The posting of this album wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the always excellent music editing work of Captain Acid. I saw that he'd found a soundboard of most of one of the concerts from the tour (the Los Angeles Forum), and that's what made me consider posting something from this tour. I'm using Captain Acid's remixing work for all the songs sourced to the Forum show. He sprinkled his usual magic dust on the recording to make it sound even better.
Unfortunately, the soundboard recording ended before the show did. So Captain Acid used an audience recording from a Seattle, Washington on November 4, 1974 for the last five songs. I listened to that portion and wasn't so impressed, because even Captain Acid can only do so much with poor source material.
So I looked around for a better source for those remaining songs, and found it with a concert in Fort Worth, Texas, on November 22, 1974. Like the Seattle show, it was just an audience bootleg, but it was a better recording, for whatever reason. The main problem with it was the lead vocals were too low in the mix, but I used the UVR5 audio editing program to fix that. Furthermore, I took extra care with the banter between songs for the Fort Worth tracks, using the Enhanced Speech program by Adobe to add clarity to the words. The result was that portion now sounds nearly as good as a typical soundboard. I doubt you'll notice the difference between the two sources.
However, there were additional problems with the Forum section of the show. Three songs were incomplete: "Cheparte" was only missing about the last 30 seconds, "Hari's On Tour [Express]" was missing only the very beginning, and "Tom Cat" had over half missing. I used the Fort Worth tracks to fill in the missing portions. So that's why those songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. Additionally, one song in the Forum section, "Sound Stage of Mind," was missing altogether, so I used the Fort Worth version for that. Finally, the first ten seconds or so of "Sue Me, Sue You Blues" sounded dull and muddy. Luckily, that spot was an instrumental bit that was repeated later in the song, so I patched in the better audio. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title too.
After all that editing, I think the whole show sounds pretty darn good. But what about the actual musical content? The shows on the tour got a lot of bad reviews. From what I read, I think there were four main reasons.
One, Harrison was really into the music of India, and wanted to use the tour to introduce people to that. So a big section in the middle of the concert - about 32 minutes on this recording - prominently featured Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. Nowadays, many people are open to different types of world music, but back in 1974 a lot of people were hostile to that. They wanted to hear more Harrison songs instead. But I was pleasantly surprised by this section of the concert. It wasn't the type of Indian music that sounds alien to most Western ears. Instead, it was more of a union of Indian and Western music. In fact, Harrison and members of his band often played with the Indian musicians for that section of the concerts, and I believe that's the case here. For instance, I'm sure I could hear the organ of Billy Preston on some of the Indian songs. So give this section a try, you might just like it.
A second problem had to do with Harrison's voice. He was suffering from laryngitis even before the tour began, causing his voice to sound hoarse for the entire tour. That problem only got worse as the tour went on, because he played something like 49 concerts in 45 days, due to often doing two shows a day. Harrison realized this was a problem, but it would have cost him a ton of money to reschedule the tours, so he just suffered through it, hoarse voice and all. But, listening to this recording, I was pleasantly surprised. Yeah, his voice sounded different, but I quickly got used to it, and it certainly didn't ruin the show for me. We're lucky that the Forum show was relatively early in the tour. Later on, apparently his problem got worse, to the point that he was unable to hit many notes and Billy Preston often doubled the vocals to help out.
A third problem had to do with song selection. At this point in Harrison's life, he was burned out on his Beatles experience and he was tired of most of the Beatles songs. Audiences expected him to play lots of Beatles songs, but for this concert, like all the concerts on the tour, he only sang four Beatles songs: "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Something," "For You Blue," and "In My Life." He also largely avoided songs from his massively popular solo album "All Things Must Pass," only playing "What Is Life" and "My Sweet Lord."
A fourth and related problem had to do with song lyrics. Probably because he was tired of Beatles songs but felt obliged to play at least a few of them, he changed the lyrics to them. For instance, I've renamed "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" to "While My Guitar Tries to Smile" because of the new lyrics. Perhaps most controversially, he changed the lyrics to "In My Life," a song actually written and sung by John Lennon, with the final line changed from "In my life, I love you more" to "In my life, I love God more."
