...
and you know as bob dylan said he not busy being born is busy dying
and yet nobody's trying to figure out what's the cause of death and what happens when you die i mean
that to me is the only thing really that's of any importance the rest is all secondary that was the great george
harrison during a surprise visit he made the vh1 in 1997 and that was a day that i will never
ever forget george came by the studio with ravi shankar to promote ravi's album chance
of india which george had produced and played on now george harrison rarely ever appeared
on tv and we weren't really sure how long he'd want to stick around the deal we had with him was that we
were
going to turn on the cameras ask george and ravi a couple of questions
about the album and if george felt comfortable he'd stay a
while
if he didn't we were going to get our sound bite call it a day well we
ended up talking with him for well over an hour and then
someone from the crew stuck a guitar in george's hand and he just started taking requests right there on the studio floor
i don't think i will ever have a moment like that again i was nervous out of my mind and i sat there next to george
harrison while he played a spontaneous concert for no more than 20 or 30 vh1 staffers
and friends it was truly a magical afternoon and it wound up being george harrison's last public
performance so we're going to bring you some of that music later on but right now we want to give you a chance to hear
some
of the remarkable conversation george shared with us that day and
you'll see as he got more comfortable he talked a lot about the
beatles the maharishi all things must pass the concert for bangladesh and bob dylan
the traveling wilburys john lennon and so much more people like to call george harrison the
quiet beetle but i'll tell you when he opened up he was just one of the smartest most interesting and funniest people it was
ever my honor to meet a lot of the footage you're going to see here has never been shown before and some of it's kind of rough
the
crew here was literally just running around setting up lights and
equipment as george got ready to play but it's really okay george was
never
about slickness or showbiz he was an international star by the time he was 20 years old and he spent most of
his life pushing against all the artificial famous celebrity he was george harrison and he was one of
a kind it may sound like a lofty thing to say on vh1 but basically
you know what are we doing on this planet and i think through the beetle experience that we'd had we've grown so many years
within a short period of time i'd experienced so many things and met so many people but
i realized there was nothing actually that was giving me a buzz anymore i was i wanted something better i
remember thinking i'd love to meet somebody who will really impress me i don't mean because somebody like you
know bert lancaster because he was in the movie right i mean i met bert lancaster and he impressed me
on
that level but i meant somebody who could really impress me and that's
when i met ravi which was funny because he's this little fella
with an obscure instrument from our point of view and yet it led me into such
depth and i think that was that's the most important thing it still
is for me you know i get confused when i look around at the world and i see everybody's running around
and you know as bob dylan said he not busy being born is busy dying
and yet nobody's trying to figure out what's the cause of death and what happens when you die i mean
that to me is the only thing really that's of any importance the rest is all secondary
do
you think pop musicians are afraid to deal with subjects that are so
big or it just doesn't occur to them or do people think oh it's not
commercial enough who
wants to talk about life itself i don't know what anybody else thinks and you know as the years have gone by i
seem to have found myself more and more out on a limb as far as you know that
kind of thing goes i mean even close friends of mine you know they maybe don't want to talk about it
because they don't understand it but i believe in the thing that i read years
ago which i think was in the bible it said knock and the door will be opened and it's true if you want to know
anything in this life you just have to knock on the door whether that be
some physically on somebody else's door and asked them a question or which i was lucky to find is the
meditation is you know it's all within because if you think about it
there isn't anything i mean in creation the whole of creation that is
perfect you know there is nothing that goes wrong with nature only what man does then it
goes wrong but we are made of that thing the very essence of our being of every actor
but superimposed on that is through if i can use the word the tidal wave of both that goes through
the world cable you can say that yeah so does this were being barraged by
