Thanksgiving 1974-my first concert ever-George Harrison

I saw the 6 p.m. Harrison concert on Thanksgiving night at the Omni in Atlanta. In spite of Harrison's hoarse voice, the shortage of Harrisongs performed, and the re-arrangements, it was an uplifting concert. 17 years later, as a Tokyo-based CNN correspondent, I got to meet George and interviewed him backstage right before the last gig of his two-week, 1991 tour of Japan. I caught four of the shows in Japan. The Japan shows were much better produced. George reached deep into his repertoire and performed songs I never thought he'd do live, like "Old Brown Shoe" and "Piggies." Clapton and his band were superb backing him. George was quite relaxed when I met him in a small room in the bowels of the Tokyo Dome. His temporary manager (on loan from Bob Dylan) escorted him to the room and left, leaving George with just my camera crew and me. No minders. He was both a quiet gentle soul and a hardened veteran entertainer with a big career under his belt. He reeked of both spirituality and wealth, wearing some fine threads. He definitely had a presence about him, and he was very gracious. We had 10-15 minutes with him, so there wasn't much time to get into a lot of depth. Here's the raw video of the on-camera portion of our interview.

 

What a great way to start your concert life! The closest I got to "seeing" George was seeing Carl Perkins in the mid 1950s.