The historic Concert For Bangladesh from 1971 has been back in the news since it was finally added to streaming services.
George Harrison had long been friends with sitar great Ravi Shankar of India. When Shankar asked Harrison for help after the Bangladesh Liberation War and torrential rains & flooding had devastated the country, Harrison put together the first major humanitarian concert.
George called on his friends for help…Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Billy Preston and Ringo Starr. The Beatles were in the middle of their breakup lawsuit, so no Paul McCartney. John Lennon said he’d do it if Yoko Ono was included, but George said no. After about three months of planning, the concert was scheduled for August 1st, 1971. There was a rehearsal on July 31st, and then an afternoon performance and an evening show on August 1st.
After an introduction and a performance on sitar by Ravi Shankar, the Rock show kicked off with some George Harrison songs… “Wah Wah”, “My Sweet Lord”, and “Awaiting On You All”. Those were followed by Billy Preston playing his hit “That’s The Way God Planned It” (a nice version), Ringo Starr with “It Don’t Come Easy” (he flubbed some lyrics, but sounded good), and Leon Russell joined George for “Beware Of Darkness” (one of the best tracks).
Just like on the studio version, Eric Clapton played lead guitar on Harrison’s Beatles song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (a strong performance, especially by George).
Leon Russell had been on tour with his band & vocalists, and he brought them all along for a stirring in-the-groove medley of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” & “Youngblood”.
Next, George Harrison played an acoustic version of “Here Comes The Sun” with the group Badfinger, who Harrison was producing at the time. Here’s Badfinger’s Pete Ham with George during the concert.
“Sun” was played a little faster than the original, and Pete Ham did an impressive job on the intricate guitar part.
Then it was the Bob Dylan show.
Dylan has five songs in a row on the Concert For Bangladesh album. He chose songs from much earlier in his career, and his whole set was a concert highlight..
George Harrison then finished the concert with “Something” and the song he’d written to help publicize the problem in Asia, “Bangla Desh” (which was the original spelling of the country’s name).
When the album came out in December of 1971, it was a 3-record set, and the lid of the box had this cover.
Besides the vinyl, there was an album-size booklet with excellent photos. I no longer have my records and booklet from 1971, but I did find this shot of some of the pages. You can click & zoom for a closer look
The photos are really good, like this one of Dylan, and the one of Clapton he later used for an album cover.
Despite some early problems sorting out the finances, many millions of dollars have been going to Bangladesh over the years, and the concert raised awareness for the serious problems there.
Musically, it’s a good album to stream. I admit I skipped the long spoken introduction and 16-minute sitar performance, but the rest of the performances are really good, even with some typical minor errors you get with live performances that aren’t overdubbed. Here’s the full lineup of songs now on streaming.
George Harrison deserves a ton of credit for convincing the artists to perform (for free), for dealing with the various labels to make it happen, for working to make the finances come out so the money actually made it to Bangladesh, and for paving the way for future charity concerts.