Mad Dogs and Harrison
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--By Mike Jahn
I wrote the following column for the Special Features Syndicate of The New York Times. Newspapers nationwide printed it on August 21-22, 1971.
I was not going to write about the George Harrison and Friends concert at Madison Square Garden. This is because there is a lag of a few weeks between the writing of this column and its publication date and that concert was well cohered by the wire services.
The AP and UPI undoubtedly flooded the country with the facts. Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr, together with Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar, Leon Russell and others, joined in a massive benefit to raise money for refugees of the fighting in East Pakistan. It was the first joint appearance of George and Ringo since 1966. They raised a lot of money. There will be film of the concert and an album.
These are the facts, which everyone probably knows by now, so I will ignore them. But there is, I feel, a need to disseminate a few feelings about being at the affair, and about what its greater significance might be.
Long before the concert, the maneuvering for tickets was incredible. Every other person I met on the street said something like "Say, if you get an extra ticket, well, uh...," and embarrassment.
Tickets Going for $200
The tickets were well accounted for. Outside the Garden they were being scalped for as much as $200 each. The ones I finally got were in the third row on the side, and were marked $100 each. The press doesn't pay this, but presumably a lot of people sitting there did. My friend and I walked in holding our tickets as if they were the Star of India. We went to our seats and prepared to sit it out. The front rows are where everyone ends up when the stage is rushed. I always like to sit in the first tier at the Garden, close enough to see well, but well out of the combat zone.
There was no combat. The audience was a musical one, by and large, which means they sat and listened. Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, and Alia Rakha played a lovely afternoon raga and an East Pakistani folk tune, to open the show.
Great Backing for Dylan
Then Harrison came out, surrounded by 19 (count 'em) musicians. People applauded and cheered but the stage was not stormed. The group played very well. It struck me at the time that the show should have been called Mad Dogs and Harrison, because off in one corner sat Leon Russell, at the piano, apparently directing the band.
The group played the expected Harrison songs, like "My Sweet Lord" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," and a few unexpected numbers, such as Russell singing "Jumping Jack Flash" mixed in with the Coaster's "Young Blood." Dylan appeared and, with Harrison (lead guitar), Russell (bass) and Starr (tambourine) backing, sang a few -- "Blowin' In the Wind," "Love Minus Zero - No Limit," "A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall," and "Just Like A Woman."
It was difficult to hear at times because right in front of my section several dozen photographers were fighting it out with ushers to get near the center of the stage. Half the time you couldn't see or hear because of them. Also, the promoters stationed a full film crew directly between the press section and the center of the stage, so the principals were largely invisible.
Middle-Aged Writer
And right behind me, somebody who apparently was a middle-aged writer, was talking loudly with his daughter, asking her song titles and things. At the end of my review in a New York newspaper I wrote about this man who apparently brought his teen-age daughter to the concert to tell him what was going on. I couldn't do anything about the photographers, but I did manage to give the guy behind me a dirty look.
The entire concert had a definite air of deja vu to it. I had the distinct feeling I had been there before, with Dylan, looking as he did 10 years ago when he was playing down at Gerde's Folk City in the Village; George Harrison and Ringo Starr, whom I hadn't seen in concert since they played Shea Stadium; and all of this nostalgia was couched in modern terms, surrounded by relatively new artists.
It was very fulfilling somehow to see the old and the new, mixed so perfectly and playing so well. As though the top musicians were trying unconsciously to compensate for the feeling of desolation in the rock scene by banding together. Musically, it was one of the best Garden concerts I've seen. It also reminded me of something concert promoter Sid Bernstein, who arranged the Beatles' Shea Stadium appearances and is reported negotiating to buy the Fillmore East, said recently on the subject of violence at concerts and festivals.
Greater Purpose Needed
The only way you can have a mass concert, or a festival, now [he said] is to have a greater purpose which all the audience understands. Such as a benefit, where everyone knows the money is going someplace worthwhile, not just into some star's pocket.
This was such a case, and it certainly worked. There was no violence, save some window-breaking outside caused by people, I am told, who did not know the affair was a benefit. There was no violence or any significant trouble inside the hall, the first time in a long while that a Garden audience has been so orderly.
And it was not expected. I was waiting for another Shea Stadium Beatles madhouse, and it didn't materialize. The only problem, and it was one 99 per cent of the audience missed, was the photographers up front, and people talking too loudly during the quiet parts.
The concert had just become a pleasant memory. Then I got to my desk one day and opened the mail. There was a plain, white envelope, the type already bearing a stamp that you buy at the post office. I opened it.
"Dear Mr. Jahn -
"Sorry -- didn't realize I was talking so much.
My daughter is 22. She took me.
"Yours truly,
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr."
-30-
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