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One Guy's Opinion |
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It’s late coming, but not having published a January issue last
month, I
was unable to pay my respects to the late George Harrison, who left this
world just as our double Dec./Jan holiday issue was going to press. While
many words have already been written on the passing of 58-year-old rock icon,
I felt the need to reflect on this person who had such a profound impact on
not only the music world at large, but on this music fan who grew up in the
1960s and came of age in the 1970s.
So you can turn the page at this point and discover the
latest in local music news, or you can read on if so inclined... because this
Harrison fan needs to spill a little ink on an artist and humanitarian much too
under appreciated and overlooked during his time with us.
George Harrison’s music has had a special place in my heart for
many years. Hardly a week’s gone by since 1974 without at least one of
his solo albums finding its way to my stereo.
Harrison’s only solo tour of the U.S. came in 1974 and he
performed here at the Chicago Stadium. I was a 14-year-old high school
freshman and that was the first concert I ever attended. Now, more than a
quarter of a century and several hundreds of concerts later, Harrison’s
remains one of the most
memorable shows of all I’ve had the good fortune to witness.
I honestly had no idea what Harrison’s
post-Beatles bag was at that time and only went because a buddy had an extra
ticket to the show. I just thought it would be cool to see an ex-Beatle up
close and personal.
Harrison played down his illustrious Beatles’ past that
night. He was not the lovable mop-top I had seen on “Ed Sullivan” in
1964 as a child. He looked more like a vagabond with his scraggly beard, long
hair, denim clothes and sneakers. I’d gone to see a “rock god” and wound
up seeing a common man who connected to my heart.
Harrison introduced me to music light years removed from the
hand-me-down Beatles tunes I’d grown up with as the youngest of three kids;
music that has stayed with me ever since.
Billed as “George Harrison & Friends,” that concert
featured Tom Scott & The L.A. Express, who introduced me to jazz for the
first time. They left enough of an impression that I sought out more jazz;
discovering Miles Davis, Maynard Ferguson, Dizzy Gillespie and others along the
way.
Billy Preston, with his huge tumbleweed-like afro bouncing wildly
behind his keyboard, gave this “white bread” son of a banker his first ever
taste of real funk music. I went and bought the “Space Race” 45 rpm
single the next day, along with an 8-track of Harrison’s All Things Must Pass
album.
Of course the greatest moments that night came from Harrison
himself, who from that day forth became and still remains my very favorite
ex-Beatle.
It’s sad that most people fail to realize how
Harrison accomplished many “musical firsts” during his post-Beatles years.
He was the first artist to ever assemble an all-star benefit
concert. Years before events like Bob Geldof’s “LIVE AID!,” Willie
Nelson’s “Farm Aid,” and the Beastie Boys’ “Free Tibet Concerts,”
Harrison set the template for how such shows would be (and still are) produced
with 1971’s
“Concert For Bengla Desh.”
Touched by the plight of Bengla Desh refugees displaced by
the India-Pakistan war, Harrison used his celebrity recruit high profile friends
like Bob Dylan, Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Badfinger, Preston and Scott.
He pitched to them the idea for a concert to raise money and awareness on a
global scale, and help temper the suffering of these people.
Harrison also had the foresight to record that landmark event
and upon releasing those concert recordings, introduced the world’s very first
“benefit” recording. He explained how he wanted the music to continue
helping long after the concert was over.
Harrison was also the first major rock artist to
introduce Eastern music to Western ears, first with the Beatles during their
much publicized visits to India and later with his string of tragically
underrated solo albums.
Wanting to share with his fans the music he had come to love
and embrace, Harrison brought the real deal to these shores for the very first
time, when his 1974 tour featured sitarist Ravi Shankar.
While the hour-long set Shankar and his musical
entourage played at the Stadium wore thin after about 30-minutes, that tour
propelled the hitherto unknown Shankar to world fame. Now in his
seventies, he remains the most famous of all Eastern musicians thanks to
Harrison.
Taking nothing away from the late John Lennon, who was both
revered and reviled for his pro-peace diatribes, Harrison’s message of peace
was just as powerful, albeit more subtle. Anchored by his profound faith in God,
Harrison’s music declared love for all creation.
He may have offered up the occasional pop dittie like “Got My
Mind Set On You” and “Crackerbox Palace,” but the body of his work had
much deeper messages for those who cared to hear it.
His tribute to slain comrade John Lennon, “All Those Years
Ago,” was an uplifting salute to friendship. Harrison also showed us
that he could poke fun at his revered past too on songs like “When We
Was Fab” and the insanity that came with fame on“Cockamamie Business.”
Fans now mourning the loss of this beautiful human being can
best pay tribute to him by listening with fresh ears to songs like – “Living
In The Material World,” “Love Comes To Everyone,” “The Light That Has
Lighted The World,” “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” and others
which fill his
remarkable solo catalog.
Harrison left us with some magnificent music, the least of
which is his powerful declaration of faith, “My Sweet Lord,” a personal
prayer that became a number one hit in 1970 because of its ability to connect
with a wounded generation still struggling with the pain and confusion of the
Vietnam era. The song has been re-released worldwide as a single, with
proceeds going to charity and is currently climbing the charts. That is a
loud declaration about the “quiet Beatle” and his impact.
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