SECTION ONE
PAGE TWO
sm
COLUMN
SIXTY-SIX, DECEMBER 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al Aronowitz)
PART TWO:
GEORGE AT THE BOBFEST
GEORGE HARRISON
(Photo By Myles Aronowitz)
George
Harrison had told me to meet him at the Pierre at 4 p.m. but it must have been
close to 5 when a charming, dark-haired woman assistant whose name I think was
Linda found me downstairs in the Pierre Cafe, just off the lobby, where I was
with my photographer son, Myles, having a cup of coffee at my table in
anticipation of the long night ahead. In
my all too wasted past, I would have equipped myself with stimulants much more
exotic and illicit than coffee, but that great self-destructive binge of
creativity spawned by the 1960s had long ago come to an emphatic end, no matter
to what extent its fruits might be celebrated later tonight.
Tonight would
be when George would mount the stage of Madison Square Garden to join a
veritable Who's Who of Rock's most accomplished heroes in a "Bobfest,"
which is what Neil Young would call it when it came his turn to step up to the
mike. What's a "Bobfest?"
"'COLUMBIA
RECORDS CELEBRATES THE MUSIC OF BOB DYLAN' HONORS HIS 30TH YEAR;" the
headline on the press release said. "ALL-STAR
OCT. 16 MADISON SQUARE GARDEN CONCERT EVENT SELLS OUT IN RECORD 70
MINUTES." I think the last
Garden show to sell out that fast was George's Concert for Bangladesh.
I don't know. I've been out
of the loop for the last 20 years. Except
that the tickets for this show started at $80 and went up to $150 and you were
allowed to buy only one pair at a time.
The cast for
tonight's show included a house band consisting of Booker T. on keyboards, Steve
Cropper and G. E. Smith wielding guitars, Duck Dunn on bass and Jim Keltner on
drums. I told George I still had my
"Jim Keltner Fan Club" pin that George had made up on one of his
previous tours years ago. For this
show, George ordered a supply of black T-shirts that bore a line from one of
Bob's songs, in crazy, colorful lettering:
"It's
That Million-Dollar Bash."
The show
certainly had a million-dollar cast. The
lineup featured Eric Clapton, Kris Kristofferson, John Mellencamp, Willie
Nelson, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash and June Carter, Tracy Chapman and on and on and
on, including Roger McGuinn, whose Byrds got their first hit with a pop version
of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."
In an article
in the Times two days before the concert, Peter Watrous quoted Roger as saying
that if Dylan hadn't come along, pop music might have stayed strictly
"bubblegum" and there might not have been Bob's brand of
"thinking man's music."
"All
those concepts of his might have been lost," Roger was quoted as saying.
"The Beatles were doing straight pop, and Dylan had a talk with
Lennon and after that the Beatles changed, got motivated to do something more
interesting, more intellectual."
Which is exactly the reason why I decided it was so essential for me to get Bob and the Beatles together in the first place. Well, it wasn't exactly like acting as go-between for the Arabs and the Jews, but I knew that such a meeting was going to be an earth-shaking
At
first, Dylan was
lukewarm
to meeting the Beatles
event.
I wrote about Dylan and Lennon as mirror images of each other.
To me, it was obvious that if I could get Dylan and the Beatles together,
what would evolve is exactly what did evolve.
They influenced one another and everybody's music got better still.
The world benefited.
It's true
that I had youthful ambitions of one day claiming far greater contributions to
contemporary culture than that, but I certainly feel honored to have played at
least that role. At first, Dylan
was lukewarm to meeting the Beatles. He
sneered at their music as kid stuff. To
Bob, the Beatles were more "bubblegum." Bob had started out as a rock-and-roller like all the other
kids, but when I met him he was in his folkie-purist phase. He turned up his nose at pop, but I argued:
"Today's
pop is tomorrow's folk music."
I finally got
Bob and the Beatles to meet in Manhattan's Hotel Delmonico. Afterwards, when the Beatles were playing a benefit at the
old Paramount Theater in Times Square, I brought Bob to the show.
He stood on a chair in the wings to watch.
He was staying a lot at my house in Berkeley Heights, N.J., in those days
and afterwards he asked my wife to drive him over to Rondo Music on Route 22 in
Hillside. There, he rented an
electric guitar and took it back to my house.
Soon, he was in the studio recording his first electric album.
"It's
chaos, absolute chaos down there at the Garden!" George told me when Linda,
after apologizing profusely for her boss' lateness, finally ushered me into the
sitting room of his suite. "I
don't know how they're ever going to get that show together.
I'm sorry I had to keep you waiting but they kept me waiting.
Then I still didn't even get to do my run-through."
He smiled and
we shook hands and then we hugged. We
hadn't seen each other in close to 20 years.
I reminded him that the last time was in his suite at the Plaza after his
last Garden concert.
"That
was in '74," George recalled. "We
used to come to New York a lot when [Allen] Klein managed Apple.
Then he no longer managed Apple and we no longer came to New York so
much. I've only been here probably
two or three times in 20 years since John was shot.
