“I was a bit wound up”: the tour that almost broke George Harrison
Anyone starting their life as a touring act needs to know what they are getting themselves into beforehand. It’s one thing to have a lust for life when touring around the world, but the minute that the hotel rooms begin to look the same and the crowds become background noise, is when artists figure out they are on a rollercoaster that they can’t get off of. It’s no wonder that The Beatles decided they had had enough by the mid-1960s, but what’s even stranger is how many of the band members, like George Harrison, stuck to that lifestyle once they started flying solo.
Harrison was always the last of all the former Beatles who seemed ready to embrace his stardom in that way. Part of his belief system was about trying to downplay his ego as much as possible, and while he did have his moments where he could grandstand, he was more than happy to be the one fading into the background rather than be the shiny pop star at the centre of everything.
Once the Concert for Bangladesh got underway, Harrison knew that he could do something with his craft that went far beyond the typical rock and roll fare. He wanted to make his music to help people, and while he was more than happy to make records like Living in the Material World, it was a different matter entirely when he saw that his shows would benefit people suffering half a world away.
By the time he got to work on his third record, things had started to wane for him. His marriage had collapsed after Patti Boyd started dating Eric Clapton, and while Dark Horse features a lot of great moments throughout its runtime, it’s hard to pay attention to any of the performances when all you hear is Harrison suffering from laryngitis and barely making it through many of the tunes.
“That was the nearest I got to a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t even go into the house.”
George Harrison
But he still had an album to promote, and once he hit the road, fans got a good listen to what Harrison was working with. Despite limping his way through the entire set half the time, Harrison was always an engaging performer, either passing some of the vocal duties on to Billy Preston or performing the instrumental track from the album ‘Hari’s On Tour’, which is one of the most underrated pieces of music he released during his 1970s run.
After going through that many shows after one of the biggest philanthropic events in rock history, Harrison could hardly stand up by the time that he got back home, saying, “That was the nearest I got to a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t even go into the house. I was a bit wound up – then when I came in, I looked in the mirror and decided: ‘Oh, I’m not that bad after all.’ Ego. That reflection. All those bits of rubbish everywhere and I was, I realised, getting dragged down into that hole.”
And listening back to the record Extra Texture, Harrison’s fatigue was starting to show in the music, too. Outside of the stellar pop single ‘You’, many of the tracks sound like Harrison being increasingly frustrated over the prospect of making music, with songs like ‘Tired of Midnight Blue’ even admitting that he wasn’t taking care of himself properly behind the scenes.
Given how beaten down he was, the fact that he could pick himself up on records like 33 and ⅓ was a miracle. If there’s one thing that Harrison knew more than any of his Beatle bandmates, though, it was about letting time pass and giving space for time to fate to swing back in his favour.
