Concert for George

• 1. Introduction

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  The Concert for George opened on the 29th of November 2002 with a Sanskrit prayer, the Sarvesham chant, filling the Royal Albert Hall in London with sound that George Harrison himself had loved for decades. The audience had gathered exactly one year after Harrison's death, summoned by his widow Olivia and his son Dhani to mark the occasion in the way Harrison would have wanted: not with solemnity alone, but with music, laughter, and sitars. What happened that night was one of the most unusual memorial concerts in popular music history. How do you celebrate a man who was a Beatle, a devotee of Indian classical music, a Monty Python enthusiast, and a ukulele player all at once? The answer, it turned out, was to do all of it at the same time.

• 2. Organising the Night

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  Olivia Harrison and Dhani Harrison took responsibility for shaping the evening, but they handed musical direction to Eric Clapton, a choice that carried its own history. Clapton had played with Harrison across decades and knew his arrangements intimately. The profits from the event went directly to the Material World Charitable Foundation, an organisation Harrison himself had founded. That the concert benefited a cause Harrison had created gave the night a quality beyond commemoration; it was also an extension of work he had started in his own lifetime. Clapton's role as musical director meant he was both architect and performer, a position that shaped which songs were chosen and how faithfully they were rendered.

• 3. India First

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  Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi Shankar, walked onstage before any rock band member appeared, opening the concert with "Your Eyes" on sitar. Her presence signalled that this was not going to be a straightforward rock tribute. Dhani Harrison and Jeff Lynne then joined her for Harrison's "The Inner Light", a song rooted in the Tao Te Ching that Harrison had set to Indian instrumentation. The evening's most ambitious Indian music passage was "Arpan", a composition Ravi Shankar wrote specifically for the occasion. The Sanskrit word means "to give". Running to just over twenty-three minutes, "Arpan" brought together the London Metropolitan Orchestra, the English Chamber Choir, the Boys and Girls Choir of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, and an ensemble of Indian classical musicians playing instruments including the mohan vina, sarangi, sarod, and veena. The string arrangements were conducted by Michael Kamen. Clapton himself appeared on acoustic guitar for that piece, alongside musicians from multiple traditions. Ravi Shankar offered a dedication. The opening third of the concert, in other words, was an act of cultural seriousness that few rock memorial events have attempted before or since.

• 4. The Python Interlude

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  Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin were among the Monty Python members who took the stage for a comedy interlude. Neil Innes, a long-time Python collaborator, joined them. The troupe performed "Sit on My Face" before Palin appeared in character as an overwrought announcer confessing he had always dreamed of being a lumberjack. Carol Cleveland, Tom Hanks, and The Fred Tomlinson Singers then came out to complete a full performance of "The Lumberjack Song". Harrison's close friendship with the Python group was well known. He had personally financed the production of "Monty Python's Life of Brian" in 1979 through his company HandMade Films because he wanted to see the film get made. Their presence at the Royal Albert Hall was thus not a novelty booking but a reflection of one of Harrison's most enduring personal loyalties.

• 5. George's Band

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  Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr joined the stage for what the programme called George's Band, making the concert one of the rare post-Beatles occasions to bring surviving members together in performance. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Billy Preston, Jools Holland, Albert Lee, Sam Brown, Gary Brooker, Joe Brown, Ray Cooper, Andy Fairweather-Low, Marc Mann, Dave Bronze, Klaus Voormann, and Jim Keltner were among the musicians who filled the band. Many had worked on Harrison's recordings over the years. The set drew from both his Beatles catalogue and his solo work, with most performances staying close to Harrison's own arrangements. Tom Petty sang "Taxman" and "I Need You". Jeff Lynne took "I Want to Tell You" and "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)". Clapton sang "If I Needed Someone" and "Beware of Darkness". Ringo Starr sang "Photograph", co-written with Harrison, and "Honey Don't", a Carl Perkins song Harrison had sung on "Beatles for Sale". McCartney sang "For You Blue" and "All Things Must Pass".

• 6. Reunions on Stage

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  "Handle With Care" brought together Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Dhani Harrison, and Jim Keltner, reuniting most of the surviving Traveling Wilburys with the notable absence of Bob Dylan. The song had been a Wilburys vehicle in the late 1980s and hearing it live in that configuration was one of the evening's pointed absences and presences at once. McCartney opened his performance of "Something" on solo ukulele before the full band joined him, with Clapton adding vocals and guitar. The ukulele was one of Harrison's favourite instruments, and the choice to begin that way made the tribute specific rather than generic. Clapton, McCartney, and Starr performed "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" together, a song Harrison had written for the White Album. Billy Preston sang "My Sweet Lord" with McCartney on piano and Clapton on twelve-string acoustic guitar. The group then closed the main set with a collective performance of "Wah-Wah".

• 7. Joe Brown's Closing

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  Joe Brown walked out last and played "I'll See You in My Dreams" on ukulele, the final performance of the night. Written by Isham Jones and Gus Kahn, the song was not a Harrison composition, but its setting on the instrument Harrison loved gave it a weight the title alone might not have carried. Brown was backed by a small group: Neil Gauntlett on acoustic guitar, Dave Niles on bass, Phil Capaldi on drums, and Chris Stainton on digital keyboard. The choice of a song about parting, played on a ukulele, as the concert's last gesture was not accidental. A film of the concert, directed by David Leland and photographed by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Chris Menges, was released on DVD on the 17th of November 2003. A compact disc version appeared on the same date, though it did not include the Monty Python tracks or the Sam Brown performance. Rhino Records released a Blu-ray version on the 22nd of March 2011. In 2018, to mark what would have been Harrison's 75th birthday, the concert reached streaming services for the first time and was also issued on vinyl LP, more than fifteen years after the night itself.