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48 Years Ago Today; The Concert for Bangladesh is held at Madison Square Garden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concert_for_Bangladesh
The Concert for Bangladesh (or Bangla Desh, as the country's name was originally spelled) was a pair of benefit concerts organised by former Beatles lead guitarist George Harrison and Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. The shows were held at 2:30 and 8:00 pm on Sunday, 1 August 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, to raise international awareness of, and fund relief for refugees from East Pakistan, following the Bangladesh Liberation War-related genocide. The concerts were followed by a bestselling live album, a boxed three-record set, and Apple Films' concert documentary, which opened in cinemas in the spring of 1972.
The event was the first-ever benefit of such a magnitude, and featured a supergroup of performers that included Harrison, fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and the band Badfinger. In addition, Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan – both of whom had ancestral roots in Bangladesh – performed an opening set of Indian classical music. The concerts were attended by a total of 40,000 people, and the initial gate receipts raised close to $250,000 for Bangladesh relief, which was administered by UNICEF.
After collecting the musicians easily, Harrison found it extremely difficult to get the recording industry to release the rights for performers to share the stage, and millions of dollars raised from the album and film were tied up in IRS tax escrow accounts for years, but the Concert for Bangladesh is recognised as a highly successful and influential humanitarian aid project, generating both awareness and considerable funds as well as providing valuable lessons and inspiration for projects that followed, such as Live Aid.
By 1985, through revenue raised from the Concert for Bangladesh live album and film, an estimated $12 million had been sent to Bangladesh, and sales of the live album and DVD release of the film continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF. Decades later, Shankar would say of the overwhelming success of the event: "In one day, the whole world knew the name of Bangladesh. It was a fantastic occasion."
<snip>
Concert programme
Afternoon show
Except for brief support roles in December 1969 for both the Delaney & Bonnie and Friends band and Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, the Concert for Bangladesh was Harrison's first live appearance before a paying audience since the Beatles had quit touring in August 1966. Dylan had stopped touring that same year, although he had made a moderately successful comeback in August 1969 at the Isle of Wight Festival, his most recent live performance at this point. Speaking in 2005, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner described the "buzz" preceding the first Concert for Bangladesh show as being at a level unexperienced in New York since the Beatles' 1966 visit.
Ravi Shankar (pictured in 1969)
In his role as master of ceremonies, Harrison began the afternoon show by asking the audience to "try to get into" the opening, Indian music portion of the programme. He then introduced Ravi Shankar and the latter's fellow musicians – sarodya Ali Akbar Khan, tabla player Alla Rakha, and Kamala Chakravarty on tamboura. Shankar first explained the reason for the concerts, after which the four musicians performed a traditional dhun, in the format of a khyal rather than a standard raga, titled "Bangla Dhun". Their set included a second piece, authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter suggest, citing Harrison's own description that each show's Indian music segment lasted for three-quarters of an hour, whereas only seventeen minutes of music appears on the Concert for Bangladesh live album. The recital was afforded a "fidgety respect" from fans eager to discover the identity of Harrison's advertised "Friends", although the audience's goodwill was more than evident. A short intermission ensued while the stage was cleared and a Dutch TV film was shown, displaying footage of the atrocities and natural tragedies taking place in former East Pakistan.
To thunderous applause from the New York crowd, Harrison appeared on stage along with his temporary band, comprising Ringo Starr, a very sick Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Klaus Voormann, Jim Keltner and eighteen others. Backed by this "full Phil Spector/All Things Must Pass rock orchestra", Harrison began the Western portion of the concert with "Wah-Wah", followed by his Beatles hit song' "Something" and the gospel-rocker "Awaiting on You All". Harrison then handed the spotlight over to Preston, who performed his only sizeable hit (thus far), "That's the Way God Planned It", followed by Starr, whose song "It Don't Come Easy" had recently established the drummer as a solo artist. Nicholas Schaffner was in the audience for this first show and later described Starr's turn as having received the "biggest ovation" of the afternoon.
Three scenes from the concert
Next up was Harrison's "Beware of Darkness", with guest vocals on the third verse by Russell, who covered the song on his concurrent album, Leon Russell and the Shelter People (1971). After pausing to introduce the band, Harrison followed this with one of the best-received moments in both the shows – a charging version of the White Album track "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", featuring him and Clapton "duelling" on lead guitar during the long instrumental playout. Both the band introduction and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" are among the few selections from the afternoon show that were included on the album and in the film. Another one was Leon Russell's medley of the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and the Coasters' "Young Blood", which was also a highlight of Russell's live shows at the time. With Don Preston crossing the stage to play lead guitar with Harrison, there were now temporarily four electric guitarists in the line-up. Don Preston, Harrison and Claudia Linnear supplied supporting vocals behind Russell.
