New Book on Harrison..$1000

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New Book on Harrison..$1000

Review: Concert for George - Olivia Harrison & Brian Roylance

20 March 2005

 

A new book about George Harrison documents an all-star tribute

concert to the dead Beatle. Its price? A cool grand. Steve Braunias

takes a look at the reverential tome.

 

 

Two down, two to go. Although the most interesting half of the Fab

Four were first to die, the world will definitely allow itself vast

outpourings of grief when the two remaining Beatles, vain Paul and

desperate Ringo, kick the bucket. We shall be told about their place

in history. We shall hear a great many tributes. We shall be reminded

of Beatlemania, of Sgt Pepper, of "Mull of Kintyre". And then it will

get interesting, because then we will be offered a range of

souvenirs.

 

We can expect the boxed CD set and the DVD collection. But what else?

For poor old John Lennon, the best thing on offer since his death in

1980 has come in the shape of Albert Goldman's biography. Yes, it was

vicious, it was most disrespectful, and a lot of it was probably

plain wrong. Like Othello, Lennon's ghost would have every right to

moan: "Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my

reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains

is bestial." Which is a dreadful shame, but the fact is that

Goldman's The Lives of John Lennon is a comic masterpiece.

 

Not so the new book devoted to George Harrison, who died of cancer,

aged 58, in November 2001. Reverent, hushed, sincere, Concert for

George is an astonishing kind of souvenir: printed in a limited

edition, it costs $1000. Yes. When a book costs a grand, you know it

is no longer a book.

 

Copies numbered 1 to 350 are half-bound in a terracotta shade of

leather; copies numbered 351 to 2500 are bound in a silk-screened

fabric over padded boards with bronze page edges. The paper stock is

an archival quality 200GSM matt art. It is produced by London's

Genesis Publications, and can be ordered via the good offices of

Hedleys Booksellers in Masterton. The two companies have been down

this road before - Harrison's limited edition book I Me Mine, which

reprinted his song lyrics, appeared in 1980.

 

The new Harrison tome is precious, special, an event. It is a

collector's item. Its 308 pages, thin on text and big on photos,

document the all-star tribute concert for Harrison held at the Royal

Albert Hall in November 2002. The stars included Eric Clapton, Jeff

Lynne, Ravi Shankar, Monty Python, Tom Hanks, Tom Petty, Harrison's

son Dhani, the two surviving Beatles, plus an assortment of old

Beatles hands such as Billy Preston (knew them back in Hamburg,

played keyboards on "Let It Be") and Klaus Voorman (knew them back in

Hamburg, drew the Revolver cover). It's entirely possible the artists

played a tolerable racket; their own accounts give you the impression

this was one of the most magnificent nights of live music ever

performed.

 

A few quotes are accorded each musician - with the mysterious absence

of Paul McCartney. Gary Brooker remembers touring with the Beatles in

1965; he says: "George was the one who would pass a joint. He'd

always make sure that we had something to smoke." Jools Holland

mentions the time Harrison put a teatowel on his head and said he was

Osama bin Laden. We are told that when Bob Dylan once visited

Harrison, his host dragged him over to the stereo and played George

Formby records until Dylan fled. Terry Gilliam, from Monty Python,

says that despite Harrison's vast wealth, "it never stopped him

moaning and bitching". Ringo says: "George was shouting or he was

loving."

 

There are a few other illuminating remarks. But only very few.

Concert for George is not something you buy to read. Even the great

Paul Theroux, who you might reasonably hope would apply his usual

cool intelligence to the task of writing the book's introduction,

provides a lame, pious eulogy for the dearly departed. There are 450

photographs, many published for the first time. Dhani Harrison looks

a lot like his dad. Tom Petty looks like he arrived on stage after

someone had dug him up from a really deep grave. But neither is the

book something you buy to look at; it's something you buy to possess.

 

The concert obviously meant a lot to the performers involved. They

were Harrison's friends; they adored him, respected him, loved him.

You, too, can be part of this intimate soiree by buying one of the

available 2500 books. Nice. And it's a good and proper thing to pay

respects to Harrison. After all, he was a Beatle. He was also one of

the coolest people in the world around about 1966. He wore shades, he

went out with the ravishing Patti Boyd, he looked good with a sitar.

He could most certainly be a droning bore with his endless talk about

karma and all that, but there is plenty of evidence of a sharp wit.

And then there are his songs - or, as Olivia Harrison, George's

widow, refers to it in Concert for George: "His body of work."

 

Just how fit and healthy was that body? Does his music, and his music

alone, deserve the important mortuary of Concert for George? As a

Beatle, his primary role was to play guitar. He was bloody good at

that. Probably the most electrifying guitar solo on a Beatles record,

however, wasn't played by Harrison; that claim goes to Eric Clapton,

on Harrison's song "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". But Harrison was

about less, not more. His sharp, elegant playing strokes itself up

against countless songs from the Beatles catalogue, from "A Hard

Day's Night" to "I Feel Fine" to "Let It Be"; let loose, he made a

fabulous din on "Rain", "Revolution", and "Yer Blues".

