George Harrison - The Rhythm and Soul Tribute Show

In 1976, after the re-release of all their singles, I discovered The Beatles and for much of the next ten years I sought out every album and book I could find. In the nineties, mainly as a result of over familiarity, they took a backseat in my musical focus but this year they returned to thrill me with that vast vault of familiar tunes. For the past month I have listened to nothing else, last Tuesday night I brought down all the books and scrapbooks from the attic and on Friday was sitting bat my computer working to let It Be when my friend Geoff’s email told me that George had passed away. It was the re-release of his album All Things Must Pass that re-ignited my interest in the Beatles. If The Beatles were my band then George was my Beatle.

As a tribute, tonight’s show looks at the rhythms and soul searching of George Harrison, the quiet Beatle, private legend, religious man, great guitarist, song writer, humanitarian, arts beneficiary, husband to Olivia, father to Dhani and influencer of us all...

WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS

Maybe Lennon has been seen as the political Beatle but the first Beatle to go political when Taxman was written and became the lead off track to perhaps their finest album Revolver it is a Harrison track. Harrison has been known as the third Beatle but I would disagree. If John Lennon was the rebel bite and voice and Paul McCartney was the pretty boy diplomat and melody then George Harrison was the spiritual soul and defining sound. It could be said too that Paul had a voice and John had melody but it was Harrison alone who had the soul and sound...

I FEEL FINE

As Beatlemania, a phrase I might be right in saying George coined, got absolutely silly, Harrison was the first who started seeking something beyond the material wealth and meaningless fame. Drawn musically to India by the discovery of Ravi Shankar’s sitar, the guitarist got more than a new sound for the recording of Rubber Soul. He plunged headlong into eastern mysticism and led the rest of the Beatles into a six week stay at the feet of the Maharishi Yogi...

INNER LIGHT

Whatever was going on in George’s unorthodox, for a Liverpool working class lad, religious endeavours, the last two years of The Beatles saw him not only reaching the heights of the Lennon and McCartney song writing team but eclipsing them with the two best songs on Abbey Road. One of the songs was Here Comes The Sun and the other was the song that would become along with Yesterday one of the most covered songs in history. Harrison’s first wife Patti Boyd who also inspired her second husband Eric Clapton to write Layla and Wonderful tonight was thought to be the object of the beautiful love song Something...

SOMETHING

When The Beatles ended no one had any doubts that Lennon and McCartney would survive outside the group. There were question marks over Harrison. What a surprise then when it was the quiet guitarist who had the first solo post Beatles number 1 with his song of devotion and praise to his God and possibly the song that gave rise to modern worship music...

MY SWEET LORD

As if being the first to get a number 1 was not enough Harrison pout together the world’s first ever triple album and though the third disc was just guitar jamming All Things Must Pass sits above Lennon’s Imagine and McCartney’s Band On the Run as the best Beatles solo record. It was an album drenched in Harrison’s spiritual search. For me, that spiritual search has been a help to me in my own very different spiritual pilgrimage. I have a different belief but I admire his passion of belief. I have always been able to drill below the specifics of his Krishna chants and tap into something that inspires me in my devotional relationship with Christ...

HEAR ME LORD

As a believer in Christ as opposed to Krishna I have always been able to shake hands with Harrison on many issues that raise their heads out of our faiths, faiths that inspire our imaginations to dream and pray for a better world. The papers have written about his message of love this weekend. He had a longing for that naive hippy summer of love, a love that the Beatles were all about. As Lennon sang of the hippy dream of love being over, it was never over for George. His faith extenuated his desire and belief in a world where we would treat one another better. It saddened him how humans treated each other.

ISN’T IT A PITY

It was not enough to sing about and pity the negative actions of humanity. Harrison was keen to really change things. When his friend Ravi Shankar told him about the plight of Bangladesh, he took action. First he write the song Bangladesh and then he got together some of the world’s greatest musicians to put on the world’s first major charity concert, inspiring Live Aid and all other such events that followed. It is fitting that Bob Geldof should be prominent in those paying tribute this weekend...

BANGLADESH

Saving the world is a major challenge for anyone and Harrison never saw himself as a world crusader. He preferred the quieter world of the solitude in his Oxfordshire mansion known as Crackerbox Palace. There he kept his devotion to his religion. He was never afraid to look inside and ask some soul searching questions. Those songs of self discovery have always challenged me. He once said life was all about asking, “Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?”

JUST FOR TODAY
EASIER TO SEE YOURSELF

But his songs did not stop at encouraging personal critique, change and holiness, he held on to that dream of not only saving himself but the entire world. His song Save The World from 1981’s Somewhere In England album took on Green issues among other things. And it shows too George’s great sense of humour weaving in and out of the serious...

SAVE THE WORLD

After the re-release of All Things Must Pass in January I had been hoping for new material from George in 2001. It was also be great to see the release of remastered versions of my favourite albums, Living In The Material World, 33 & 1/3 and George Harrison with a few extra tracks. As we mourn his loss this weekend we have to hope that these will be released sooner rather than later. In the meantime the last recording released before his death came out just last week. Even here Harrison brought humour and seriousness as he used the publishing name RIP2001. He also asks us preachers a question...

HORSE TO WATER...

Talent, humour, humanitarian spirit, seeker of truth...thank you George...

ALL THINGS MUST PASS

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