George Harrison in 1974: Why Did He Decide To Tour?

He warned people about the different arrangements as well. From the press conference:

What kind of material will you be doing on the tour?

Couple of old tunes and a lot of new ones. The old tunes seem to have got slightly different arrangements. I`m gonna do “My Sweet Lord” and “Give Me Love”, but slightly different variations of them. They should be much more loose.

Will Ravi open the show?

No, I`ll be opening the show, but it`s definitely not going to be a Bangladesh Mark II, if that`s what people are thinking.

Will you be playing Britain and Europe?

I`d like to. I tried to squeeze a concert in just before Christmas although all the halls were booked out. The feeling within the band is that we should do a gig in London. They`re saying, `let`s do 12 dates, let`s tour England, let`s tour Europe`. I want to go to Japan. I want to go everywhere. This year there`s too much for me to do and not enough time to do it in.

 

I'm pretty sure the people who were exposed to the Indian music made it out alive ok. George told them what the deal was beforehand, and if they still decided to go and felt that offended then that's their problem.

 

If people wanted to go see a slick, professional show featuring Beatles hits in their original arrangements for them to latch onto, they could go see Wings Over America. And I don’t say that as a knock on Paul, I love Paul and I love Wings. But good for George for doing his thing his way.

 

I also like Paul's "Anytime is Paradise" reference before he flees the scene...

 

Totally agree with you, but in a real world sense (especially back then), kids who were just going because George was a Beatle, they had no idea what this would be. I'm not saying George shouldn't have done what he wanted to do, but honestly, I think a lot of people didn't understand it, or know what they were getting.

 

Rock fans in the 70s sound pretty close-minded if the concept of seeing an extremely talented group of Indian musicians for one show was so horrible.

 

George had some great players helping him out on the tour: he probably should have hired some backing vocalists as well, to assist him in that department.

 

He did it his way and got hammered for it. He obviously learned his lesson as you could see by his arrangements of his songs at the Prince’s Trust and the Japan shows. He didn’t make the same mistake twice except for MSL 2000 which paled in comparison to the original. He tried to take out the melody he got sued for and it didn’t work.

 

Paul had not played in America at that point. He still had visa issues.

George was their first chance to see a Beatle for almost a decade. George can't have been clueless about their expectations given he was doing a large arena/stadium tour and charging high prices (at the time, even with inflation they are cheap in comparison to today's prices) for his tour.

 

My recollection is that it was in the middle.

 

Sure, but he did include Ravi in the Concert For Bangladesh, and Indian music had long been part of his work. It's not like it came out of nowhere.

Also, The Beatles were known to push boundaries, not as a nostalgia act.

 

Yes, again agree, (especially in hindsight), but at the time that's how it felt to me and many others. I think we wanted to hear George play a bunch of Beatle and All Things Must Pass songs. He did a bit of that, but obviously was not his focus.

 

George was in his disavowal of being a Beatle and trying to cement his solo credentials phase. He did certainly did change things up. One line from Something: There's something in the way - remove it. I saw him in Houston in late November '74, afternoon show. I'm glad I went, but I was disappointed at the time. When he first sang, there was a collective groan because of his voice.

 

Just curious, Lindas share of the publishing of which co written songs at that time?

 

Saw the '74 GH tour... FANTASTIC!

 

Probably the RAM album.

 

Their tours were pretty faithful to the hits.

 

I get that. I see it as George using this opportunity to make it clear that's not who he was. I think it's a shame he never felt comfortable being his true self on stage after that.

 

In the early 60s. They never got a chance to experiment live, except for in Hamburg I guess.

 

Half the songs on Ram for a start:

Ram (album) - Wikipedia

 

But she didn't really co-write the songs, it was a business manoeuvre by Paul to get non Beatle royalties.

 

Also FANTASTIC!:

Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Rickets
3rd degree burns
Heebie jeebies
The New York Jets

 

Right. It was around that time he said something to the effect of "If I play something for her and get some feedback, I consider that co-writing."
Brilliant move, though.

 

Taxes?

He had to pay taxes on all his earnings from the tour, and charitable donations are tax deductable, and who knows - he may have actually come out slightly ahead financially by his charitable donation. Even if the amount of money (tax deduction VS charity amount) turned out to be a wash (or even a slight loss) - I know I'd much rather have a chunk of my money going to a charity of my choice than that same amount of money (more or less) going to the US government in tax - even more-so given some of the things the US gov't was getting up to in that era!