Willie Weeks Said George Harrison’s 1974 Dark Horse Tour Was the ‘Classiest’ Tour He’s Ever Been On
Bassist Willie Weeks said George Harrison‘s 1974 Dark Horse tour was the “classiest” tour he’s ever been on. Meanwhile, George didn’t feel too glamorous. At least George’s backing band felt comfortable.
Billy Preston said the Concert for Bangladesh ‘inspired’ the former Beatle to organize his 1974 tour
In early 1974, shortly after his wife, Pattie Boyd, officially left him for Eric Clapton, George traveled to India with his musical guru, Ravi Shankar. According to Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison by Joshua M. Greene, they stayed in an ashram in the holy land of Vrindavan.
Being there gave George a magnificent feeling. Suddenly, he wanted to do a tour, which was surprising. The last time George toured was in 1966 with The Beatles at the height of Beatlemania, which exhausted him, aged him, and made him paranoid.
Still, Greene wrote, George remained “energized” by the success of 1971’s Concert for Bangladesh and “refreshed by his time in India.” In March 1974, George announced a new album, Dark Horse. There’d be a U.S. tour too.
“He was definitely inspired after Bangladesh,” said Billy Preston, who later went with George on his Dark Horse tour. “He wanted to [perform live] again, right away.”
In days, George formed a band and began recording Dark Horse at Friar Park. Bassist Willie Weeks sensed an urgency. George became extreme in everything he did, even if it was just going to get fish and chips down the road.
He raced his Porche back into Friar Park on one fish and chips run and skidded through a row of hedges. He just shrugged.
“I’m looking at George, and he just looks away like, Don’t say nothing. Well, we went into the house and neither of us ever said a word,” Weeks said. The bassist then touring with George would be an experience.
Willie Weeks said George Harrison’s 1974 Dark Horse tour was ‘classy’
George sped things up in the recording studio too, but all it did was strain his voice. Everything was spiraling out of control in his haste. So, George’s Dark Horse tour was doomed to fail from the start.
“I’d done three albums before I went on the road, and I was still trying to finish my own album as we were rehearsing, and also we’d done this other tour in Europe with these classical Indian musicians,” George later told Rolling Stone. “By the time it came to going on the road I was already exhausted.
“But I had that choice of canceling the tour and getting everybody uptight, or going through with it. So I decided, ‘Sod it, it’s probably better to do it.’ But no, I don’t miss it at all – being in crummy hotels, eating lousy food, always having to be somewhere else.”
According to Weeks, George’s Dark Horse tour was more glamorous. Despite everything during the hectic tour, Weeks said George “remained very kind to all of us, always. He’d pull little surprises. You’d check into your hotel room, and there was no telling what would be waiting for you there.”
Weeks “had a taste for lobster.” One night, he entered his hotel room and found George had delivered dozens to his bathtub.
“There was a whole lot of ’em in there,” Weeks said. “In spite of the hard time with the press, he still kept his sense of humor and generosity. That stayed intact. Every night after the show, we’d board this private airplane and on one side would be all kinds of Indian food and on the other side American food, roast beef, what have you.
“Every night, we’d get our food, grab a seat, and cool out. Next thing we knew, we’d be in the next city, checked into our hotel, and ready for bed. And it wouldn’t even be all that late. It was the classiest tour I’ve ever been on, the best hotels, the best everything. He wanted to make everybody happy. It was beautiful.”
George’s Dark Horse tour went badly
Whether the former Beatle was being nice or just wanted to keep his band’s morale up, his Dark Horse tour was a disaster.
George opened each show on his seven-week tour with a lengthy performance by his musical guru, Ravi Shankar, and a troupe of Indian musicians. Greene wrote that it left fans “yawning and restless.”
When George came on to perform, he constantly urged the crowd to shout, “Chant Krishna! Christ! Krishna! Christ! Allah! Buddha!” Greene wrote, “He came across as overzealous, alienating much of his audience.” Initially, George didn’t play Beatles songs either because he’d feel like a hypocrite.
“People had come expecting at least a few Beatles memories, but George refused to be pulled back into that persona,” Greene wrote. Eventually, Shankar convinced him to play a few of his Beatles songs, but he changed the lyrics to reflect his spirituality.
“George absolutely took the press to heart,” Weeks said. “He was not happy. He was having problems with his voice, and some people used that as an excuse to give him a hard time, maybe because of what he was trying to bring to the audiences. It was a struggle. I remember feeling hurt for him because the stress of it all was just too much.”
George came home from his Dark Horse tour completely mentally and physically drained. He went to his garden and collapsed there. George said everything the press wrote about depressed him, but it didn’t seem so bad anymore once he remembered all the good times he’d had on the tour. Leave it to George to shake off one of the most trying periods of his career and focus on the good.
As for his relationship with his bassist, George once said he’d rather Weeks on bass than Paul McCartney.
