stood straight and tall. I let my craziness out on stage."

 Harrison asked Weeks to join him and organist Billy Preston each night in a dance on stage, but the basis declined because he felt he could not play and dance at the same time. Weeks did, however, receive a regular opportunity to solo during "For You Blue."  "I didn't want to take a solo on that song, Week said, "but George insisted. So, I tried to make the best of it. It was a standard 12-bar blues, and I had 24 bars to play, but sometimes I inspired George, and he said, 'Go ahead, play some more.'"

 Long tours of many one-night stands with few days off can be strenuous for touring musicians.  Ravi Shankar was hospitalized for exhaustion at one point during the tour, and "Harrison's voice," Weeks said, "was not in shape for such an ambitious tour." So the concerts received terrible reviews. The strain, however, did not catch up with Weeks. "I took care of myself. I didn't hang out late at night. After the gig, I'd go to my room, take a bath, lie back and, listen to some music, and relax. I didn't go crazy the way a musician is supposed to do on the road."

 Weeks longs to join a permanent band under the right conditions. "I don't deserve to be a side man." He said, "I feel I'm reaching people through my music. I don't need to jump out front, and I don't care if people don't make a big stink over me because I watched the audience during the concerts and made a lot of eye contact. I caught them digging me."

 Week says he is positive about his future, even though it is difficult to find the kind of musician he likes. He plans to go to California for the next two months to relax and practice his playing and then look for the right band. Meanwhile, he may tour Europe with Harrison in the near future. 

Harrison and Friends Magnificent

Harrison and Friends Magnificent

Daily Utah Chronicle

By David Proctor

November 18, 1974
 

    To get right to the point. George Harrison and his band and Ravi Shankar put on a magnificent concert at the Salt Palace Saturday night, Harrison was obviously delighted to be on stage, and the sell-out crowd was obviously just as glad to see him there. 

    The bands were tight, the music fine, and everything from the staging to the lights to the sound was perfect. It was not to say that there weren't any rough spots, because they were, but they were the sort most people don't notice until they begin to think about the show later. 

    First, George has not performed live for any sustained time since the last Beatles tour in 1966, and the strain on his voice was evident. He began to stretch it in the second half. When he got to his new single "Dark Horse," he needed help from Billy Preston to hit the high notes.

     The second problem was less obvious. George simply left out too much of his own material. "Here Comes the Sun," "Living in the Material World," "If it is Not for You," "Beware of Darkness," the "Art of Dying," "Within You, Without You," "All Things Must Pass," "Wah Wah," and "Bangladesh" were all admitted and missed, but what was included was magnificently done. 

    Chronologically. It went like this. At 8:25, the house lights went down, and musicians began to file on stage. The Krishna symbols on either side of the stage lit up, and a huge dark horse banner unfurled from the ceiling. Dark Horse is Harrison's new label, distributed by A&M, for which he will produce but not record. The stage was lit, and Harrison led the band in a new instrumental, "Harry's On Tour Express." "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" has some new lyrics thrown in to make it read, "While My Guitar Gently Smiles." A pattern he followed off and on throughout the evening, Harrison took his own solo on this one, a part that Eric Clapton made famous. And while the style was different, it was equally effective as the original.

     He was loose, bounced around the stage, grinned, and looked thin and happy. "Something" received a quicker pace than the original or the Bangladesh version. The overhead lights switched to red and gave him a scarlet halo as he moved through the tune, and Preston sang the responses gospel style again. The lyric was changed, and the song ended with, "If I don't believe in something..."

     "Sue me, Sue You Blues" ended the first segment and ushered in the Shankar family and friends. Now, the stage was a tiny United Nations with a sitar, an ARP synthesizer, acoustic and electric guitars, tablas, and a Fender bass, all combining perfectly. The rest of Harrison's set included "Peace on Earth," a surprise "In My Life" and "My Sweet Lord" as encore.   The ovation was thunderous and deserved. Harrison has again proved his point. He was the Dark Horse Beatle but no longer.

George Harrison

By Greg Erikson

Student Life (Logan, Utah)

November 20, 1974

    There was a lingering question in many a mind, prior to 8pm Saturday evening. Just who  were we going to see in the Salt Palace? The man everyone was waiting to experience had been in self-imposed exile for eight years, George Harrison, the dark horse of the Beatles, had not made an American tour since 1966.

     Although his absence was temporarily interrupted in 1971 to help raise funds for the war-stricken people of Bangladesh, George has been little less than extinct during this time. However, Harrison was not totally idle. Besides playing private occasions with Lennon, McCartney, and Starr, he has cut a few albums of his own. Among them, All Things Must Pass and Living in the Material World. Also, George is planning a new release containing the single hit "Dark Horse" to be out in two weeks.

     Throughout the concert, Harrison was somewhat of a salesman. Not only did he try to promote his own records and the Indian music of the Shankar family, but he sold himself to the crowd as well. The ex Beatle was in very good spirits. And along with the getting down Boogie tunes by Billy Preston, they took the crowd on a ride no one will soon forget.