Actually twice. The [Rock
and Roll] Hall of Fame in February, '88 and then '89 or '90 to do a couple of
tracks on Eric's [Clapton] 'Journeyman' album."
I asked
George what he thought about New York nowadays.
"I think
they should pull a lot of it down and plant some trees in it," he laughed,
"and thin out the people a bit. Ship
a few people off into different places. I don't think it's very healthy at all. It's crumbling, it's tired, but it still has a kind of
atmosphere. In the '60s and '70s
for me, it was kind of interesting when we used to hang out, we used to go in
weird places.
"Then
there's that kind of thing where you can get into feelin,' 'Hey, man, yeah,
we're in the city and this is city life and we're cool.' But for me, I have no desire to be in any city, even a small
city. I don't like cities.
I want to be as close to nature as possible.
Purely just because I want to survive and I think it takes its toll on
you---the pollution, the noise, the uptightness, the hostility---and all it does
is it fries your nervous system and knocks years off your life."
I asked
George what he has been doing to advance his musical career.
"Musically,
I've just sort of come along," he said, but then he quickly added:
"Not really. . . Like I'm
doing it like most people who are doing their career, making sure they have an
album out every year and the tours and all that.
When I feel like it, I'll just do an album.
I'll probably make one. That's
what I've been planning to do the last couple of months is to start writing some
new tunes. . .
What about
the Traveling Wilburys, I asked, referring to the fictional group that George
concocted with the help of Dylan, Petty and ex-ELO leader Jeff Lynne.
"The Wilburys was fun," George said. "I think we should do some more again, because it is relatively simple. It's not like a solo album, in which the responsibility is on you. You can hide behind each other's backs and maybe write lyrics that you maybe wouldn't write
George
also
had become
a movie mogul
on your own.
I thought that was fun. I
like that last album we did. The
first one, we did in 10 days, to write it and do the basic tracks, and then Jeff
Lynne and I spent a bit more time with Tom puttin' it together.
"The
last one, the second one we did, it took six weeks to write it, record it and
mix it, everything. It's really
good because you tend to get bogged down doin' solo albums.
You get used to doin' it over and over until you lose the point.
So, it's a little rough bug. It's
got that more natural feeling."
Since I last
saw George, he also had become a movie mogul, producing a string of films that
won critical and commercial success.
"When
the economy went bad in the world," George said, "a lot of people
couldn't pay us what they owed us and we suffered a little bit over the past few
years, paying interest on bank loans that were due to the bank from the money
that the other people hadn't paid us. Now
we had to sue Cannon Films. Then
Cannon sold the company to this Italian, Paretti, who was even worse than Cannon
and then he got rid of it to MGM. You
know that big story that was in the papers about Credit Lyonnais. It ended up we won the case and we got the money from MGM,
but it wasn't MGM's fault.
"The
people who actually caused all the problems in the first place got away with it,
really. But they'll get theirs,
eventually. A lot of people in
film, well, in any business, are like that, where they take the attitude, 'We
just won't pay and they won't sue us!' We
just had a few years of trying to regroup and we've got a few projects that
we're trying to get started. I'd
like to do just a few more projects and then see how it goes.
"We
would change the way we do the business because in the past we raised our own
money from the banks. But I think
now the days of those smaller budgeted films which we were making---there's no
market for them. It's just becoming
difficult. So, we've been making
films with Hollywood, with those people. Did
you ever see any of the films we made? Did
you ever see Life with Brian" That
was the first film we did. There
were a few that were quite good. One
with Bob Hoskins. Bought this film
that was being shelved. Good
Friday. One of his first
films."
The telephone
rang and George picked it up. It
was a friend of Tom Petty who cracks backs.
George didn't tell me if the friend actually was a chiropractor or not.
"Where
are you?" George said, talking on the telephone. "I don't think I have time.
Today has just been a mess. I
have so many things to do that I'm just gonna spend some time before I come back
just tryin' to get myself calmed down and have a shower and do all that.
If I get time, maybe I. . . I think it might be best to pass. . . I am a
bit tight around the neck, but I wouldn't worry about it.
If I see you backstage, you'll understand. . .
Maybe you'll be able to fix my neck or something."
George
explained to me that the friend had done George's back the night before but his
back probably had just snapped right back to where it had been before the friend
had cracked it. Anyway, George said
he had found his salvation in guess what? Transcendental
Meditation. Remember the Maharishi?
"It's
quite good to get an amount of stress out," George said. "Today it's a bit odd because I've been doing a lot of
this meditation to gettin' myself together.
I just do it. It's part of
my day, that's the most important thing, twice a day. And today, because my boy came in with some friends of ours
on the Concorde and they came in at 9:30, and we'd. . . so I missed my program
this morning and it's like it feels wrong all day, it's not quite right yet.
"So, I'm
planning, before I go down to the Garden. . .
I'm just going to cool out and do a big long one and get myself
together."
George said
his wife, Olivia, was in the bedroom, where their 14-year-old son, Dhani, was
having a bath.
