BEFORE: I spotted this one airing on PBS a few months ago, while I was putting this chain together. I was fairly sure that I owned the concert on DVD, but I didn't think I'd ever watched it. I know that I've listened to it several times, it's in my iTunes library so I must have bought the CD at some point. The trouble was that I couldn't put my hand on the DVD at the time, I figured it was either down in my basement media room with the CD, or perhaps it was still in a bag of unpacked Christmas gifts from two years ago, because I thought I remembered getting this as a gift. Nope, no luck, so I recorded the PBS airing on my DVR, just to be on the safe side - in fact, I recorded it twice, because there was one airing that was an hour and a half, and another that was two and a half hours. OK, maybe the longer one was with pledge breaks included, but again, just to be on the safe side...
It turned out that the 90 minute recording was missing the first hour, so whoever programmed the grid for PBS that week made a huge error - therefore I was glad that I recorded it twice. Ringo Starr carries over again from "The Kids Are Alright", and it seems that I've sort of come full circle with this chain, since I started this over a month ago with the Beatles and Eric Clapton. I've been second-guessing my scheduling ever since I started this Summer Music Concert Series, in the first film about Jimi Hendrix I saw Pete Townshend make an appearance, and I thought that maybe the film about The Who needed to be up at the start of the chain. But no, I figured I'd circle back around to films with Ringo in them, and I could use it later in the chain as a connector. (Plus, The Who's not a top priority band for me, though if other people think of them as top-level, I won't argue, they're just not a personal favorite of mine.)
A big reason to watch this one now is to squeeze in another appearance from Tom Petty, you may recall I dedicated this 10th Movie Year to him, and maybe that influenced my decision to do a rock music chain in the first place. But so far I've only heard him on one soundtrack ("Appaloosa") and being interviewed in that documentary about Elvis Presley. (For a while I had that film linking to this one, but then I moved things around.) At least he'll perform on camera in today's film.
But the other reason for not watching this one with the other Beatles films back in July was that I hadn't worked out my path to the end of 2018 yet, so I didn't know for sure if I had a space for this one. Now I have a plan that should get me to the end of the year, and I worked that out in a way that held a slot open for this tribute concert. So now I can proceed.
AFTER: It's funny, right after watching the concert recorded from PBS, I found my original DVD of the full concert, which would have run nearly 2 1/2 hours. I was debating whether to delete the program from my DVR or save it, and possibly try to dub it to DVD, when I decided to take one last look for the DVD I was fairly sure I already owned. I found it in the DVD cabinet, of all places - hey, things are always in the last place you look, but that's mainly because you stop looking once you find them. The version I recorded off PBS was also 2 1/2 hours long, but that included pledge breaks, so they must have cut something out - I looked up the set list on Wikipedia and yep, they edited out the first 20 or 30 minutes of the concert, which was mostly sitar music played by Ravi Shankar. Whew, I dodged that bullet - if I had to sit through 20 minutes of sitar playing, I would have enjoyed this film a lot less, and probably given it a lower score.
There were also TWO songs performed in concert by the Monty Python ensemble, but they only aired one - I guess you can't broadcast the song "Sit on My Face" on PBS, not if you want the channel to keep getting government funding, anyway. Normally I'd protest any censorship of the Pythons, but was it really appropriate in the first place to sing such a vulgar song at a tribute to a deceased Beatle? OK, maybe it was George Harrison's favorite Python song or something, but I'd ask to see the paperwork on that before approving it. I'm sure he had a good sense of humor and all, but still, this should have been a more solemn event than that. As it is, even "The Lumberjack Song" might have been pushing things a bit.
Especially when so many of George Harrison's songs were about religion or peace or just being contemplative about one's place in the world or the transitory nature of things. Many of the songs performed here seemed especially appropriate, like "All Things Must Pass" - what a great message for a tribute concert! Even if we're missing George and regretting his demise, we have to remind ourselves that all things are temporary, including our lives, but also our grief and sadness. "My Sweet Lord", that one also fits in very well, as does "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)", "Isn't It a Pity", and then even Beatles songs like "I Need You", "If I Needed Someone" and "I Want to Tell You" seemed to have a deeper meaning than was originally intended if you imagine them being sung to a fellow comrade who's no longer present.
Ringo Starr also performed "Photograph", and made reference to how he wrote the song with George, and it meant one thing, and now when he sings it, it means something else. Probably it used to be about a lover who walked out and isn't coming back, and now maybe it's about his bandmates who died and aren't coming back. That's a great song, if it can have a meaning that changes over time, or is so open to interpretation that it can serve a dual purpose. But then, of course, Ringo ruined things by singing "Honey Don't", which is just a silly Carl Perkins number that had no relevance at all. Again, this is a tribute concert, it's not a place for lines like ""Sometimes I love you on a Saturday night, Sunday morning you don't look right". That seemed inappropriate. It felt like Ringo just treated this event like it was one of his All-Starr concerts, and with Billy Preston and Gary Brooker in this band, you can see how maybe he just got confused.
But this 2002 concert was the first time that Paul and Ringo had played on stage together since the Beatles broke up. Maybe they'd gotten together and jammed in private, but 23 years without playing on stage together? There must have been some bad blood there. (Wait, I know Ringo was in Paul's movie "Give My Regards to Broad Street" in 1984, so who knows? Maybe they have been friends, and they just never found a concert to play together in during all that time.)
The grouping of musicians on stage made for some other odd situations - when I saw Dhani Harrison interacting with Eric Clapton, I wondered if it felt strange for him to play guitar with the man who once stole his father's girlfriend - but then, I guess if Clapton hadn't done that, then George wouldn't have gone on to marry Olivia and Dhani wouldn't have been born. Do other people even think about these things, or is it just me? Also, was it weird for Paul McCartney to play on George's song "Wah-Wah"? Like, does he know that George wrote that song about his frustration in working with the other Beatles?
Anyway, the last couple films had a bunch of songs in them that I didn't even know - I only knew a few Frank Zappa songs, and there were a few Who songs that I wasn't familiar with - but thankfully I knew almost every song today (except maybe "Horse to the Water"). The real highlights for me began when Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers took the stage, they killed it on "Taxman" and "I Need You", then Jeff Lynne joined in for "Handle With Care" and it was almost a Wilburys reunion (except for Bob Dylan and the deceased Roy Orbison, of course.)
It's a little sad that this concert's only 16 years old, and we've lost both Tom Petty and Billy Preston since then. (umm, and Jim Capaldi from Traffic...and Ravi Shankar, but he was 92.) Heck, the whole film's a little sad, this whole last month of films has been a little sad, when you get right down to it. Well, at least now we have the answer to that puzzling lyric from "A Day in the Life" about knowing how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall - it turns out that it just takes one big George Harrison-shaped one.
Also starring Eric Clapton (last seen in "Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll"), Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Tom Petty (last heard in "Elvis Presley: The Searcher"), Billy Preston (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Joe Brown, Jools Holland, Sam Brown, Gary Brooker, Jim Capaldi, Dhani Harrison, Michael Kamen, Jim Keltner, Ravi Shankar, Klaus Voorman, Ron Blair, Mike Campbell, Steve Ferrone, Benmont Tench, Scott Thurston, Eric Idle (last heard in "Ella Enchanted"), Michael Palin (last heard in "A Liar's Autobiography"), Terry Gilliam (ditto), Terry Jones (ditto), Carol Cleveland (ditto), Neil Innes, a cameo from Tom Hanks (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence"), and archive footage of George Harrison (also last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom").
RATING: 6 out of 10 Royal Canadian Mounties
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