In an effective change of pace, Harrison picked up his acoustic guitar, now alone on the stage save for Pete Ham on a second acoustic, and Don Nix's gospel choir, off to stage-left. The ensuing "Here Comes the Sun" – the first live performance of the song, as for Harrison's other Beatle compositions played that day – was also warmly received. At this point, Harrison switched back to his white Fender Stratocaster electric guitar and, as recounted to Anthony DeCurtis in 1987, he looked down at the setlist taped to the body of the guitar and saw the word "Bob" followed by a question mark. "And I looked around," Harrison recalled of Bob Dylan's entrance, "and he was so nervous – he had his guitar on and his shades – he was sort of coming on, coming [pumps his arms and shoulders] ... It was only at that moment that I knew for sure he was going to do it." Among the audience, Schaffner wrote, there was "total astonishment" at this new arrival.
As Harrison had envisaged, Dylan's mini-set was the crowning glory of the Concert for Bangladesh for many observers. Backed by just Harrison, Russell (now playing Voormann's Fender Precision bass) and Starr on tambourine, Dylan played five of his decade-defining songs from the 1960s: "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", "Blowin' in the Wind", "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry", "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" and "Just Like a Woman".
Harrison and the band then returned to perform a final segment, consisting of "Hear Me Lord" and his recent international number one hit, "My Sweet Lord", followed by the song of the moment – "Bangla Desh".
Evening show
Harrison was reportedly delighted with the outcome of the first show, as was Dylan, who accompanied him back to the Park Lane Hotel afterwards. They discussed possible changes to the setlist for the evening performance, beginning at 8 pm.
The songs played and their sequence differed slightly between the first and second shows, most noticeably with Harrison's opening and closing mini-sets. After "Wah-Wah", he brought "My Sweet Lord" forward in the order, followed by "Awaiting on You All", before handing over to Billy Preston. The afternoon's "creaky" "Hear Me Lord" was dropped, so that the post-Dylan band segment consisted of only two numbers: "Something", to close the show, and a particularly passionate reading of "Bangla Desh", as an encore. Dylan likewise made some changes, swapping "Blowin' in the Wind" and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh" in the order, and then playing a well-received "Mr. Tambourine Man" in place of "Love Minus Zero".
The second show was widely acknowledged as superior to the afternoon performance, although Village Voice reviewer Don Heckman noted that many in the audience reacted to the Shankar–Khan opening set with a lack of respect. Not aiding the Indian musicians was the failure of a microphone on Rakha's hand drums, Heckman observed, so denying the crowd a vital element of the musical interplay between sitar and sarod.
Billy Preston, pictured in 1971
During the Western portion of the show, Harrison's voice was more confident this time around, the music "perhaps slightly more lustrous", according to Rolling Stone. Towards the end of "That's the Way God Planned It", Preston felt compelled to get up from behind his Hammond organ and take a show-stealing boogie across the front of the stage.
Dylan's walk-on was again the show's "real cortex-snapping moment", Heckman opined. Dylan finished his final song, "Just Like a Woman", with a victorious salute – "holding up both fists like a strongman", Rolling Stone's reviewer remarked shortly afterwards. Following Dylan's set, Harrison introduced the band, before taking the show "to yet another peak" with "Something". Watching from the wings, Pattie Harrison described her husband's performance throughout that evening as "magnificent".
Following the two sellout concerts, all the participants attended a celebratory party in a basement club known as Ungano's. Dylan was so elated, Harrison recalled 16 years later, "He picked me up and hugged me and he said, 'God! If only we'd done three shows!'" Like Harrison, the experience of playing at Madison Square that day did not lead to Dylan immediately re-embracing the concert stage; only a brief guest appearance with the Band on New Year's Eve 1971–72 and sitting in during a John Prine club gig eventuated before he returned to touring in January 1974.
The post-concert party featured live performances from Harrison and Preston, after which a "roaring drunk" Phil Spector played a "unique" version of "Da Doo Ron Ron". The celebrations broke up in the early hours once Keith Moon of the Who began smashing up the drum kit, which actually belonged to Badfinger's Mike Gibbins.
