George Harrison’s Grammy award-winning double live Concert for Bangladesh is finally available to stream on all major digital platforms.
Presented over two sold-out shows on Aug. 1, 1971, at Madison Square Garden, this is remembered today as the first major multi-act benefit concert. Harrison’s all-star list of guests included Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, members of Badfinger and Ravi Shankar, among others.
See a new album trailer and complete track listing below. Also included as a bonus is the original studio version of Harrison’s Top 10 1971 U.K. charity single “Bangla Desh.”
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Harrison spearheaded the effort to provide aid through UNICEF for millions of East Pakistani refugees who’d fled to escape suffering associated with the Bangladesh Liberation War and the Bhola cyclone of 1970. Scheduling was so complex that they couldn’t even complete a group rehearsal before the show.
“For three months, I was on the telephone setting up what became The Concert for Bangladesh, trying to talk people into doing it – talking to Eric and all those people who did do it,” Harrison wrote in his autobiography, I Me Mine. “We had very little rehearsal. In fact, there was never actually one rehearsal with everyone present. We did it in dribs and drabs and under difficulties.”
The Concert for Bangladesh reached No. 1 in the U.K. and other countries while finishing as a gold-selling No. 2 hit in the U.S. (Harrison and friends spent six weeks behind Don McLean’s American Pie.) Initial gate receipts raised some $250,000 in relief funds; a triple album box set and film then helped generate millions of dollars for UNICEF.
That opened the door for a string of now-familiar musical charity projects like Live Aid, Farm Aid, America: A Tribute to Heroes and Live 8, among many others. “George and his friends were pioneers,” former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan once said.
Decades later, UNICEF still provides critical aid, while the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF advances this concert’s towering legacy by providing continued support. All proceeds from sales of The Concert for Bangladesh, after taxes, are directed to the Harrison’s UNICEF fund.
Track Listing for The Concert for Bangladesh
Introduction by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Ali Rakha and Kamala Chakravarti, “Bangla Dhun”
George Harrison, “Wah-Wah”
George Harrison, “My Sweet Lord”
George Harrison, “Awaiting On You All”
Billy Preston, “That’s the Way God Planned It”
Ringo Starr, “It Don’t Come Easy”
George Harrison and Leon Russell, “Beware of Darkness”
George Harrison, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
Leon Russell, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash / Young Blood”
George Harrison, “Here Comes the Sun”
Bob Dylan, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
Bob Dylan, “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry”
Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ In the Wind”
Bob Dylan, “Mr. Tambourine Man”
Bob Dylan, “Just Like a Woman”
George Harrison, “Something”
George Harrison, “Bangla Desh”
Bob Dylan, “Love Minus Zero / No Limit”
George Harrison, “Bangla Desh (studio version)”
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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