Friday, March 29

The Concert for Bangladesh Album Review – Archive, 1972 | George Harrison


WWe are not trying to do politics. We are artists. But through our music we would like you to feel the agony … in Bangladesh. “Ravi Shankar speaking before starting to play at Madison Square Garden. The album from that concert will be released next Monday as a triple album (Apple STCX 3385), with all proceeds going to Bangladesh relief (such as the $ 243,418.50 concert ticket).

Since playing in Monterey, Ravi Shankar has become known to both rock music audiences and rock musicians alike. George Harrison chose to be influenced by Indian music as soon as the Beatles played more than pop tunes: Revolver, released in 1966, shows the beginning of his self-taught. (Brian Jones was influenced at the same time: Aftermath, also released in 1966, has him playing the sitar.) Harrison was always more concerned with deepening his ideas than trying the musically impossible; So instead of emulating Ravi Shankar, both men have for years been the patron of each other: George by putting his fame at Ravi’s service, Ravi by being, deep down, an entirely better Guru to Harrison than the Maharishi. .

Ravi Shankar, a Bengali, asked Harrison for help raising funds for war victims in eastern Pakistan last summer. The Madison Square Garden concert was the result, set up in a month. The first side of the triple album has Ravi playing Ali Akbar Khan’s sitar al sarod.

Side two is, in effect, a reprise of the most memorable and characteristic songs from Harrison’s songs on All Things Must Pass (Apple STCII 639). In fact, with some very notable exceptions to come, the lineup of musicians at The Concert for Bangladesh is similar to George’s previous triple album. Eric Clapton joins him for Wah-Wah, My Sweet Lord and Awaiting On You All, with Leon Russell on piano. Photographs of Harrison at the concert show him with a long, pointed beard, like a magician, singing with his eyes closed, almost ripping the words out of himself. The chorus behind, and the audience in front, approach him, the girls in the band respond half gospel style, half like a mantra. The song is still rock; the organ and the piano mark the melody like pistons, the guitars grease it, bending and shaping the rhythm.

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My Sweet Lord was commonly recognized as the single from 1970. The song is an invocation, made not for protection, but in a state of bliss. Once again Harrison mixes East with West, the choir sometimes sings “hare krishna”, sometimes “hallelujah”. The song is simple enough that it is played even better here than on the previous studio track, Clapton’s guitar responding to Harrison’s vocals. The act of worship, vastly amplified by being performed by star performers at the height of their fame and skill, almost becomes a bliss. Each part of the song is clear, Harrison infects a small cry not in the studio version. “Touch my cheek.” When listening, the effect is only that of early Beatles hits: pleasant shudders and tingling in the fingertips, almost evangelistic.

Two hymns end the second side, Waiting for you all and that’s the way God planned it. Both songs are celebrations full of confidence, ending abruptly in their own silence.

Just as the album has a picture of a starving child on its cover, the concert audience must have heard the new words to the songs. After Billy Preston sings “I hope you understand this message,” Ringo Starr walks in to sing his It Don’t Come Easy. Horns and drums pounding, the audience clapping and calling, sing “open your heart and unite.” Then Harrison again, who remembers Dylan in Beware of Darkness: “Watch out now, watch out, watch out for greedy leaders.”

Leon Russell delivers the secular feast of fun on side four, featuring a medley of Coasters’ Jumping Jack Flash and Young Blood, taunting and howling as well as Jagger, guitars chirping through the sound, chorus of screeching girls, Leon improvising the song links. The side ends with George singing his Here Comes The Sun from Abbey Road.

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George Harrison (center), flanked by Allen Klein (left) and Ravi Shankar, speaks to reporters about his charity program for refugee children from East Pakistan at Madison Square Garden, 1971.
George Harrison (center), flanked by Allen Klein (left) and Ravi Shankar, speaks to reporters about his charity program for refugee children from East Pakistan at Madison Square Garden, 1971. Photograph: NY Daily News / Getty Images

Side Five: A roar of joy as Bob Dylan begins singing songs he wrote six or more years ago, playing acoustic guitar and harmonica, singing like he used to. Clearly, it connects Bangladesh with the concerns of its old songs, giving them a new twist, another facet. Four years ago, Dylan said of his first songs, which the children took as hymns: “I no longer have the capacity to feed this force that all these songs need. I know that the force exists, but my perception has become something new. “And on other occasions he spoke of feeling intolerably confused by the pressures placed on him. Now, remaking these songs by singing them at the concert in Bangladesh, Dylan brings them to the light again, reminding us of its value.

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, like most of Dylan’s songs, elliptical and metaphorical, takes on a new focus. “They have been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a cemetery”: and the audience sees the newspaper photos of the brown corpses. “I met a young woman / whose body was on fire.” “The executioner’s face / is always well hidden / where hunger is ugly / where souls are forgotten.” Here and now, familiar words are difficult to assimilate: they are too apt, they point to pain too great to be grasped except by a poet. But here is the poet, in public. Dylan goes from Blowin ‘In The Wind, Mr Tambourine Man, to Just Like A Woman. He plays softly, within himself; perhaps to make it clear that the show is Harrison’s.

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The concert ends relaxed with George singing Something and Bangladesh. What was said to be Woodstock was the Madison Square Garden concert in Bangladesh. It is registered. The concert will be the greatest act of magnanimity rock music has ever achieved.


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