A Tribute to George Harrison

Dec. 1 -- The first rock and roll concert I ever went to was George Harrison's concert at what was then the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland. It was 1974, and George was in the midst of his first and only full-fledged concert tour of the U.S.

I was all of fifteen years old, and this was quite an experience for me. I had previously only been to R&B shows in smaller venues, and I wasn't quite sure of what to expect at a rock concert. Needless to say, I was a bit overwhelmed, at first, by the huge crowd (about 20,000 people), the sheer loudness of the music, and the ever-present smell of a certain illegal substance that was seemingly being smoked by about half the crowd.

A couple of things still stand out about that night. Unfortunately, the music is not really one of them. George's voice was pretty shot, ravaged, I believe he himself later admitted, by incessant smoking. (Fortunately, his voice would come back to him, and many more hits would follow. But he only toured one more time, in the early '90s, in Japan.)

What really stood out was the sense of anticipation before the show, and the excitement that flowed through the crowd when George appeared. Everyone stood up, cheering, and straining to get a better view. "There he is!," you could here people exclaim. "Oh my God," I thought. "It's a Beatle!"

The Beatles had only broken up four years before, and George was only 31 at the time of the concert, but The Beatles Legend was already becoming firmly entrenched in our pop culture consciousness. At this point all four former Beatles were enjoying successful solo careers. Although fans were forever hopeful, it seemed unlikely that we'd ever see the four of them perform together again. And as the spontaneity of the '60s' music scene began to give way to the bland, unimaginative pop-rock of the mid-seventies, some began to appreciate the Beatles' musical accomplishments in a whole new way: in their entirety, with a beginning, middle, and end to their musical output.