The Concert for Bangladesh (album)
The Concert for Bangladesh (originally spelt The Concert for Bangla Desh)[2] is a live triple album credited to "George Harrison & Friends"[3][4] and released on Apple Records in December 1971 in America and January 1972 in Britain. The album followed the two concerts of the same name, held on 1 August 1971 at New York's Madison Square Garden, featuring Harrison, Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and Eric Clapton. The shows were a pioneering charity event, in aid of the homeless Bengali refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War, and set the model for future multi-artist rock benefits such as Live Aid (1985) and the Concert for New York City (2001). The event brought Harrison and Starr together on a concert stage for the first time since 1966, when the Beatles retired from live performance, and represented Dylan's first major concert appearance in the US in five years.
The Concert for Bangladesh
Co-produced by Phil Spector, The Concert for Bangladesh features his Wall of Sound approach in a live setting. Besides the main performers, the musicians and singers include Badfinger, Jim Horn, Klaus Voormann, Alla Rakha, Jim Keltner, Jesse Ed Davis and Claudia Lennear. Minimal post-production was carried out on the recordings, ensuring that the album was a faithful document of the event. The box set's packaging included a 64-page book containing photos from the concerts; the album cover, designed by Tom Wilkes, consisted of an image of a malnourished child sitting beside an empty food bowl. The album was delayed for three months due to protracted negotiations between Harrison and two record companies keen to protect their business interests, Capitol and Columbia/CBS.
On release, The Concert for Bangladesh was a major critical and commercial success. It topped albums charts in several countries and went on to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in March 1973. Together with the 1972 Apple concert film directed by Saul Swimmer, the album gained Indian classical music its largest Western audience up until that time. It was reissued in 2005, four years after Harrison's death, with revised artwork. As of 2011, sales of the album continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF, which raised $1.2 million for children in the Horn of Africa, in a campaign marking the album's 40th anniversary.
Album preparation[edit]
Concert recordings[edit]
Speaking in 2011, Spector identified two issues that prolonged the live album's preparation, both of them reflective of the haste with which the concerts came together: "It was chaos [setting up at Madison Square Garden] – we had three hours to mic the band, then the audience came in, and we didn't know how to mic the audience."[29] Rather than a standard band, this was a full Wall of Sound orchestra,[16][30] as Spector re-created his Wall of Sound approach in concert.[31] The large ensemble consisted of two drummers (Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner), two keyboard players (Billy Preston and Leon Russell), six horn players (led by Jim Horn), three electric guitarists (Harrison, Eric Clapton and Jesse Ed Davis), a trio of acoustic guitars to be "felt but not heard"[32] (Badfinger's Pete Ham, Tom Evans and Joey Molland), the seven members of Don Nix's "Soul Choir", together with bassist Klaus Voormann and a dedicated percussion player, Mike Gibbins of Badfinger.[13][33][34] In his review of the Concert for Bangladesh film, John Pidgeon described the scene as "a roadie's nightmare of instruments, mikes, amps and speakers".[35]
Before the Western portion of the concerts, there were the traditionally hard-to-record Indian string instruments[36] of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan to amplify, together with Alla Rakha's tabla and the drone-enhancing tambura, played by Kamala Chakravarty[37] – each offering natural musical tones so easily lost in the "cavernous Garden".[38] An additional challenge for Kellgren had been the need to capture the dynamics of a well-paced show designed around professionally presented hit songs, rather than a loose superstar jam.[39][40][nb 1]
Release[edit]
The Concert for Bangladesh was released in the United States on 20 December 1971, and in Britain on 10 January 1972,[102] with the same Apple Records catalogue number (STCX 3385) in both territories.[103] The retail price for the lavishly packaged triple album was set at $12.98 in America[53] and an extraordinarily high £5.50 in the UK,[62] due to the purchase tax surcharge there.[72] The prices drew some criticism,[53] from Harrison for one,[67] even if it was accepted that the proceeds were going to those in desperate need[104] – or, as Beatles Forever author Nicholas Schaffner wrote in 1977, to "a nation still viewed as the worst pocket of misery on earth".[105] Similarly, the relief project's funds controversy and tax problems, which came to light shortly after the release of the live album, were a source of frustration to Harrison,[106] but commentators have noted that these problems took nothing away from the "resounding success"[107] of Harrison and Shankar's Bangladesh relief project.[78]
Despite the cost, the album was an immediate commercial success.[108][109] In America, it spent six weeks at number 2 on the Billboard Top LPs chart.[110] On the other US charts, compiled by Cash Box and Record World, the live album peaked at number 2 and number 1, respectively.[108] It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on 4 January 1972 for sales of over 500,000 units.[111] In the UK, The Concert for Bangladesh became Harrison's second number 1 album, after All Things Must Pass in early 1971.[112] In Melody Maker's readers poll for 1972, it was ranked second in the "World" album category.[113]
The album was similarly successful on charts around the world.[99] In Pakistan, the government banned the record. The government also advised its embassies and other foreign diplomatic offices that the album contained "hostile propaganda against Pakistan" and that they should pressure their local contacts to stop the music being played on the radio.[99]
