Why John Lennon hated George Harrison’s tour with Ravi Shankar: “It wasn’t the greatest thing in history”
No one from The Beatles was exactly itching to get back on the road once they fell apart. They had become far too big than any rock band was ready for, and despite having some fine moments together in the studio, their concerts didn’t have the proper equipment to do their songs justice by the end of the 1960s. Even though everyone began making their way back onto the main stage during their solo years, John Lennon was always the first to hesitate when it came to playing live.
After all, Lennon had done the most when the Fab Four first started gigging in their Quarrymen days, and after having to deal with legions of screaming fans, he would have rather done anything else than play a concert. He certainly could break out his guitar if it was for the right cause, like on Some Time In New York City or his gig at the Toronto Peace Festival, but he was far more content making songs like ‘Imagine’ from the comfort of his studio.
The stage represented a platform he didn’t need, but George Harrison knew it could be used for good. After putting out his landmark album All Things Must Pass, The Concert for Bangladesh was Harrison’s way of giving back to the people, predicting Live Aid by over a decade and managing to raise money to help people struggling half a world away. That might have scratched the itch, but Harrison had even bigger plans later.
When working on the album Dark Horse, ‘The Quiet One’ figured it was a good time for him to make his way around the world with his new group. After all, he loved being part of a band rather than being the person at the front, and hearing him play off of Ravi Shankar and Billy Preston was the best option for him to enjoy himself onstage.
That is if he had a decent voice to wrap everything around. Although all the songs on Dark Horse were fine, him blowing his voice out before the tour began left many people underwhelmed when they heard him. It’s one thing to hear him balance out his Beatles classics with Shankar’s Eastern music, but hearing him croak out every one of his songs was more than most listeners were hoping for.
But for all of Harrison’s internal philosophy of yin and yang, Lennon was the one who could be most objective about the tour, saying, “It wasn’t the greatest thing in history. The guy went through some kind of mill. It was probably his turn to get smacked. George is out for the moment,” he said. “And I think it didn’t matter what he did on tour.”
Granted, it might not have helped that Harrison decided to change some of the lyrics of his favourite tunes. ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ would get changed to ‘While My Guitar Tries to Smile’ during several shows, and Lennon would have probably been less than thrilled if he had heard Harrison do a version of the song ‘In My Life’, only with the lyrics changing to reflect his relationship with God.
Still, the band never gave a bad performance, judging by the bootlegs of the shows, and had the press not been so harsh, maybe we could have seen Harrison go on the road a few more times in the future. Harrison may have put the ‘hoarse’ in Dark Horse during those dates, but we all would have gladly taken more shows of him trying than having him leave the touring life for good.
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