George Harrison was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian culture and helped broaden the scope of popular music through his incorporation of Indian instrumentation and Hindu-aligned spirituality in the Beatles' work. Although the majority of the band's songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contained at least two Harrison compositions. His songs for the group include "Taxman", "Within You Without You", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something". Harrison's earliest musical influences included George Formby and Django Reinhardt; subsequent influences were Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins and Chuck Berry.
The Concert for Bangladesh was a pair of benefit concerts organised by former Beatles guitarist George Harrison and Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. The shows were held at 2:30 and 8:00 pm on Sunday, 1 August 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, to raise international awareness of, and fund relief for refugees from East Pakistan, following the Bangladesh Liberation War-related genocide. The concerts were followed by a bestselling live album, a boxed three-record set, and Apple Films' concert documentary, which opened in cinemas in the spring of 1972.
The Concert for George was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 29 November 2002 as a memorial to George Harrison on the first anniversary of his death. The event was organised by Harrison's widow, Olivia, and his son, Dhani, and arranged under the musical direction of Eric Clapton. The profits from the event went to the Material World Charitable Foundation, an organisation founded by Harrison.
Dhani Harrison is a British musician, composer and singer-songwriter. He is the only child of George and Olivia Harrison. Dhani debuted as a professional musician assisting in recording his father's final album, Brainwashed, and completing it with the assistance of Jeff Lynne after his father's death in November 2001. Harrison formed his own band, thenewno2, in 2002 and has performed at festivals, including Coachella, where Spin magazine dubbed their performance as one of the "best debut performances of the festival." The band also played Lollapalooza three times, with Harrison joining the festival's founder Perry Farrell on a cover of The Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" at 2010's event. In 2017, Harrison released his debut solo album In Parallel. The 2019 film In///Paralive, showcases the live version of his debut solo album and was recorded in the round at Henson Studios in Los Angeles. Harrison's 2019 single, "Motorways ", was described by Rolling Stone as "a psychedelic track with a robust beat".
Derek and the Dominos was a short-lived English–American blues rock band formed in the spring of 1970 by guitarist and singer Eric Clapton, keyboardist and singer Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon. All four members had previously played together in Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, during and after Clapton's brief tenure with Blind Faith. Dave Mason supplied additional lead guitar on early studio sessions and played at their first live gig. Another participant at their first session as a band was George Harrison, the recording for whose album All Things Must Pass marked the formation of Derek and the Dominos.
Brainwashed is the twelfth and final studio album by English rock musician George Harrison. It was released posthumously on 18 November 2002, almost a year after his death at age 58, and 15 years after his previous studio album, Cloud Nine. Recordings began over a decade before Harrison's death but were repeatedly delayed. The album's overdubs were completed by his son Dhani, session drummer Jim Keltner, and longtime friend and collaborator Jeff Lynne.
Anoushka Shankar is a British-American sitar player and musician, as well as occasional writer and actor. She performs across multiple genres and styles—classical and contemporary, acoustic and electronic. In addition to releasing seven solo studio albums beginning with Anoushka (1998), she has also worked alongside a wide variety of musicians, including Karsh Kale on the full-length collaboration Breathing Under Water (2007) and her father Ravi Shankar. She has received nine Grammy Awards nominations and was the first musician of Indian origin to perform live and to serve as a presenter at the ceremony. She was the youngest and first woman to receive a British House of Commons Shield.
"Any Road" is the final single by George Harrison and is the opening track to his posthumous album Brainwashed. Harrison began writing the song in 1988, during the making of a video for his 1987 album Cloud Nine. It is the last released record of new material credited to George Harrison.
The Concert for Bangladesh is a live triple album credited to "George Harrison & Friends" 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.
"Bangla Desh" is a song by English musician George Harrison. It was released as a non-album single in July 1971, to raise awareness for the millions of refugees from the country Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan, following the 1970 Bhola cyclone and the outbreak of the Bangladesh Liberation War. Harrison's inspiration for the song came from his friend Ravi Shankar, an Indian-Bengali musician, who approached Harrison for help in trying to alleviate the suffering. "Bangla Desh" has been described as "one of the most cogent social statements in music history" and helped gain international support for Bangladeshi independence by establishing the name of the fledgling nation around the world. In 2005, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan identified the song's success in personalising the Bangladesh crisis, through its emotive description of Shankar's request for help.
Breathing Under Water is an album by Anoushka Shankar and Karsh Kale released on 28 August 2007. Shankar and Kale expand beyond cultural and traditional borders of music with this collaboration. With the help of featured guests Ravi Shankar, Sting, Norah Jones, Midival Punditz, Salim Merchant, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and others, the duo blended Indian classical music, electronica, dance and folk styles.