     During the well-integrated show, Harrison and Preston played "What is Life," "My Sweet Lord," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Dark Horse," "Will It Go Round in Circles," "Space Race," and "Nothing from Nothing."

     In addition to displaying his fine keyboard talents, Preston even treated the audience to an exhibit of his dancing ability. Although the crowd wanted the band to play on, the flawless concert ended after one encore and about three hours of long-awaited music; I am sure that those people fortunate enough to enjoy the George Harrison happening last Saturday night will agree, the youngest Beatle is alive and very well.

George Harrison: Weak and Feeble at Start of Tour

 

George Harrison Weak and Feeble at the Start of Tour

By Jeani Read

November 4, 1974

The Province (Vancouver, British Columbia)

    It was George Harrison's concert, his first North American appearance since a concert for Bangladesh in 1971 and the debut of a seven week tour. 

    And for a long time, all I could think about was Dylan. Bob Dylan. A few months ago, making his first tour in what seemed like forever, singing all his songs wrong for the people who wanted to hear them the way they were used to hearing them.  Harrison sang most of his songs wrong, too, except the painful difference, and it was painful, was that Dylan was in complete control of what he was doing. It was an extraordinary experience in image, breaking a personal integrity, if you will. And George, well, George didn't seem as if he knew what he was doing at all. 

    The double image kept reoccurring, reinforcing at first by the fact that when Harrison stepped up to the mic to sing, His voice sounded curiously broken and Dylanesque. Except Dylan has always sounded like that, and now he was pushing it, fighting and almost venomous, powerful and acidic, and George was weak and feeble.

     Dylan, authoritative and uncompromising. Harrison, bobbing and smiling hopefully through gaunt cheeks. I'm back. Do you like me? Please? 

    Dylan surrounds himself with strong musicians, splitting the show with him and still incontestably dominant. Harrison does the same, but he is unable to dominate anything that happens and too often embarrassingly upstaged.

     On Saturday, the evening started, hopefully enough, with George and the band delivering an almost southern Allman-style instrumental while his Dark Horse record label logo unfurled on a huge screen above the stage. Two Indian characters representing universality lit up the side curtains, anticipating the imminent arrival of Harrison's spiritual and showbiz companion, Ravi Shankar.

     The previously silent, perhaps reverent, crowd packed into the Coliseum broke into a rewarding, sparkle, lit ovation, but the following three hours did little to inspire a similar response, rendering the audience, with rare exceptions, to a state of long suffering.  

    The band, three horns, drums, guitar, precussion, bass and Billy Preston on keyboards has impeachable track records. It featured such people as Tom Scott on sax and woodwinds, Andy Newmark on drums, Willie Weeks on bass, and Robben Ford on guitar. Their credits reach from Jimmy Dorsey and Buddy Rich to Sly Stone and Scott's own L.A. Express.

     But the sound was poorly balanced and erratic, and the band, through the first four selections that included a number from Harrison's own Material World album and his Beatles legendary "Something" never galvanized into a satisfactory working unit.  It was not until at least Billy Preston took over with a strutting version of "Will It Go Round in Circles."  Here, the saxes, trumpets, and rhythm section felt considerably more at home. At last, something to hang some meaty horn lines onto, something to lean and dig into, which they did, and that's pretty well how it went. 

    George kept on singing his sweet, mild tunes off key, pathetically struggling through his edgy range, offering some nicer guitar licks, but rarely any head turning great ones.  And Preston, who was out front and centered only twice more "Outta Space" and Nothing from Nothing", didn't even have to try to steal anything from the star. Just a couple of tightly punctuated organ hits, a shot or two, and it was stolen.

     Even Georgia's best shots, "Sue Me, Sue You,"" While My Guitar Gently Weeps","Give Me Love" were received with nothing like the kind of enthusiasm that Preston's efforts earned. You couldn't even get away with calling it good pacing. And then there were, of course, Ravi Shankar and his dozen plus family who occupied 45 minutes in the middle of the show in what was not so much a cultural exchange as a cultural gap, very nice innovations, and shortcut ragas, compositions based on various Indian folk tunes, an orchestra of instruments and voices hypnotic, changing textures, flexible, impossible rhythms. 

    Shankar first conducting and then playing the audience polite and surprisingly receptive, but the twain never managed to meet, except perhaps in a later moment, when, with both contingents on stage at the same time, they delivered an intriguing mix called "Dispute and Violence". Otherwise, George said,"as jazz."

    So after a night of musical raggedness, concerted physical leaps, and get it on soul training. Anti rock star Harrison closed with "My sweet Lord.", It is refreshing to find in a performance press biography, (although unfortunately fraught with suspicions of plastic virtue), that his personal ambitions now are to have no personal ambitions and that his professional ones are to do a worthwhile job and to leave it vaguely completed. But if you stick to that, you end up with a concert tap that feels even less than vaguely complete, And it is anything to pay $10 for.