EDIT: Ravi Shankar died yesterday, Tuesday, December 12, 2012, at the age of 92 in Southern California. RIP you beautiful man; legend of music, Beatle guru, sitar master.

Orignally Published May 5, 2011- Part 56 is a double dose adventure of Indian/English fun.  First we have an awesome rare clip of George Harrison in India taking a sitar lesson with legendary sitar master Ravi Shankar in 1966.  After the Beatles quit touring the mad, mad, world in early 1966, they all took long vacations.  George decided to take his wife, Patti Boyd, to India, where he met Ravi, and insisted on becoming his apprentice.  The first video shows Ravi instructing George on some scales near a beautiful lake and mountain, while Ravi narrates the experience, expressing total shock and bewilderment at why a pop musician of George’s stature would be interested in classical Indian music.  Of course, George’s interest in sitar music caused an international explosion in the instrument and genre, and made Ravi Shankar an international star.  Video two shows the results of all of these efforts, “Within You Without You,” the second best song off Sgt. Pepper, (“A Day in the Life” being the best.)  This song is so incredible.  It’s a total masterpiece of artistic expression.  John Lennon said it best about the song, saying that George was “so clear” on this track, and that it was one of his favorite songs.  The lyrics are some of the most brilliant in the entire Beatles catalog, and sonically, its just perfect, a psychedelic joyride through George’s Indian soaked mind.  I also think its a stunningly original song coming from a man who adopted gurus to learn from his whole life, (Perkins, Lennon, McCartney, Dylan.)  This song has nothing to do with any of those guys, its just pure George, and its brave of him to stick his head out, in the Beatles of all groups, with a song like this.  And its undeniably fantastic!

Prince is one of my heroes, so you might be wondering why the Prince page on my website is fairly barren.  Well, the truth is, I’d probably have every Prince music video and performance I could get my hands on if I could, but Prince and his legal team make it damn near impossible to for anyone on the internet to post his music and videos.  Well, there is one performance that thankfully is available for the public to consume, and that is of Prince’s epic guitar heroics at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Prince was inducted in the same year George Harrison was honored as a solo artist, and so Dhani Harrison, George’s son, invited Prince on stage for the performance of the White Album classic, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”  I read somewhere that Prince had never even heard the song before, though that’s hard to believe as Prince peeled off one of the greatest and most showstopping flawless guitar solos of all time.  What is especially spectacular about the performance is that the man who played the original solo on the record, Eric Clapton, was a bit of a guitar legend too, so Prince had a lot to live up to.  The thing is, sometimes people forget that Prince is Prince.  The man is rightfully one of the greatest musical geniuses of the pop era, and one of the more criminally underrated ones too.  Rumor has it that Prince played such an insanely great solo in response to the snub he felt after being left off of Rolling Stone Magazine’s top 100 guitar players ever list.  Prince proves that he belongs somewhere on that list, perhaps in the top ten, so watch this clip if you’ve never seen it, and take in the “purple’s one’s” majesty of rock.  Oh, and lastly, at the end of the song, Prince hurls his guitar into the sky towards the audience, and it never lands…a new mystery for our time.

Most people know about George Harrison’s beautiful cover of the song “Got My Mind Set On You.”  The original version, written by Rudy Clark and performed by James Ray way back in 1962, is basically never played anymore.  I’m here to rectify that crime against music by bringing you the original version to sit along side George’s hilarious music video classic.  The original version includes some parts that George skipped over, mainly the odd Gospel Greek chorus in the James Ray version.  George actually released TWO music videos, and the second one is far less known then the classic one of George break dancing in his private study.  The other lesser known features none other than Alexis Denisof, the famed Joss Whedon actor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Avengers fame courting a young girl at an amusement park!  How about that for bizarre cross sections of pop culture?!  You also get to see famed Electric Light Orchestra conductor Jeff Lynne back up George in this rare video as well.  Jeff actually produced George’s Cloud Nine album on which this song appeared.  So, sit back, relax and enjoy an old soul singer, an ex-Beatle, a fluffy haired rock producer extraordinaire, and a star of your favorite cult television classics all mingling and dancing together to one of the world’s catchiest songs.

Well, this is miraculous.  Here we have a simple video of famed Beatle producer George Martin, his son Giles, and George Harrison’s son Dhani, all playing around with the master track for “Here Comes the Sun.”  Off Abbey Road, “Here Comes the Sun” is probably George’s second greatest song behind “Something,” also from the same record.  That is a matter of opinion, but the undisputed fact is that from 1968-1971, George was operating at an incredible peak of creative intensity, with his work on Abbey Road serving as a precursor for his immense solo masterpiece album All Things Must Pass.  Anyway, in the video, Dhani is fiddling with the dials when he comes across a lost electric guitar solo George recorded years ago.  It is a gorgeous piece of hard electric rock that gives edge to one of George’s sweetest songs.  While the part sounds great, especially to Beatle fans who have memorized every note of their music, it’s not hard to see why it didn’t make the final cut, as the electric flourish takes away from the gentle majesty of the final mix. It’s a shame the Beatles couldn’t tour in their later era because they probably would have added extra solos and changes to their songs that would have spun off countless beautiful variations.  Still, the undisturbed perfection of what remains what makes discovering anything lost so poignant and moving.  Enjoy this clip and pass it to your friends, especially George fans, its magical.

