George Harrison Remained Philanthropic After the Concert for Bangladesh, He Just Didn’t ‘Shout About It’
George Harrison remained philanthropic after 1971’s Concert for Bangladesh. He just didn’t “shout about it” and make a fuss. The former Beatle privately supported different charities and gave to those in need whenever he could.
George Harrison began his philanthropic career when he organized the Concert for Bangladesh
In late 1971, legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar told George about the humanitarian crisis in East Pakistan.
A devastating cyclone killed 500,000 people. After months of inaction from the West Pakistani government, people wanted a change. Eastern nationals declared themselves the independent country of Bangladesh. It started a bloody war. The Western Pakistani troops committed genocidal acts on the Bangladeshi people.
In 1997, Shankar told John Fugelsang at VH1 (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters) that he’d started planning a benefit concert himself. He expected to raise about 20 to 30 thousand dollars. When George started looking into the crisis, he believed he could do better.
“The more I read about it and understood what was going on, I thought, ‘Well, we’ve just got to do something,’ and it had to be very quickly,” George told Fugelsang. “And what we did, really, was only to point it out. That’s what I felt.”
George’s former bandmate John Lennon gave him the confidence to organize the benefit concert. After he consulted an Indian astrologer to find the perfect date, George got to work. He set it for August 1, 1971, at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Badfinger, Billy Preston, and Ringo Starr signed up to perform.
George said (per Rolling Stone), “The Concert for Bangladesh was just a moral stance. These kinds of things have grown over the years, but what we did showed the musicians and people are more humane than politicians.
“Today, people accept the commitment rock ‘n’ roll musicians have when they perform for a charity. When I did it, they said things like, ‘He’s only doing this to be nice.'”
However, the former Beatle only did the benefit concert to help Shankar and start it for someone else to take over.
“You think, ‘Somebody’s gotta be doing something,'” George told MuchMusic in 1988. “And you look around and there’s nobody doing anything. So, you think, ‘Well, just gotta get it started.’ And then you get more and more involved in it; like for me, it took three months from when I decided I’d help Ravi. That was the basic idea, to help Ravi do a concert. I got involved, and it escalated.”
George raised $243,000 at the Concert for Bangladesh, and the live album and the film brought millions more. UNICEF didn’t get the funds until much later, but George set a president with the Concert for Bangladesh. It paved the way for other benefit concerts like Live Aid.
George remained philanthropic after the Concert for Bangladesh; he just didn’t broadcast it
During a 1987 interview on BBC Breakfast, George explained that he’d always been philanthropic. He just hasn’t “shouted about it.”
BBC Breakfast asked George if he’d consider doing something philanthropic for his home, Liverpool. “I do, I mean I do a lot of things, but I do them without shouting about it nowadays,” George replied.
“I have a foundation, which we continue to give money out to people for various things. For instance, there was a thing in Liverpool where there was a school; they didn’t even have money for pencils for the kids. I mean, I can’t believe that, but that situation exists. So, we do things like that, buy them pencils or help buy wheelchairs, all kinds of things. But I just don’t shout about it.”
George also performed at many charity events over his long career, including Ferry Aid and the Prince’s Trust Concert.
The Beatle hated that celebrities had to bring awareness to global issues
George was always philanthropic. However, he felt it was more of the government’s job to bring awareness to global issues, not celebrities.
He told Mark Rowland in 1989 (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), “That’s what annoys me, it’s always the people who start these organizations who raise people’s awareness, and the people with the power and the ability to change enormous things very quickly don’t want to do it, they want to drag their feet.
“It’s the same thing with any of those charities, you know, like going back to Band Aid [singer-songwriter Bob Geldof’s 1984 charity-driven supergroup —Ed.] and all that kind of stuff.
“And now there’s millions of charities, and it’s always musicians or film people who are doing the work that government really is supposed to do. They collect taxes to take care of everybody, but instead they’re all off, there, playing their little games with missiles and stuff.”
George would’ve chosen to use his platform for good, without or without the government’s help.
