George Harrison: A poet, a rebel, a friend

People are never quite what they seem. The person with the biggest smile could be fighting demons on the inside, the guy with a grumpy face could have the liveliest personality and a person with a short fuse could have the kindest of hearts.

George Harrison, the lead guitarist of the most famous pop band in the history of this planet, writer of a host of iconic songs and an incredible solo artist in his own right, has always been known as the ‘Quiet Beatle’.

Harrison was the youngest of the four Beatles members and also the most reclusive. He wasn’t fond of the media attention and didn’t enjoy the fanfare as much as his bandmates.

When the Beatles first started, he was just the quiet guy who would stand at one corner of the stage and conjure up magical tunes from his guitar. He started writing songs later on, which surprised bandmates Paul McCartney and John Lennon, who wrote all of the early Beatles songs.

“I think it was easy to underestimate George because me and John had always written most of the stuff and had had most of the singles. He wasn’t that interested in the beginning. But then he started to get interested and boy, did he bloom. He wrote some of the greatest songs ever,” said McCartney on a radio show last year.

McCartney didn’t exaggerate when he credited Harrison for writing, ‘some of the greatest songs ever’. Harrison penned and sang classics like, ‘Something’, ‘Here comes the sun’, ‘I me mine’, ‘While my guitar gently weeps’ for the Beatles.

After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Harrison broke free from the shadow of McCartney and Lennon. Just months after the Beatles fell apart after years of turmoil, Harrison released his first solo album, “All things must pass”. The title track of the album and other songs like ‘My sweet lord’, and ‘What is life’ were considered instant classics and are still a staple for anyone who enjoys 70s pop songs.

And the world finally realised that the ‘Quiet Beatle’ had the most to say.

The poet hidden in Harrison finally got out. The next year, the rebel and the friend in Harrison also was out for the world to see.

In the mid-60s’, Harrison had formed an unusual friendship with Indian classical music maestro, Pandit Ravi Shankar.

Harrison had a keen interest in Indian spirituality and was also fascinated by the unique sounds of Indian musical instruments, especially the sitar.

Harrison wanted to learn how to play the sitar from Ravi Shankar and Shankar obliged. But just two years into his sitar training, Harrison realised that he enjoyed the company of Ravi Shankar more than the rigorous sitar lessons and decided to give up.

But the friendship he formed with Ravi Shankar changed his entire outlook on life. He was introduced to the world of Vedic spirituality, which he embraced wholeheartedly and didn’t let go of for the rest of his life.

Harrison was deeply indebted to Ravi Shankar in more ways than one. So, when Shankar approached him to do something for the one million Bangladeshi refugees in India during the liberation war in 1971, Harrison couldn’t say no.

But to say that Harrison did it just as a favour for a friend is not entirely accurate. Shankar had only suggested a small benefit show to raise $20,000-30,000 for the victims of war. It was Harrison who turned it into the grand spectacle that was the, ‘Concert for Bangla Desh’.

“America was actually shipping armaments to Pakistan, who were, you know, just massacring everybody, and the more I read about it and understood what was going on, I thought, “Well, we’ve just got to do something” and it had to be very quick. And what we did really, was only to point it out. That’s what I felt,” Harrison said in a television interview in 1997.

So, while Shankar just wanted to send some help to the hurting Bengalis, Harrison wanted to bring the world’s attention to the plight of the Bangladeshi people and how the US is helping Pakistan conduct genocide with arms and ammunition.

In just six weeks, Harrison booked Madison Square Garden in New York, arguably the most famous arena in the world, convinced Bob Dylan to perform on stage after staying out of the public eye for almost five years, roped in former Beatle band mate Ringo Starr, and other superstars like Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell among many others. And all of them performed without charging a dime.

Ravi Shankar along with Alla Rakha, Ali Akbar Khan and Kamala Chakravarty also performed Indian classical music in the concert.

On 1 August 1971, in front of a jam-packed Madison Square Garden, Harrison, who himself had never arranged a concert at that scale as a solo artist before, led a multi-cultural, all-star group of artists onto the stage for a concert the likes of which the world had never seen before.

The concert began with Indian classical music, which to the surprise of Ravi Shankar and his team, thousands of Western music fans heartily appreciated.

After the classical performance, the crowd was shown a short documentary on the plight of the refugees, which was followed by songs from Harrison, Preston, Ringo and Dylan.

The concert was held twice on the same day, in the afternoon and in the evening. And needless to say, the concert was a tremendous success.

The concert itself made $250,000. But the album, which was finally released in December 1971 after several complications, was a huge hit and brought in millions. It also won the album of the year award at the 1973 Grammy Awards.

But the end result of the concert was a bit anticlimactic. The funds, more than $12 million, remained in an Internal Revenue Service escrow account till 1985 before finally reaching Bangladesh.

The concert, was a success as it had served its main purpose, forcing the world to take notice of the atrocities happening in Bangladesh.

The concert could’ve easily been called something like, Concert for Refugees or East Pakistan or East Bengal. But the name ‘Bangla Desh’ was purposefully left in to put the new country’s name in everyone’s mouth.

Harrison also wrote and sang the song, ‘Bangla Desh’, which closed the concert and once again put the word Bangladesh to the forefront.

The starting lyrics of the song went something like this,

Here, the friend is obviously Ravi Shankar. In his bid to remove the sadness from his friend’s eyes, the rebel inside Harrison stood up against the dominant Western ideology and gave a country fighting for its existence a ray of hope from a place they had least expected from.

Bangladeshis have always been indebted to Harrison for his gesture, which the singer was also aware of.

“Even now I still meet waiters in Bengali restaurants who say: “Oh, you Mr Harrison. When we were in the jungle fighting it was great to know somebody out there was thinking of us,” Harrison said.

When the world silently watched the massacre of Bangladeshis, the ‘Quiet Beatle’ picked up his guitar, rebelled against the dominant narrative and became the eternal friend to a country where he never stepped foot on.

To sum it up in Harrison’s trademark nonchalant style, not too bad for a quiet chap from Liverpool!