LIVING IN THE MATERIAL WORLD
A worthy follow-up to the epic All Things Must Pass, the beautiful production mixes pop, protest, intimate spiritual yearning and some of Harrison’s best ever writing and singing. Released 50 years ago, on May 30, 1973, the album remains a somewhat unsung masterpiece.
THE very first time I laid eyes on George was at John Lennon’s Ascot Sound studio on February 16, 1971. John was making Imagine. George was walking into the hall. I’d gone to the bathroom and I came out and saw him and we just said, “Hi.” He said that he really loved the Delaney & Bonnie record that I’d played on, Accept No Substitute. It wasn’t a successful record, or a big record, but all the English guys loved it. To have George say that to me was a big deal.
Suddenly, after Ascot Sound, I saw George a lot. It was a really busy time. I was on sessions with him with Leon Russell, Phil Spector was producing, and Gary Wright. It did feel at that time, post-Beatles, that George was gathering this community of new artists and like-minded, soulful musicians around him.
He was the most unusual person. John was just very, very normal. He was a regular kind of guy: funny, incredibly smart, and incredibly fast with everything. Nothing took a long time. When we got to hanging out, it was fantastic but it was like living in a cloud. There’s so much John stuff that I just can’t remember because we were so loaded, and everything was so condensed, timewise. George was just the opposite. With George, it was always kind of mystifying how he would come up with stuff to do, and how easily he made it happen.
With The Concert for Bangladesh, he told me that Ringo would do it if I would do it. Irehearsals – there may have been another one; one of them was in the basement of the hotel – but they were effective. We played the backbeat together. It was extraordinary to me that I didn’t really have to watch Ringo, because our hearts beat almost in the same tempo. When you hear that Bangladesh record, you don’t hear two drumkits – it’s remarkable. I can hear both our sounds.
