Okay, here we go.
Where we left off, George was in Los Angeles with the musicians he had assembled frantically rehearsing and finishing the "Dark Horse" album before the tour's scheduled start on 2nd-Nov-1974 in Vancouver B.C.
When the tour was announced, the demand for tickets was so great that many shows sold out immediately and second and third shows were added to many venues.
To many, this was the first time seeing a Beatle performing live. The last time the Beatles had toured had been in 1966, and many were too young to experience "Beatlemania" the first time around.
The problem was that George was not going to play to the audience's expectations. At the press conference announcing the tour George said, "I'm certainly not going to go out there doing Beatles tunes,
it's just that I'm not the Beatles." (Which kinda falls under Rule No. 1 of 'How to piss off/alienate your audience/fan base/critics'.)
To George, this was a tour showcasing Ravi Shankar's music and the musicians that George had assembled playing the songs he wanted to play. The Beatles songs George chose to perform were lyrically twisted in a typical George fashion.
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" became "While My Guitar Tries To Smile", with "I look at the floor and it looks quite tidy." The lyrics to "Something" became "If someone's in the way, we move them." And what should have been the highlight of the show, a performance of John's "In My Life", became "In My Life, I Love GOD more." Audience and press reactions were nonplussed to say the least.
George spent the 15th to the 31st of October adding overdubs and vocals to songs dating as far back to November 1973 - "So Sad (No Love Of His Own)", about the break-up of his marriage, which had been started, but not finished in time for the album "Living in the Material World" and given to Alvin Lee for his album "On The Road To Freedom". There was also "Ding Dong, Ding Dong" also started in November 1973 and intended as a Christmas single, but shelved, uncompleted until April 1974.
There were two songs recorded in April 1974 with the band L.A. Express, who were Joni Mitchell's touring band at the time, "Hari's On Tour (Express)" and "Simply Shady", which had evolved from an overnight jam session with the band after George invited them to his home recording studio after seeing them perform with Joni Mitchell the day before.
July 1974 saw George write and record "Far East Man" with Ronnie Wood ex-The Faces and soon to be Rolling Stone for Ronnie's debut album "I've Got My Own Album To Do". It was part of the same sessions that produced "It's Only Rock 'N' Roll (But I Like It)".
"Maya Love", "It Is 'He' (Jai Sri Krishna)", "Dark Horse", "Bye Bye Love", "I Don't Care Anymore" and "His Name Is 'Legs' (Ladies And Gentlemen)" were all finished in October. "I Don't Care Anymore" would be the B-Side of the lead single "Dark Horse". "His Name Is 'Legs' (Ladies And Gentlemen)" was left uncompleted and finished for the following album "Extra Texture".
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The title song "Dark Horse" was the last song recorded on October 31st before the band flew out to Vancouver the following day to begin the tour. George wrote the liner notes to the album from memory on the plane on the way to Vancouver, resulting in miscrediting several performers who, in fact, did not play on the album, and would not be corrected until subsequent reissues.
If anyone wants to know what condition George's voice was in on the tour need only listen to the title song.
The album was released on 9th-December-1974, two thirds of the way through the tour.
DARK HORSE
Singles - Dark Horse b/w I Don't Care Anymore - Chart US #15, UK None
Ding Dong, Ding Dong b/w I Don't Care Anymore - Chart US #36, UK #38
Side A
1) Hari's On Tour (Express) [Instrumental]
2) Simpy Shady
3) So Sad
4) Bye Bye Love (
Felice Bryant/
Boudleaux Bryant/George Harrison)
5) Maya Love
Side B
1) Ding Dong, Ding Dong
2) Dark Horse
3) Far East Man (Ronnie Wood/George Harrison)
4) It Is 'He' (Jai Sri Krishna)
What was immediately apparent to the listeners and critics was that quality control had gone out the window with this record. Whereas 'Living In The Material World', Ravi Shankar's 'Family and Friends' and Splinter's 'The Place That I Love' all had a coherent George "sound", 'Dark Horse' was a sonic patchwork. Three or four sets of musicians recorded cuts at various times and locations, during various stages of George's vocal problems.
The other issue was the creation of George's home studio at Friar Park. With no more need to drive to London and waste precious studio time and money; just simply inviting friends over to jam and going into the home studio whenever the mood struck him meant that there was no one looking over George's shoulder to point out the bum note or the flubbed vocal.
George said in the press conference announcing the tour, that if anyone wanted to know what the state of his life was at that moment, they need only listen to the album. "Dark Horse" was George's "Plastic Ono Band", a dark confessional album, where he lashed out at his wife, his spirituality, his listeners and critics.
The most egregious being the inclusion of a cover version of the Everly Brothers' 'Bye Bye Love,' where George rewrites the lyrics to include barbed attacks on his ex-wife Patti and Eric Clapton, with whom she had taken up with and would eventually marry. It was a song better left off the record.
