The 1972 Elvis Presley show that broke George Harrison’s heart: “Oh Jesus”
You’re unlikely to be great forever, and the odds are stacked against you in terms of being able to prove your brilliance in front of audiences for the whole of your life. Either you quietly walk away when you realise things have declined, like George Harrison did with his commitment to touring, or you die on stage, a shell of the performer you once were.
George Harrison, often dubbed the ‘Quiet Beatle’, never really clicked with performing on his own without the rest of the band, hence why he very rarely toured, and made his public appearances as infrequent as possible unless accompanied by other musicians.
A large amount of this realisation came after his gargantuan tour of the US went horrifically wrong for him in 1974, when a series of personal issues, such as illness, exhaustion and drug dependence, seeped into his trip with Ravi Shankar. It was evident from these catastrophic shows that he clearly wasn’t suited to the idea of embarking on a string of 45 dates and that, despite his pedigree as a recording artist, he was better off not taking his talents on the road.
He knew that he had to quit, or at least take a lengthy hiatus after that, but the same can’t be said for one of his own personal idols, who he saw descend to the lowest point of his career on the stage even before he’d grappled with his own personal demons on stage.
The sense of second-hand embarrassment that he felt watching Elvis Presley perform at Madison Square Garden in 1972, realising that the damage he had done to his body was severely affecting his ability to perform, and that his heart had all but given up on being the showman he once was, was truly tough for Harrison to accept. He revealed to Creem Magazine that despite coming out of his dressing room glammed up, Presley was evidently not performing to the best of his abilities.
“I was just cowering like this little rag-man,” Harrison recalled, noting how he still felt inferior to the man dubbed ‘The King’. “I wanted to say to him, ‘Why don’t you just come out in your jeans and your black shirt. Get rid of all them horrible women singers in your band, all them horrible trumpet players and just have James Burton and the drummer and the bass player and the piano player?’”
“‘Just come out and do ‘That’s All Right, Mama’,” Harrison wanted to ask of Presley. “But instead he came out and did (sings) ‘I did it myyy wayyyy.’ Oh, Jesus. But we all loved Elvis, and it was sad to see what happened to him.”
“We still love him, and he’s still there in his spirit and in his music, and best of luck to him. That’s what I say.”
George Harrison on Elvis
Harrison would go on to realise through his own disastrous concert run that performing the songs everyone wants to hear is the best way to appease fans, rather than leaning on covers or lesser-known material. Even though he wanted to hear ‘That’s All Right, Mama’ from Presley, Harrison knew that he was incapable of delivering such a thing.
Truly exhausted and unable to reclaim the magic that made people fall in love with him in the first place, this ought to have been the sign for Presley to gracefully step back from performing for the good of his own legacy and health, but sadly, those words from Harrison were never uttered, and therefore were not heeded. Presley’s eventual death in 1977 would shock the world, but for Harrison, he’d effectively ended everything good about his career five years before.