um you know by both but not only that the way the world is structured or the
way creation is structured we have duality which says yes no good bad lost game birth death
and it's a this circle that you get trapped in it's like the memphis blues again
and that's the hardest thing to to understand what is causing um both of these things
what's causing day and night good and bad it's all the cause and this is the effect
so i mean we're getting really transcendental here but to say that
our physical being is really um on a very very subtle level it's just
like the sap in a tree is is the sap and it runs throughout all the parts of the tree now it's like that
our bodies are manifesting into physical bodies but the cause of the sap is pure consciousness pure awareness and
that is perfect and perfect knowledge but we have to tap into that to understand it and that's really why
for me this record is important because it's another little key to open up the within
for each individual to be able to sit and turn off um turn off your mind relax
and float downstream it's amazing isn't it i love how george worked his old philosophy back to
the ravi shankar album he was helping to promote chance of india which is a terrific record by the way
george's love of eastern music led to a lifelong devotion to eastern philosophy and the sitar
it was george who turned the other beatles onto the maharishi yogi and george stayed loyal to the
maharishi's teachings when the other guys all lost interest i asked him to talk a little bit about what he valued and knows
and in his many other teachings ravi you said a very beautiful thing a couple years back in an interview
they asked you what it was like for you to become a big rock star quote unquote a big pop star as it were
um
and i recall you saying that it was easier for you because you were
older at the time as opposed to someone like george who was
in his early 20s when it happened do you think that um that may be a
reason why you found a search for for something deeper in life i think about
you embracing eastern philosophy i think about dylan becoming born again do you think it it
drove you to search for something deeper because you were worshiped by millions
and
why do you think that it drove you to search for something deeper as
opposed to someone like elvis who had a hard time handling it
actually elvis i think looked at something deeper too um
yeah because i know i know that he was you know at different times he was involved with um
different organizations and i mean it was sad about elvis i think um compared to the beatles um
elvis i always saw it the problem for him was that he was the only one who had that experience
yeah it's like hippies you know so it takes more people to have that surely experience uh
i mean the four of us all experienced the thing and in a way we gained strength
and supported each other in the turmoil but yeah i think fame is a good thing
in terms of giving you uh heightened experience or at least more
experience and um but then it's what you do with that or what what that uncovers i think for me
you know as i say i realize i want to you know i just want more this isn't it this isn't it you know fame is not the
goal money you know although money is nice to have it can buy you a bit of freedom you know you can go to the bahamas when you
want but it doesn't it's not the answer and the answer you know is um how to get peace of mind
and how to be happy that's really what we're supposed to be here for and
the difficult thing is that we all go through our lives and through our days and we don't experience bliss and you
know it's a very subtle thing and to experience that and to be able to know
how to do that is something you don't just stumble across you've got to search for
it did you experience bliss on stage or in the studio um in a way did performing
it put you in touch with with that with that bliss well we had happiness at times and um
but you know not the kind of bliss i mean where like every atom of your body is just
buzzing you know because it's again it's beyond the mind it's like you
know it's it's when there's no thought involved i mean it's it's a
pretty tricky thing to try to to get to that stage because it means controlling
the mind and being able to transcend the relative states of consciousness
waking sleeping dreaming which is all we really know but there is another state that goes
beyond all that and it's in that state that's where you know the bliss and the knowledge you
know that's available is that was just a little taste of george harrison's vh1 interview we're going to
be back with much more including a never-before-seen performance in just a moment
yesterday don't bother me
and
we're remembering george harrison and looking at some of an interview
he did with vh1 during a rare visit to our studio in 1997.