In March 1973, The Concert for Bangladesh won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.[114][115] In Harrison's absence, Ringo Starr attended the awards ceremony in Nashville and carried off a tray of Grammys, one for each of the featured performers.[116][117][nb 8] Author Peter Lavezzoli writes that, with the success of the live album and Saul Swimmer's concert documentary, which opened in US cinemas in March 1972,[119] Indian classical music reached its largest Western audience to date through the Concert for Bangladesh.[120]
Critical reception[edit]
Contemporary reviews[edit]
Cash Box's reviewer described The Concert for Bangladesh as "the most eagerly awaited album of 1971" and "every bit as breathtaking as we hoped". The reviewer deemed the sound "flawless" and the booklet "stunning", and concluded: "listen to the records and hear music history."[121] Don Heckman of The New York Times similarly commented that the album lived up to expectation, and that Harrison's statements on The Dick Cavett Show had seemingly had the desired effect. For Heckman, the live album confirmed the concerts' standing as a distillation of pop music's growth and maturity throughout the 1960s, thereby offering "a decade's music in microcosm". In addition to praising the structure and pacing of the live records, he admired Harrison for continuing his post-Beatles "optimism-with‐energy attitude", which Heckman recognised as an effective counter to the Nixon-inspired apathy permeating rock music at the time.[122][nb 9]
Having attended the concerts in August, Ed Kelleher of Circus magazine wrote that the live album not only conveyed the "magic ... the sheer joy" of the event, but the music "practically jumps right out into your life". He singled out songs by Dylan, Russell and Harrison, along with Shankar's performance, but admitted to the futility of naming "individual highlights" since the album was "one consistent high".[123] Rolling Stone continued its near-deification of the concerts as a defining moment in the evolution of rock 'n' roll.[124][125] Jon Landau wrote of Harrison: "the spirit he creates through his own demeanor is inspirational. From the personal point of view, Concert for Bangla Desh was George's moment. He put it together; and he pulled it off ..."[126] Landau lauded the pacing and professionalism of the entire show, and recognised the highpoint as the album-closing "Bangla Desh", the lyrics of which were no longer "an expression of intent but of an accomplished mission".[127] In The Village Voice's inaugural Pazz & Jop poll, critics voted The Concert for Bangladesh the eighth best album of 1971.[128]
Among UK reviewers, Geoffrey Cannon of The Guardian wrote: "What Woodstock was said to be, the Madison Square Garden Bangladesh concert was. It's on record. The concert will stand as the greatest act of magnanimity rock music has yet achieved."[129] In Melody Maker, Richard Williams began his review by saying, "If you buy only one LP in 1972, make it this one." He likened Shankar and Khan's interplay on "Bangla Dhun" to "Charlie Parker trading licks with Johnny Hodges", and found Harrison's opening trio of All Things Must Pass tracks "[u]nbelievably ... in some ways even better" than the originals, and Preston's "That's the Way God Planned It" "feverishly exciting". Williams named Dylan's "Just Like a Woman" as "the masterpiece".[87]
In a causerie-style piece for New Statesman, Michael Nyman wrote that the music failed to support the claim that the concerts had educated listeners on the plight of the Bangladeshi refugees. He admired many of the performances but detected an "aloofness" in Shankar's sincerity and bemoaned that Dylan's outdated repertoire surpassed some of the more recent pop selections by Harrison and Preston, and that the lavish LP booklet "must have cost money which could have been channelled elsewhere".[130][nb 10]
The NME's Roy Carr and Tony Tyler deemed the concerts "probably the greatest indoor rock 'n' roll event ever held", adding that Dylan's five-song set "easily justified" the album's price tag.[62] As at the time of the concerts,[131][132][133] much was made by music journalists of the change in Dylan's singing voice, as well as his choice of songs, which harked back to the so-called protest period of 1962–64 and the creative zenith that culminated in his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.[32][127][123] "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was another track that received significant attention, thanks to the guitar "duelling" between Harrison and Clapton.[134][nb 11]
Reissues[edit]
The Concert for Bangladesh was first issued on CD on 30 July 1991 in America and 19 August in Britain.[157] It was presented as a two-disc set, with significant editing of the breaks between songs.[158] The downsizing to CD dimensions meant that much of the effectiveness of the booklet photography was lost;[159] in addition, the contents were trimmed down to 36 pages.[160] Having stated his disappointment in a 1988 interview that the album had been allowed to go out of print,[161] Harrison recorded a promotional interview on the 20th anniversary of the concerts, to accompany the CD release.[162]
Harrison was working on a reissue of the album and film before his death in November 2001.[163] Although the project was due for release the following year,[164] the new editions were not issued until 25 October 2005.[165] The remastered releases appeared with a photo of Harrison on the cover,[81] although the special-edition DVD retained the original image.[166] The reissue was the 1972 concert film's first international release on DVD.[167] It was accompanied by the Concert for Bangladesh Revisited with George Harrison and Friends making-of documentary,[165][168] which was directed by Claire Ferguson[169] and co-produced by Olivia Harrison.[170][nb 14]
The revised packaging was credited to Wherefore Art?[172] As a bonus track, the album included "Love Minus Zero/No Limit",[173] which Dylan had performed during the afternoon show (i.e. the matinee performance) at Madison Square Garden.[174][nb 15]
Sales of the Concert for Bangladesh album and DVD continue to benefit the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF.[177][178] In 2011, as one of the fund's projects to mark the 40th anniversary of the concerts and the live album's release,[177] and in conjunction with UNICEF's "Month of Giving" campaign,[179] the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF raised over $1.2 million in emergency relief for children in famine- and drought-stricken areas of the Horn of Africa.[180]
"The Artists"
"The Band"
The Hollywood Horns
The Soul Choir