 

Lennon and McCartney hogged the songwriting on Beatles records for

the first few years. Harrison, the youngest Fab, held back. By 1966,

though, he stepped forward, and grew in such confidence that his 1969

classic "Something" has become the most covered Beatles love song of

all time. Which leaves about a dozen songs he recorded with the

Beatles that stand the test of time, that indicate genius at work.

They include the well-known "If I Needed Someone", "Taxman",

and "Here Comes the Sun", and more obscure songs such as his two

Indian-inspired delicacies, "The Inner Light" and "Long Long Long",

and his raucous "It's All Too Much".

 

As for his solo career, the number of good to great songs written by

Harrison shrinks to about half a dozen. It's a curious thing that all

the Beatles made their best work in the first two or three years

after the band dissolved. Lennon made his masterpiece album Plastic

Ono Band, and the best-selling Imagine; after that, the rest wasn't

much chop. Ringo made the singles "It Don't Come Easy"

and "Photograph"; the rest wasn't any chop at all. McCartney's first

two solo albums stand up better than his subsequent work. The same

goes for Harrison.

 

AdvertisementAdvertisementHis 1970 release, All Things Must Pass, is

loaded with powerful tracks - "What Is Life", "Wah Wah", "Isn't It a

Pity", "My Sweet Lord" - which were given the full production

treatment by mad, bad Phil Spector. After 1973, and the mystic

pleasantries of Give Me Love, a veil of silence is best drawn over

Harrison's "body of work".

 

But his best material had style, grace, attack - and wit, too. An

example of his black humour? When the Beatles gave their famous press

conferences in America, in 1964, Harrison was asked: "What's this we

hear about an annual illness, George?" His reply: "I get cancer every

year."

 

 

Concert for George is published by Genesis Publications, $1000,

available through Hedleys Booksellers, see www.hedleysbooks.com.au

 

GEORGE HARRISON'S WIDOW PLANS ON FINISHING UNRELEASED PROJECTS

Trevor Scott

Web Posted: 3/15/2005 2:11:17 PM

George Harrison's widow, Olivia, is determined to complete all the

work Harrison left unfinished at the time of his death. Harrison died

in 2001 from cancer at the age of 58. Olivia told the Los Angeles

Times that, quote, 'I need a five-year plan just to finish everything

he started... He had this extraordinary work ethic. He never stopped.

He always had something going.'

 

 

Earlier this month she appeared at an Australian launch party for the

deluxe $600 limited-edition coffee table book commemorating the 2002

Concert For George tribute show at Britain's Royal Albert Hall. All

proceeds from book will benefit the charity founded by Olivia and

George Harrison called The Material World Foundation.

 

Olivia is currently working on re-releasing Harrison's post Beatles

Apple catalogue, including a re-mastered version of the legendary

1971 The Concert For Bangla Desh album -- with bonus tracks. Last

year Olivia re-issued all of Harrison's post 1976 albums as a box set

called The Dark Horse Years 1976-1992. Harrison himself was compiling

a multi-disc box set containing outtakes from as far back as 1970 at

the time of his death. The Harrison's son Dhani (pronounced 'Danny')

has reportedly continued work on the set, which has no release date

yet.

 

Olivia says that Harrison was at ease with his Beatle past at the

time of his death, and laughed as she recalled his witticisms: 'He

always said: 'If you're going to be in a band, you might as well be

in the Beatles',' as well as, ''The biggest break of my career was

getting into the Beatles. The second biggest break was getting out of

them.''

She went on to say that, 'History has been written. It's not going to

be rewritten. He was a great man and a great songwriter and a great

singer and just a wonderful man.'

For more information on the The Concert For George book, log on to

Genesis-publications.com.

 

 

 

 

'Quiet Beatle' wasn't, says Harrison's widow

 

 

By Randy Lewis

Los Angeles Times

March 27, 2005

 

 

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Olivia Harrison likes to quip that, were she

to write a book about her 27 years with "the quiet Beatle," she'd

call it "Never a Dull Moment."

 

George Harrison mixed his well-known passion for music and his quest

for spiritual truth with utterly worldly penchants for auto racing,

gardening and socializing with a zeal that seemed to run counter to

the public image of a shy, inward-looking musician and family man who

rarely made a splash in public after the Beatles broke up.

 

"People would say to him, 'You're not touring and you're not

recording -- what do you do with yourself?' " says Olivia, a Southern

California native who came into Harrison's life after his first

marriage painfully and famously fell apart when his wife, Patti Boyd,

fell in love with one of his best friends, Eric Clapton.