most everybody knows that george was the youngest beatle the lead guitar player and the composer and singer of songs
like something here comes the sun and while my guitar gently weeps and george always laughed about the fact that
whenever sinatra on stage would introduce his version of something by calling it the greatest love song of
the last 20 years he would then credit it to lennon mccartney it was george who led the beatles to
indian music and culture to meditation and to yoga jordan was the most spiritual of the fabs and he was also many experts say
the best actor in the beatles stephen soderbergh who directed traffic in erin brockovich is a huge fan of the
beatles first movie a hard day's night and he has said george was the best actor of the four of
them by far it's amazing there's not a line he doesn't nail oh by all means i'd be
quite prepared for that eventuality anyway if you don't cooperate you won't beat susan i lose this susan when she's
at home only susan can't be our resident teenager y'all have to love her she's your symbol
oh you mean that push person gets everything wrong i beg your pardon oh yeah the lads
frequently
sit behind the television and watch her for a giggle in fact once we
all sat down wrote these letters saying our gear she wasn't all
that rubbish she's a trendsetter it's her profession she's a drag a well-known drag george met his future
wife
patty boyd on the set of a hard day tonight in 1964. that's her right
there playing one of the girls the beatles ran into on the
train in the beginning of the movie george went on to have a second career as a film producer making such great
films as mona lisa monty python's life of brian and time bandits for handmade films
and he also had something of a third career as a concert promoter he pretty much invented the all-star
charity rock show with the concept for bangladesh at madison square garden in august of 1971
30 years ago
i
talked to george and ravi shankar about that historic event when you
think about all the talent you assembled and all the money you raised
for the album um it was a very controversial thing in bangladesh john lennon used to
get
in trouble all the time for his activism did anyone tell you you know
look it's a little bit hot no don't go there don't don't uh
were you discouraged at all by people for pursuing it no not really i think that was one of the things that um i
developed by just by being in the beatles was being bold and i think john had a lot to do with
that you know because john lennon um you know if he felt something strongly he just did it
and you know i picked up a lot of that by being a friend of john's just that
attitude of well just go for it just do it like when ravi said to me we'll you know it may he wanted me and peter
sellers to come and introduce the show and he could make 25 000 straight away i thought of the john
lennon aspect of it which was you know film it and make a record of it
and you know let's make a million dollars and uh you know i think that boldness was
you know by by having that fame of by learning through the beatles you
know that you get a bit more clout you know if if you're well known well let's let's talk about the concert uh
and all the all the benefit concerts of the eighties uh how did you go about getting the talent who showed up eric
clapton ringo bob i just thought i just got on the telephone in los
angeles there was a fellow there was an indian astrologer who
i'd met in la and so i said to him hey does it is there any good particular day to put
this concert on and he said um august something august the 1st of august the
2nd and i just i thought new york was the best place to put it
it's because all the media and you know it's in between europe and the la and uh
i checked madison square garden i found it was vacant on that day on august was it the first or the first or
the second first and uh i just got on the telephone and i
started um calling people and there was certain people i could really
i knew i could rely on who was um you know ringo and keltner the drummers
and we got bad fingers just to you know be acoustic guitar players because i was
hanging out a lot of the time with leon russell and leon said he'd come and bring don preston
leon actually was very helpful in the song itself bangladesh i kind of wrote the song but he suggested
to me to put to write that intro you know where it kind of sets up the story my friend came to me yeah uh so
um and then leon of course played on the single we quickly made the single to try and get it out to
um you know getting on the radio how quickly we did it in one night i think wrote it
quite a bit i wrote it you know one day and um a couple of days later assembled the
people who played on it and uh and then we all came off to oh and i
was calling eric all the time eric was in a bad way at that time
had a slight um drinking problem or something and uh but he managed to make it
eventually and that's why we ended up with jessie ed davis because he was around and so we
started showing him that the songs were going to do in case eric never made it and then eric came
and
he decided to have him both on because he couldn't chase jesse away
there was three guitars in one show forever yeah and don preston
as well actually leon's guitar player and then bob now tell me how did you get bob
how did you get bob out of seclusion up in new york state to come down and do the show i just asked him really
and uh i don't know i you know my relationship with bob is i
don't know it's you know i've always just tried to be straight with him because he's also been surrounded by
tidal wave people and so you know i just always tried to
be straight with him and um you know he responded he the night before the show though was a
bit tricky because we we went down to madison square where they were setting it up and um we stood on the stage and it suddenly
was a whole frightening scenario and bob turned to
me and he said hey man i don't think i can make this i've got a lot of work you know things to do in new jersey
or something like that and by that time i was so stressed out because i'd just been on
the telephone for like i think it was three weeks about three weeks of setting the entire thing up
i've been on the phone about 12 hours a day and at that point i said look you know
don't tell me about that i you know at least you've been on stage on your own that's all you've ever done
you know i've never you know i've always been in a band i've never stood out front you've never done a tour before so you
know i don't want to know about that and uh right up till he came on the
stage
i didn't know if he was going to come when the show began you didn't
know yeah and i had on a list on my guitar and i had a bit
where he said bob question mark and if you look in the film
i turn around to see if he's around and he's so nervous that he's just coming on even before he announced him
he hadn't been on stage in a long time he delivered and that really i think you know it really made
the show you know by having um you know ravi and myself as one thing but bob just
gave it that extra bit of class we'll have more from george harrison's interview with vh1 plus an unexpected performance
when we come back mr harrison with all of the enormous problems in the world how did
you happen to choose this one to do something about it because i was asked by a friend if i'd
help you
and we're remembering george harrison and looking at some of the interview he did with vh1 during a visit to our studio in 1997.
