Bangla Desh (song) - Background

Background

By the spring of 1971, George Harrison had established himself as the most successful ex-Beatle during the band's first year as solo artists − in the words of biographer Elliot Huntley, he "couldn't have got any more popular in the eyes of the public". Just as importantly, writes Peter Lavezzoli, author of The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, Harrison had "amassed such good will in the music community" during that time. Rather than looking to immediately follow up his All Things Must Pass triple album, he had spent the months since recording ended in October 1970 repaying favours to the friends and musicians who had helped make the album such a success. These included co-producer Phil Spector, whose wife, Ronnie Spector, Harrison supplied with songs for a proposed solo album on Apple Records; Ringo Starr, whose "It Don't Come Easy" single he produced and prepared for release, following the original session for the song in March 1970; Bobby Whitlock, singer and keyboard player with the short-lived Derek & The Dominos, whose eponymous debut solo album featured Harrison and Eric Clapton on guitar; and former Spooky Tooth pianist Gary Wright, whose Footprint album Harrison also guested on, along with All Things Must Pass orchestrator John Barham.

Another project was the Apple Films documentary on the life and music of Ravi Shankar, Howard Worth's Raga, for which Harrison had stepped in at the last minute to provide funding and film distribution. With Harrison also acting as record producer for the accompanying soundtrack album, work began with Shankar in Los Angeles during April '71 and resumed in late June, following Harrison-produced sessions in London for the band Badfinger.

A Bengali by birth, Shankar had already brought the growing humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh to Harrison's attention, while staying at the ex-Beatle's house, Friar Park, earlier in the year. The state formerly known as East Pakistan (and before that, East Bengal) had suffered an estimated 300,000 casualties when the Bhola cyclone hit its shores on 12 November 1970, and the indifference shown by the ruling government in West Pakistan, particularly by President Yahya Khan, was just one reason the Bengali national movement sought independence on 25 March 1971. This declaration resulted in an immediate military crackdown by Khan's troops, and three days later the Bangladesh Liberation War began. By 13 June, details of the systematic massacre of citizens were finally beginning to emerge internationally via the publication in London's Sunday Times of an article by Anthony Mascarenhas. Along with the torrential rains and intensive flooding that were threatening the passage of millions of refugees into north-eastern India, this news galvanised Shankar into approaching Harrison for help in trying to alleviate the suffering. "I was in a very sad mood, having read all this news," Shankar later told Rolling Stone magazine, "and I said, 'George, this is the situation, I know it doesn't concern you, I know you can't possibly identify.' But while I talked to George he was very deeply moved ... and he said, 'Yes, I think I'll be able to do something.'"

A commitment to stage The Concert for Bangladesh was the result, and six weeks of frantic activity ensued as Harrison shuttled between New York, Los Angeles and London attending to the details, before he, Shankar and others would take the stage at Madison Square Garden, on Sunday, 1 August. While conceding that Harrison was no "natural sloganeer" in the manner of his former bandmate John Lennon, pop-culture author Robert Rodriguez has written, "if any ex-Fab had the cachet with his fan base to solicit good works, it was the spiritual Beatle."