Best of Cream is a compilation album of material recorded from 1966 to 1968 by the rock band Cream, and released shortly after their disbanding. The album was originally released by Cream's U.S. label Atco (Atlantic) Records, and was available on that label during the years 1969–1972. The album was briefly reissued in the U.S. in 1977 by RSO/Polydor Records, to whom U.S. distribution rights for Cream's recordings had reverted by that time. A re-release was pressed in 2014 by Polydor on 180g vinyl.
Concert for George is a 2003 British documentary film directed by David Leland that covers the events of the Concert for George, a tribute concert for George Harrison held at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 29 November 2002.
Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India was an Indian classical music revue led by sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar intended for Western concert audiences and performed in 1974. Its presentation was the first project undertaken by the Material World Charitable Foundation, set up the previous year by ex-Beatle George Harrison. Long a champion of Indian music, Harrison also produced an eponymous studio album by the Music Festival orchestra, which was released in 1976 on his Dark Horse record label. Both the CD format of the Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India album and a DVD of their performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London were issued for the first time on the 2010 Shankar–Harrison box set Collaborations.
The Concert for Bangladesh is a film directed by Saul Swimmer and released in 1972. The film documents the two benefit concerts that were organised by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar to raise funds for refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War, and were held on Sunday, 1 August 1971 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. As well as notable performances from Harrison and Shankar, the film includes "main performer" contributions from Harrison's fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and Leon Russell, and a surprise walk-on from Bob Dylan. Other contributing musicians include Ali Akbar Khan, Eric Clapton, the band Badfinger, Klaus Voormann, Jesse Ed Davis, Jim Horn and Jim Keltner.
"I Am Missing You" is a song by Indian musician Ravi Shankar, sung by his sister-in-law Lakshmi Shankar and released as the lead single from his 1974 album Shankar Family & Friends. The song is a rare Shankar composition in the Western pop genre, with English lyrics, and was written as a love song to the Hindu god Krishna. The recording was produced and arranged by George Harrison, in a style similar to Phil Spector's signature sound, and it was the first single issued on Harrison's Dark Horse record label. Other contributing musicians include Tom Scott, Nicky Hopkins, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner. A second version appears on Shankar Family & Friends, titled "I Am Missing You (Reprise)", featuring an arrangement closer to a folk ballad.
Chants of India is an album by Indian musician Ravi Shankar released in 1997 on Angel Records. Produced by his friend and sometime collaborator George Harrison, the album consists of Vedic and other Hindu sacred prayers set to music, marking a departure from Shankar's more familiar work in the field of Hindustani classical music. The lyrical themes of the recorded chants are peace and harmony among nature and all creatures. Sessions for the album took place in the Indian city of Madras and at Harrison's home in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, following his work on The Beatles' Anthology (1995). Anoushka Shankar, John Barham, Bikram Ghosh, Tarun Bhatacharaya and Ronu Majumdar are among the many musicians who contributed to the recording.
"Ride Rajbun" is a song by English musician George Harrison. It was released in 1992 on the multi-artist charity album The Bunbury Tails, which was the soundtrack to the British animated television series of the same name. Harrison co-wrote the song's lyrics with Bunbury Tails creator David English. The eponymous Rajbun was a character in the series based on English's friend and cricketer Rajendrasinh Jadeja, one of a team of cricket-playing rabbits – in this case, from Bangalore in India. The composition is in the style of a nursery rhyme or children's song, while the all-Indian instrumentation on the recording recalls some of Harrison's compositions for the Beatles during 1966–68.
Collaborations is a four-disc compilation box set by Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar and former Beatle George Harrison. Released in October 2010 on Dark Horse Records, it compiles two studio albums originally issued on that label – the long-unavailable Shankar Family & Friends (1974) and Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India (1976) – and Chants of India, first issued on Angel Records in 1997. Although all three albums were originally Shankar releases, for which Harrison served in the role of music producer and guest musician, both Shankar and Harrison are credited as artists on the box set. Each of the collaborative projects represents a departure from Shankar's more typical work as a sitarist and performer of Hindustani classical ragas, with the box set showcasing his forays into, variously, jazz and rock, Indian folk and orchestral ensembles, and devotional music.
I Still Do is the twentieth solo studio album by English musician Eric Clapton. It was released through the independent Bushbranch Records/Surfdog Records label. The album is a combination of new material written by Clapton and classic songs, contemporary tunes, and influences interpreted in his own style.