</snip>
The Concert for Bangladesh (or Bangla Desh, as the country's name was originally spelled) was a pair of benefit concerts organised by former Beatles lead guitarist George Harrison and Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. The shows were held at 2:30 and 8:00 pm on Sunday, 1 August 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, to raise international awareness of, and fund relief for refugees from East Pakistan, following the Bangladesh Liberation War-related genocide. The concerts were followed by a bestselling live album, a boxed three-record set, and Apple Films' concert documentary, which opened in cinemas in the spring of 1972.
The event was the first-ever benefit of such a magnitude, and featured a supergroup of performers that included Harrison, fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and the band Badfinger. In addition, Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan – both of whom had ancestral roots in Bangladesh – performed an opening set of Indian classical music. The concerts were attended by a total of 40,000 people, and the initial gate receipts raised close to $250,000 for Bangladesh relief, which was administered by UNICEF.
After collecting the musicians easily, Harrison found it extremely difficult to get the recording industry to release the rights for performers to share the stage, and millions of dollars raised from the album and film were tied up in IRS tax escrow accounts for years, but the Concert for Bangladesh is recognised as a highly successful and influential humanitarian aid project, generating both awareness and considerable funds as well as providing valuable lessons and inspiration for projects that followed, such as Live Aid.
By 1985, through revenue raised from the Concert for Bangladesh live album and film, an estimated $12 million had been sent to Bangladesh, and sales of the live album and DVD release of the film continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF. Decades later, Shankar would say of the overwhelming success of the event: "In one day, the whole world knew the name of Bangladesh. It was a fantastic occasion."
<snip>
Concert programme
Afternoon show
Except for brief support roles in December 1969 for both the Delaney & Bonnie and Friends band and Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, the Concert for Bangladesh was Harrison's first live appearance before a paying audience since the Beatles had quit touring in August 1966. Dylan had stopped touring that same year, although he had made a moderately successful comeback in August 1969 at the Isle of Wight Festival, his most recent live performance at this point. Speaking in 2005, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner described the "buzz" preceding the first Concert for Bangladesh show as being at a level unexperienced in New York since the Beatles' 1966 visit.
Ravi Shankar (pictured in 1969)
In his role as master of ceremonies, Harrison began the afternoon show by asking the audience to "try to get into" the opening, Indian music portion of the programme. He then introduced Ravi Shankar and the latter's fellow musicians – sarodya Ali Akbar Khan, tabla player Alla Rakha, and Kamala Chakravarty on tamboura. Shankar first explained the reason for the concerts, after which the four musicians performed a traditional dhun, in the format of a khyal rather than a standard raga, titled "Bangla Dhun". Their set included a second piece, authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter suggest, citing Harrison's own description that each show's Indian music segment lasted for three-quarters of an hour, whereas only seventeen minutes of music appears on the Concert for Bangladesh live album. The recital was afforded a "fidgety respect" from fans eager to discover the identity of Harrison's advertised "Friends", although the audience's goodwill was more than evident. A short intermission ensued while the stage was cleared and a Dutch TV film was shown, displaying footage of the atrocities and natural tragedies taking place in former East Pakistan.
It was magical. That's the only way to describe it, because nobody had ever seen anything like that before, that amount of star power ... all in two hours onstage at one time.
– Phil Spector, 2011
To thunderous applause from the New York crowd, Harrison appeared on stage along with his temporary band, comprising Ringo Starr, a very sick Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Klaus Voormann, Jim Keltner and eighteen others. Backed by this "full Phil Spector/All Things Must Pass rock orchestra", Harrison began the Western portion of the concert with "Wah-Wah", followed by his Beatles hit song' "Something" and the gospel-rocker "Awaiting on You All". Harrison then handed the spotlight over to Preston, who performed his only sizeable hit (thus far), "That's the Way God Planned It", followed by Starr, whose song "It Don't Come Easy" had recently established the drummer as a solo artist. Nicholas Schaffner was in the audience for this first show and later described Starr's turn as having received the "biggest ovation" of the afternoon.
Three scenes from the concert
Next up was Harrison's "Beware of Darkness", with guest vocals on the third verse by Russell, who covered the song on his concurrent album, Leon Russell and the Shelter People (1971). After pausing to introduce the band, Harrison followed this with one of the best-received moments in both the shows – a charging version of the White Album track "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", featuring him and Clapton "duelling" on lead guitar during the long instrumental playout. Both the band introduction and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" are among the few selections from the afternoon show that were included on the album and in the film. Another one was Leon Russell's medley of the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and the Coasters' "Young Blood", which was also a highlight of Russell's live shows at the time. With Don Preston crossing the stage to play lead guitar with Harrison, there were now temporarily four electric guitarists in the line-up. Don Preston, Harrison and Claudia Linnear supplied supporting vocals behind Russell.