Listeners and critics weren't buying it and, while the album charted at Number 4 on the US Billboard chart and the lead single made #15 on the Billboard charts, in the UK it was different story. The album failed to reach the UK Top Fifty, the first post-solo Beatles album to do so since Ringo's Country/Western album 'Beaucoups Of Blues' in 1970 and the lead single 'Dark Horse' failed to place in the Top Fifty, while 'Ding Dong, Ding Dong' only reached #38. George would not have a Top Ten album or single in the UK until 'Cloud Nine' in 1987.
After the first show in Vancouver, it was apparent that two songs that George intended to perform were out of his throat ravaged voice's range, "The Lord Loves The One (That Loves The Lord)" and "Who Can See It?" and were immediately dropped from the set.
As previously mentioned, demand for shows was such that an extra two and three shows were added to several major cities, with George and the band performing two shows a day at some locations, resulting in little chance for George's voice to heal and recover.
By the time the tour reached L.A. a few days after it had begun, George was in a particularly foul mood. A tepid response to one song prompted, "I don't know it feels like down there, but from up here you seem pretty dead." On another occasion, he railed against those on the floor with their "dirty reefers."
The other problem was George's dogged insistence that Ravi Shankar's music be front and center of the tour; which is why the tour had been conceived in the first place, as a showcase for Ravi Shankar's sitar playing and Indian music in general.
But what might have worked three years earlier for the "Concert for Bangla Desh", was not particularly well received this time around and many seats in the auditoriums would remain empty until George and his band took the stage.
It was only after Ravi Shankar fell ill midway through the tour and missed a few shows did George concede the point that the audience was there to see him, and Ravi's opening set broken up into shorter, poppier songs scattered throughout the show, allowing George and the band to take periodic breaks before the penultimate songs and encore.
The tour did pick up a bit and George's mood increased shortly after the halfway mark when Olivia Trinidad Arias joined the tour.
Olivia had been A&M's marketing assistant in charge of setting up George's "Dark Horse" label. The two were first introduced over the phone in early 1974, while George was calling L.A. from London, finalizing the label. Soon, the transatlantic telephone lines were burning up, with George sometimes simply calling just to talk to Olivia. The two were formally introduced when George flew out to L.A. in late summer 1974 and George invited Olivia to join him on the tour. Olivia had to wait until her obligations with A&M were fulfilled, but once she joined George, the pair were inseparable for the rest of the tour.
To those in the press without an ax to grind, and the smaller papers, all wrote that once you got past George's vocals, the music was exemplary with Billy Preston being the highlight, alternating performing two of his three hit singles, "Outa-Space", "Nothing From Nothing" and "Will It Go 'Round In Circles". Willie Weeks and Andy Newmark were also singled out for their bass and drumming performances. George subsequently said that Billy was "someone I would never have come on the road without, because I love him so much and need him so bad."
By the time the tour concluded in New York's Madison Square Garden on 20th-December-1974, George and the band were in a particularly celebratory mood, with George wearing funny hats and encouraging the audience to sing along, turning "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" into a jam extending thirty minutes as well as all fifteen Indian musicians joining George and the band onstage for the encore of "My Sweet Lord".
20th-December-1974 Concert Setlist - Madison Square Garden
1) Hari's On Tour (Express) [Instrumental]
2) Something
3) While My Guitar Genty Weeps
4) Will It Go 'Round In Circles (Billy Preston)
5) Sue Me, Sue You Blues
6) Zoom, Zoom, Zoom (Ravi Shankar)
7) Naderdani (Ravi Shankar)
8) Cheparte (Ravi Shankar)
9) For You Blue
10) Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
11) Sound Stage Of Mind (Ensemble Jam)
12) In My Life (Lennon/McCartney)
13) Tom Cat [Instrumental] (Tom Scott)
14) Maya Love
15) Outa-Space [Instrumental] (Billy Preston)
16) Dark Horse
17) Nothing From Nothing (Billy Preston)
18) What Is Life
19) Anurag (Ravi Shankar)
20) I Am Missing You (Ravi Shankar)
21) Dispute & Violence (Ravi Shankar)
22) My Sweet Lord (Encore)
Band Members - George Harrison, Billy Preston, Tom Scott, Robben Ford, Jim Horn, Chuck Findley, Emil Richards, Willie Weeks, Andy Newmark, Jim Keltner, Kumar Shankar
George had the tour professionally recorded and planned to release it sometime in early 1975 as a way of fulfilling his contract with Capitol/EMI, but Capitol/EMI chose to release 'The Best Of George Harrison' instead. The tapes have remained in the vaults at George's Friar Park recording studio.
The tour had been emotionally and physically exhausting and the press, especially Rolling Stone, were brutal/savage in their reviews and George never forgave them. To him, the tour just proved what he knew back in 1966, that he didn't like the grind of recording/touring and he retreated to his home in Friar Park, content to record and release records on his own schedule and not play the media game of press tours to promote albums.
There was one person in the audience that final night in Madison Square Garden who had been watching the tour from afar, reading the critic's reviews and taking careful notes about what did and did not work and how the audience responded to what songs being performed. His name was Paul McCartney, with Linda, and he and his band Wings were gearing up for their 'Wings Over The World'/'Wings Over The US' the following year, and he wasn't going to make the same mistakes as George.
Is that Percy "Thrills" Thrillington?