in
just a bit we're going to show you some of the incredible songs that
george played for us that day and what turned out to be his last public
performance
for all the images that he's left us it's george's music we're going to remember best his solo record all things must pass
came out right after the beatles breakup in 1970 and was a huge bestseller it was re-released in early 2001
remastered with some extra tracks and among georgia's many solo hits were my sweet lord what is life in cracker
box palace george stopped recording shortly after john lennon was killed in 1980
but he returned in 1987 with the platinum album cloud9 and the number one single got my mind set on you
around the same time george teamed up with bob dylan tom petty jeff lynn and roy orbison at the traveling wilburys
and had another number one hit record after that he kept on writing and
recording music in the privacy of his home studio and talking with george about his recent
work it was clear that he had a lot of other things on his mind besides just music i know the one uh
benefit concert that you've done in england in the past uh a couple of 20 years or so with the natural law party back in 92
i believe what brought that about well it was um one of the things that made it easier
was i'd just done a tour of japan with eric clapton's band so i was kind
of up to speed with the songs that i was doing and i had the band was there that knew all the
material but that was i think there was a general election going on and as far as i'm concerned
whichever you know the kneeling is you know from uh
he wrote a song once and said no matter who you vote for the government always gets in
and it's not that you know in in england you always get um as far as i was concerned the left
the center and the right they're all really the same they're all different shades of the same
greyness and although it's a long shot you know maharishi
tried to get these people formed together into a party which would be called the natural law party which was
um the same maharishi maheshwarishi and the idea behind it really is to have
consciousness as the basic thing because if really
you know we get in government or we get in any situation in life we get the reflection of our own
consciousness we can't really complain about what we have because that is us it's a reflection of our own
being now if we could have um people who are actually conscious in a
spiritual sense then all the underlying problems to society i mean it wouldn't be able to
change just overnight but over a generation or two generations you could have things were
for instance say in england and i'm sure it's the same here you get disease so you've got a lot of
expenditure on hospitals and on fixing up people who have disease
now the problem is that most doctors they study disease they don't know about health so
you need to reprogram stuff so that you teach people about how to be healthy
that way you don't spend so much money on on disease you'd have people would be healthier you
wouldn't have such a you know a requirement for you know with all the various things that take up all the
money you'd be able to use that money for something else so the natural law that operates on this
planet or in the universe everything as i said earlier everything works in a perfect order
and there's a scheme to things which has a certain intelligence that drives it and makes everything work now if we as
individuals could go to that level of consciousness where
we can bring it into our being and as ma rishi mashogi once said for a
forest to be green each tree must be green so it's known as just one or two people being you know like this you'd have to
make the whole of society if they had that understanding and that's what i think really you'd
have to you know school people um right from being children teach people about their health about their
bodies about consciousness because it's all to do with consciousness raise the level of consciousness and
then everything automatically becomes better do you think it can happen or do you think people are totally on autopilot too much
ee it it can happen but it's something which will take a long long time generations of people i
mean if you look now just through say from the 60s
or the 50s there's a lot more people thanks to say indian music thanks to
rock and roll music who have got much more understanding you go out there on the street now you can find
indian spice shops indian restaurants and places to go for yoga for meditation
there's a much higher awareness generally on those kind of things and so it is
seeping through i mean where did all the really good hippies go when they all dropped out driving well i
don't think all of them are i think a lot of them are you know have you know brought up
there's probably two generations of kids now who are much more um open