In an effective change of pace, Harrison picked up his acoustic guitar, now alone on the stage save for Pete Ham on a second acoustic, and Don Nix's gospel choir, off to stage-left. The ensuing "Here Comes the Sun" – the first live performance of the song, as for Harrison's other Beatle compositions played that day – was also warmly received. At this point, Harrison switched back to his white Fender Stratocaster electric guitar and, as recounted to Anthony DeCurtis in 1987, he looked down at the setlist taped to the body of the guitar and saw the word "Bob" followed by a question mark. "And I looked around," Harrison recalled of Bob Dylan's entrance, "and he was so nervous – he had his guitar on and his shades – he was sort of coming on, coming [pumps his arms and shoulders] ... It was only at that moment that I knew for sure he was going to do it." Among the audience, Schaffner wrote, there was "total astonishment" at this new arrival.
As Harrison had envisaged, Dylan's mini-set was the crowning glory of the Concert for Bangladesh for many observers. Backed by just Harrison, Russell (now playing Voormann's Fender Precision bass) and Starr on tambourine, Dylan played five of his decade-defining songs from the 1960s: "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", "Blowin' in the Wind", "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry", "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" and "Just Like a Woman".
Harrison and the band then returned to perform a final segment, consisting of "Hear Me Lord" and his recent international number one hit, "My Sweet Lord", followed by the song of the moment – "Bangla Desh".
Evening show
Harrison was reportedly delighted with the outcome of the first show, as was Dylan, who accompanied him back to the Park Lane Hotel afterwards. They discussed possible changes to the setlist for the evening performance, beginning at 8 pm.
The songs played and their sequence differed slightly between the first and second shows, most noticeably with Harrison's opening and closing mini-sets. After "Wah-Wah", he brought "My Sweet Lord" forward in the order, followed by "Awaiting on You All", before handing over to Billy Preston. The afternoon's "creaky" "Hear Me Lord" was dropped, so that the post-Dylan band segment consisted of only two numbers: "Something", to close the show, and a particularly passionate reading of "Bangla Desh", as an encore. Dylan likewise made some changes, swapping "Blowin' in the Wind" and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh" in the order, and then playing a well-received "Mr. Tambourine Man" in place of "Love Minus Zero".
The second show was widely acknowledged as superior to the afternoon performance, although Village Voice reviewer Don Heckman noted that many in the audience reacted to the Shankar–Khan opening set with a lack of respect. Not aiding the Indian musicians was the failure of a microphone on Rakha's hand drums, Heckman observed, so denying the crowd a vital element of the musical interplay between sitar and sarod.
Billy Preston, pictured in 1971
During the Western portion of the show, Harrison's voice was more confident this time around, the music "perhaps slightly more lustrous", according to Rolling Stone. Towards the end of "That's the Way God Planned It", Preston felt compelled to get up from behind his Hammond organ and take a show-stealing boogie across the front of the stage.
Dylan's walk-on was again the show's "real cortex-snapping moment", Heckman opined. Dylan finished his final song, "Just Like a Woman", with a victorious salute – "holding up both fists like a strongman", Rolling Stone's reviewer remarked shortly afterwards. Following Dylan's set, Harrison introduced the band, before taking the show "to yet another peak" with "Something". Watching from the wings, Pattie Harrison described her husband's performance throughout that evening as "magnificent".
What happened is now history: it was one of the most moving and intense musical experiences of the century.
– Ravi Shankar, 2005
Following the two sellout concerts, all the participants attended a celebratory party in a basement club known as Ungano's. Dylan was so elated, Harrison recalled 16 years later, "He picked me up and hugged me and he said, 'God! If only we'd done three shows!'" Like Harrison, the experience of playing at Madison Square that day did not lead to Dylan immediately re-embracing the concert stage; only a brief guest appearance with the Band on New Year's Eve 1971–72 and sitting in during a John Prine club gig eventuated before he returned to touring in January 1974.
The post-concert party featured live performances from Harrison and Preston, after which a "roaring drunk" Phil Spector played a "unique" version of "Da Doo Ron Ron". The celebrations broke up in the early hours once Keith Moon of the Who began smashing up the drum kit, which actually belonged to Badfinger's Mike Gibbins.
</snip>
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