"But I feel tired as well, for some reason," George said. "Oh, I know why. Because I'm five hours' jet lag, and that's it! I go on at 10:30 tonight, which is like 3:30 in the morning for me, IF the show comes off, because it looked pretty chaotic this afternoon. They were trying to run it down in order to get the timings of everybody. I think they
For
the 'Bobfest,'
they didn't know
when to say no
made a
mistake either by not being able to say no---remember in the '70s when we did
Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden? For me to get the commitment of those people for the basis of
the show, it took quite a while. But
once I knew I had the show, after that, EVERYBODY suddenly wanted to be on the
show.
"We were
getting phone calls, 20 calls a day. All
these different artists who were then volunteering to do it.
But I just said, 'NO! That's
it! We've got the show now!'
Whereas this show, it's like they can't say no.
Or maybe they feel indebted to so many people for one reason or another
or maybe they're just gettin' carried away.
And so consequently, they're paying the price of that right now---by
being three hours behind in the run-through to time the show.
And the show is like three and a half hours long.
I mean I wouldn't personally want to sit in the audience for three and a
half hours, although, at least, it's not just one person to watch.
I mean I don't know anybody I would want to watch for more than two
hours. The best show I've seen in
the last 20 years was a lecture by Deepak Chopra, this doctor I heard, and it
was more entertaining than most rock shows I've seen.
He was talking about the spontaneous fulfillment of desire."
George looked
at me and then looked at the cassette recorder lying on the couch between us as
it wound up every one of his words.
"I would
like to just some time hang out with you, not with that feeling that we're doing
an interview," George said. "Not
that there's nothin? I don't want to say. . ."
All of a
sudden, I was like a cub reporter who couldn't think of the next question to
ask. The truth is that George and
Bob both became suns around which perhaps too much of me had once revolved.
At the concert later that evening, I would find myself weeping with awe
over Dylan's enormous body of work.
"I used
to know these guys!" I felt obliged to explain to the pretty blonde sitting
next to me. She said her name was
Sally and she surprised me by referring to Dylan as "Mumbles,"
affectionately, of course.
"He
always changes the lyrics," she said.
"You can't tell what he's singing anyway."
Later, when
George came onstage, I felt so proud, I turned to Sally and said:
"I was
just talking to him."
"Is he
really as sweet as he looks?" she asked.
"He's a
saint!" I said.
In his Pierre
suite, George said he still had to shower and shave before the 8 o'clock start
of the show, which was now close to two hours away.
He also wanted to know if there were still a Hare Krishna restaurant open
in New York. Myles said all the
ones he knew of were closed.
"They've
got food over at the Garden," George said, "I got them to get some
vegetarian rice and dahl, but now I'm not going to be there to eat it, am I?
I could do with eating. Otherwise,
I'll have no strength at all by the time I get to 10 o'clock.
That's when I'm supposed to go on."
Once, years
ago, George and I went to a Salsa night on East 86th St. Another time, I took
George for his first and last New York subway ride, from Sheridan Square to 14th
St. on the Broadway line. When we
got out at 14th St., cops were chasing someone down the platform with their guns
drawn. But the best night of all
was the night I turned the Beatles on to marijuana. That was the night I brought Bob up to meet them at the
Delmonico Hotel. We all had one of
the best laughs of our lives that night. We
did nothing but laugh at one another. That
was the night that ushered in Pop's Psychedelic Era.
Now, 28 years
later, I no longer smoked anything, but I had scored a chunk of hash in my
pocket for George just in case he needed it.
But George wasn't having any, either.
He started talking about the guy who lives for so long in the country but
then decides to get an apartment in the city.
"He sits
in the dark because he doesn't know how to plug the light," George said.
"In a way, that's what we all do.
That's enlightenment. People
don't really wanna look for enlightenment.
And so, it's like we go through our lives in the dark.
But we can just go inside and plug in the source within you/without you.
Just learn and be able to dip in, that's the thing.
Each time you meditate you can dip in.
Each time you meditate you can dip in to that reservoir.
"I
forgot about it for years and then I got really stressed out during the early
'80s or it was the culmination of all the monkey business I'd been doing.
It took me years trying to figure out what's happening to me?
I think it was just the accumulation of those years when there was drugs
in my life and those years of staying up all night and partying and just being
in recording studios and business problems and all these people I talked about
earlier---the banks wanting their money and these other people not paying us and
all that got me to the point where I said, 'Jesus!
I gotta do something here!"
"And I
remembered, 'What about meditation!' I
had forgotten totally that that's what it was all about---to release the stress
out of your system. And I got back
into that! And I do a double-dose
now and it's like, say, whereas an alcoholic can't go through a day without
going to AA or doing some kind of a program like that, for me, it's the
meditation program. In order to
keep myself focused and keep the buoyancy, the energy, and also to realize that
all this stuff that's going on is just bullshit.
It's hard to be able to not let that get next to ya!"
##
CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX OF COLUMN SIXTY-SIX
CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX
OF COLUMNS
The
Blacklisted Journalist can be contacted at P.O.Box 964, Elizabeth, NJ 07208-0964
The Blacklisted Journalist's E-Mail Address:
info@blacklistedjournalist.com
THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST IS A SERVICE MARK OF AL ARONOWITZ