to that type of consciousness and they've been brought up by you know being vegetarian or whatever
that helps the society become you know a much more um
balanced that's it's all to do with the balance you know we've got too much extreme going on you're
optimistic you have to be optimistic yeah you know i me too i just it's it's it's so funny
because when you when you talk to people it's down the middle those who think it's getting better
those are getting worse and those are things reflected in the music in all cases it is getting better and worse because
that's the nature of relativity you know good and bad good and bad but
the individual you know if the individual gets um that consciousness
then it doesn't matter because in a way you can retain the balance between the good and the bad
you know because really good and bad are the same um they are it's the same sort of thing so
it's like in the middle is the safe safe um
we're gonna have more from dh1's interview with george harrison plus a one-of-a-kind performance
i'm john fugelsteng and we are remembering george harrison when george stopped by our studio with
ravi shankar in 1997 nobody expected him to ever perform he hadn't really toured the states since 76
but when he and ravi and ravi's wife sekanya got to our young woman carrying a guitar case
so everybody here was nudging everybody and saying look george brought somebody with a guitar
now as you'll see once we were talking for like an hour or so i very rudely and brazenly asked him if he
would consider playing a song or two for us george looked a little bit startled but he was a very good sport and he asked
what do we want to hear so everybody was shouting out requests my bosses at vh1 were in my earpiece
saying get him to play a beatles song get him to play a beatles on what was even better than that george
played an indian tune probably with ravi and his wife and then he thrilled us all with a brand new song
that he had never played in public before here it is now and it's a great one this is if you don't know where you're going
any road will take you there do we want to um clear the microphones away so we can speak uh or do you want to hang on to
the instruments and play some more we'd like to play a little bit more fine can we induce you to play a little bit more
uh perhaps uh sing or play uh either or maybe if you want to if you'd like to play one of george's songs and uh and
back up on citar we wouldn't get angry if that happened um
robbie said to do something solo george yeah ravi said to do something george
yeah ravi ravi said there's ravi said okay what do you think if you don't like
it we can burn it
what do i know anything um
a practice give it a give it a whirl we'll roll reversal how about that take the rehearsal
i'm just rehearsing
if you don't have a capo do you miss his guitar lady thank you
that's your last name i can't believe it i have to figure this out let's see
tried must be the only person who doesn't know his own songs
well we'll try a burst of this one
i've been traveling on a boat in a plane and a car on a bike and a bus on a train traveling there traveling
here everywhere in every giver our large you pay the price with the spin of the wheel
with the roll of the dice ah yeah you pay a fair and if you don't know where
you're going any road will take you there
and i've been traveling on the ring and a prayer on the skin on my teeth the breads of her hair
traveling where the fall winds blow with the sun on my face in the ice and the snow but
it's a game sometimes you sometimes you're cool sometimes you're lame
oh yeah i eat someone if you don't know where you're going any road will take you there
you may not know where you came from
you may not know who you are
may not even have wondered
how you got so far but i keep traveling around the bends
there was no beginning there is no end it wasn't born it never dies there are no edges there is no
sides but we just don't win it's so far out the way out he's in
bow to god and call him sir but if you don't know where you're going
any road will take you there if you don't know where you're going any
road i'll take you there and if you don't know where you're going
any road will take you there
what
an amazing thrill it was to hear george play a new song in public for
the very first time and he actually topped that right away
with another unusual choice and he invited people to sing along on this one uh only i did
but
this is a traveling wilburys song from volume 3 that had never been
sung publicly before and had never been sung by george dillon saying
this on the album this is if you belong to me so what do you think uh i don't know i could go home and
practice
a bit and then come on you know what you can you can practice here and
uh we'll roll on it if you don't like it uh no one will see it
you want to try winging another one
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