 

"He had an extraordinary work ethic," she says, twisting the wedding

ring she still wears. "He never stopped. He always had something

going."

 

So much so that 31/2 years after he died of cancer in 2001, Olivia

still isn't close to completing his various projects.

 

Not that she's complaining. In an interview at the Santa Monica

offices of Harrison's Dark Horse Records label, Olivia says her only

goal is to bring to fruition projects George had begun, or intended

to, before his death.

 

There's the re-release later this year of the 1971 live album (and

now DVD) from "The Concert for Bangla Desh." She's also determined to

continue the philanthropic work of the Material World Foundation,

which he set up in 1973.

 

She also helped supervise the six-CD boxed set "Dark Horse Years --

1974-1992" that came out last year. She'll be active on George's

behalf as Cirque du Soleil assembles a Beatles-centered production

slated to open next year in Las Vegas. And she's hoping to see the

two albums he made with the Traveling Wilburys reissued on CD.

 

More immediately, she oversaw U.S. publication this month of "The

Concert for George," an elaborate, limited-edition tribute book to

the guitarist-singer-songwriter by Clapton, Paul McCartney, Ringo

Starr and dozens of others.

 

She's got her own

 

Oh, and she just collected her first Grammy, as a producer of "The

Concert for George" DVD. She can set it next to the five inscribed

for the Beatles that sit on the cabinet behind her desk.

 

"I need a five-year plan just to finish all the things he started,"

she says with a chuckle, noting that all the activity helps her feel

that, spiritually, she's still carrying on a relationship with him.

 

She smiles easily and speaks honestly, even about the reason she

prefers to veer away from certain subjects.

 

The couple spent much time in Hawaii, but when she's asked about

favorite memories or locales in the islands, she demurs. "I'm sorry,

I can't talk about Hawaii. It's too . . . " Her voice trails off.

 

"My initial reason for doing the book was that for the concert, a big

tidal wave just swept over all of us, and after the concert it was

like it was still reaching shore," she says. "It felt like there was

still a bit to be said.

 

"When you watch the DVD, all the images are going by, and it's like a

moment in time. With a book, you can hold it and take your time to

look at a photo, to look at those eyes looking back at you. You can

sit down quietly with a book. That's what I wanted."

 

The heart of the "Concert for George" book, beyond the dozens of

gallery-quality photos, is the anecdotes and other remembrances of

Harrison provided by Olivia, Clapton, McCartney, Starr, George

Martin, Ravi Shankar, the couple's son, Dhani, and others.

 

Clapton notes that during rehearsals for the tribute concert, "I

thought that if he were here he'd probably say, 'Thanks very much,

Eric, but I don't really want this.' . . . I thought, 'What would I

say if he said that?' And I then thought, 'Well, I'm doing this for

me, actually.' And that's more the truth of it; I needed to do it for

him, but it was for me most of all because I needed to be able to

express my grief in that kind of way."

 

Olivia says George's sense of humor was often overlooked because of

his reputation as a spiritually focused musician.

 

His wit, overshadowed in the Beatles by John Lennon's, still came

through from time to time. Years after the Beatles disbanded, he

said, "The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles.

The second biggest break was getting out of them."

 

And his humility often superseded any displays of pride. Recalls

Olivia: "He always said, 'If you're going to be in a band, you might

as well be in the Beatles.' "

 

Before she became Olivia Harrison in 1978, she was Olivia Trinidad

Arias, an Angeleno whose grandparents immigrated to Los Angeles from

Mexico.

 

She grew up in Hawthorne, Calif., hometown of the Beach Boys, which

turned out to be a major point of interest for George when she gave

him a tour of her old neighborhood.

 

An unlikely couple

 

She was working at A&M Records, which distributed Dark Horse releases

at the time, and started chatting with Harrison when he'd call about

business.

 

They found they had musical and philosophical interests in common and

soon began seeing each other regularly. "I was from outside of his

world," she says. "I was shelter from the storm. I was simple, and he

needed some simplicity at that point."

 

She says she never really stopped to think about the implications of

getting involved with a musician, much less an ex-Beatle. "You can't

really think about it that way, otherwise you're just playacting."

 

How will she cope when all the projects are completed? Is she simply

postponing the feelings of loss?

 

Those are questions she doesn't worry about, and she knows what

George would have said on the subject.

 

"One of his favorite things to say was, 'Be here now,' " she says.

His song by that title, from his 1973 album "Living in the Material

World," remains one of her favorites, and it's one she plays any time

she feels in need of moral support.

 

"Sometimes he and Dhani would be talking and Dhani would ask, 'Well

what if this happens?' or 'What, if that happens?' " she

says. "George would say, 'Be here now. Be HERE now.' "