Yeah, in a better world I too wish he would have sung more Beatles songs and more "All Things Must Pass" songs, and I wish he wouldn't have changed the lyrics. People weren't exactly clamoring for songs like "Hari's On Tour [Express]" and "Maya Love." But we can't change the past. It's understandable that Harrison wanted to try new things, and play different and new songs.
By the way, one reason he didn't sing more expected songs was because simply he didn't sing lead at all on many songs. Probably that was related to his hoarse voice. Note, for instance, that two of his songs were instrumentals. Organist Billy Preston was a big star at the time, with three Number One hits in the U.S., and he performed all three: "Will It Go Round in Circles," "Nothing from Nothing," and "Outa-Space." A lot of people who attended the concerts say Preston stole the shows with his energy. Additionally, saxophonist Tom Scott was the leader of the band (which also included lead guitarist Robben Ford), and he had the spotlight on the instrumental "Tom Cat."
So yeah, ideally, the concerts could have been better, for a number of reasons. But overall, I was pleasantly surprised by both the sound quality and musical performance, and I hope you'll feel the same.
This album is an hour and 50 minutes long.
01 Hari's On Tour [Express] [Instrumental] [Edit] (George Harrison)
02 While My Guitar Tries to Smile [While My Guitar Gently Weeps] (George Harrison)
03 Something (George Harrison)
04 talk (George Harrison)
05 Will It Go Round in Circles (George Harrison & Billy Preston)
06 talk (George Harrison)
07 Sue Me, Sue You Blues [Edit] (George Harrison)
08 talk (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
09 Zoom, Zoom, Zoom (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
10 talk (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
11 Na Na Dahni (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
12 talk (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
13 Cheparte [Edit] (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
14 talk (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
15 I Am Missing You (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
16 talk (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
17 Dispute and Violence (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
18 For You Blue (George Harrison)
19 talk (George Harrison)
20 Give Me Love [Give Me Peace on Earth] (George Harrison)
21 talk (George Harrison)
22 Sound Stage of Mind [Instrumental] (George Harrison)
23 talk (George Harrison)
24 In My Life (George Harrison)
25 talk (George Harrison)
26 Tom Cat [Instrumental] [Edit] (George Harrison & Tom Scott)
27 talk (George Harrison)
28 Maya Love (George Harrison)
29 talk (George Harrison)
30 Dark Horse (George Harrison)
31 talk (George Harrison)
32 Nothing from Nothing (George Harrison & Billy Preston)
33 Outa-Space [Instrumental] (George Harrison & Billy Preston)
34 talk (George Harrison)
35 What Is Life (George Harrison)
36 My Sweet Lord (George Harrison)
https://www.imagenetz.de/bfQYA
The cover photo of Harrison is from this tour, but I don't know the details.
Thanks, Paul! I saw George on this tour on the East Coast and the worst thing wasn't his voice, it was Harrison's insistence on stopping the show dead in the middle to bring out the Indian musicians instead of having them play an opening set. All the momentum of the show died as the rock musicians shuffled offstage and the Indian musicians came on, had to get in position and tune up. It was like an overbearing hostess insisting you eat your spinach before she'd serve dessert. Then, of course, the show came to a halt again when the Indians were done and the rock musicians came back, plugged back in, tuned up, etc. It felt very arrogant on Harrison's part then, and it still does to me now, much as I loved him.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the memories. I'd be curious what other people who saw the tour think. I'm sure he put the Indian music in the middle because if he put them at the beginning, lots of people would have found out beforehand and drifted in late. But one great thing with this album is that all the dead time is cut out, so there's no loss of momentum. :)
DeleteI saw the show in Boston. I would concur with Gummo, that the middle of the show was the wrong place for the Indian Musicians. That added to the fact that the acoustic of the old Boston Garden was totally incompatible with the intricacies of the music. I thought Harrison's choice of songs fine, and his part of the show was pretty high energy, especially Billy Preston. It would be nice to get a release from Apple, but you have done a fine job with your reconstruction. Thanks for the post.
DeleteThank you so much for this boot!
ReplyDeleteMuchísimas gracias, amigo. Saludos cordiales.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this. Much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteNice...Thanks for the fixups!
ReplyDelete