If you’ve read this site enough, you know that I like making declarations, so here is a strong one.  “All Those Years Ago,” is required listening for Beatles fans and one of the best George Harrison songs ever.  It was written by George Harrison as a song for Ringo Starr to sing, but Ringo thought the vocal melody was too high for him.  So, it went to the scrap heap.  Then John Lennon was murdered on the streets of New York City, stunning the world.  I’m sure right away, Beatles fans the world over expected a musical tribute of some sort from Paul, George, and Ringo.  Rumors of a reunion must have been strong, despite the concept being horribly illogical with John’s passing.  On a certain level, the pressure must have been high on these guys to do something, which was of course, cruelly unfair.  If your best friend died, would anyone expect you to make a commercial pop song?  A song that would be judged by music critics?  Well, the guys did respond, they are artists after all.  Paul made “Here, Today,” a touching ballad.  George took his stalled Ringo project, changed the lyrics, and made it a John Lennon tribute.  In many ways, it would be the closet thing people got to a Beatles reunion until the “Anthology” in the mid 9os.  Ringo was on drums, George was singing lead, Paul was on bass and sang backup with his wife Linda.  Famed Beatle producer George Martin contributed to the track’s production along with Geoff Emerick, the famous Beatle studio engineer.  The song is a nostalgic wonder, mixing elements of Chuck Berry guitar riffage, Bob Dylan lyricism, and sweet Beatle vocal backing magic, all classic marks of George’s songwriting.  The lyrics tell the story of George’s love for John, and his agreement with John’s life philosophies.  It also includes attacks on John’s critics, my personal favorite part.  It accomplishes a lot of ideas both musically and lyrically, but leaves you wanting more.  That’s probably the point because the biggest crime in John’s death, outside the destruction of his family, was how this was a man taken too soon.  John was nowhere near finished as an artist and as a leader of peace loving people around the world.  George knew that more then anyone, and created a song that I, and many others, can’t help but replay over and over.  Enjoy.

When the Beatles split in 1970, it was mainly a split between John and Paul.  It’s odd because George, Paul, and Ringo would have kept the group going, but because John wanted to end it, George and Ringo became as enthusiastic as John about kiboshing the whole affair.  I suppose John had more good will with the “sidemen” then Paul did, and as a result, John collaborated much more frequently with his former mates than Paul did.  In this video, I have an intimate portrait of John and George rehearsing one of Lennon’s more tender ballads, “Oh, My Love,” from the Imagine album.  It’s a cool scene where you George fiddle around with a steel guitar, and John ruminate with Yoko on their philosophies about love and sex.  You also get to see George lay down those awesome electric licks that instill in the ballad its beautiful perfection.  This video also serves as a great preview for the upcoming Martin Scorsese HBO documentary on George Harrison’s life, “Living in the Material World,” which premieres in early October.  Enjoy.

To paraphrase George Harrison, “the “you” in the song, is God.”  Gaining this insight gives the song even more creepy mysticism.  “Long, Long, Long,” from the “White Album,” is officially one of my favorite Beatles songs.  Like many people growing up with the Beatles, I wasn’t a fan of the song until I got much older.  When I was a little kid, it was too quiet (probably the quietest Beatles song in the catalog) and too boring for me to really feel.  As I grew older,  I realized it was a master class of songwriting and personal expression, and it began to affect me greatly.  It’s simply a fantastic gorgeous ode to love and God, expressed in the most ambiguous way imaginable.  I also love the little high pitched organ part, which reminds me of an ice queen ballerina dancing alone in the snow.  What’s that mysterious rattle at the end of the song you ask?  It’s a bottle of wine vibrating to the frequency of a peculiar Hammond organ note being played by Paul McCartney.  Pretty cool no?  You know what else is cool, you only have 4 more days to vote me as CBS’s Best Local NYC Blogger, by clicking here!

The Beatles are one of those bands so famous, that to the untrained ear of the average person, its hard to tell which Beatle is singing what.  Of course, such distinctions are “Beatles 101” to hardcore fans, but part of the confusion lies in the seamless harmonic blend Lennon and McCartney produced in many of their classic hits.  When they weren’t sharing a lead vocal or a song dominated by harmonies, the Beatles had simple rules about who was going to sing lead for any given song.  Normally, the principle songwriter was the logical choice for the lead.  It was very rare when these roles were reversed.  For instance, there isn’t one song that George or Ringo wrote that John or Paul sang lead on, and there isn’t one instance in the Beatle catalog of Paul or John writing a song specifically for their partner to tackle.  There were anomalies of course.  Sometimes John would write a song with melodic sections too high for him to reach, so he’d have Paul take over.  This is evident in the bridge 0f “A Hard Day’s Night,” and the choruses of “Anytime At All.”  “Day Tripper,” another John song, was almost entirely out of John’s vocal range, and so Paul becomes the dominant voice throughout the verses with John beefing up the lower harmonies and the bridge.  Despite this, John and Paul never poached each others tunes, or more exactly, they were so competitive, they wouldn’t allow it.  This came to a head during the Abbey Road sessions when John really wanted Paul’s “Oh! Darling,” but Paul wouldn’t give it up.  All this history leads to the rarity of the video I’m about to present which is a near complete performance of John Lennon singing Paul’s 1969 hit “Get Back.”  What makes this so rare and interesting is that for starters, Paul sings the lead on the record and in the live rooftop performance.  Secondly, to have John sing a Paul song with fun and relish right when they were breaking up is extremely bizarre given how their respective massive egos could barely keep them in the same room by that point.  What’s also interesting about John’s performance here is that he includes bits of lyrics that Paul originally wrote about Pakistanis taking British jobs, but later cut out due to political incorrectness.  So, with all that said, I’ve laid out this super treat of rock and roll goodness for all you to enjoy, but before you do, make sure to cast your vote for CBS’s Best Local NYC blogger, in which I’m a finalist.  Remember, if you’ve voted already, you can vote again, once every day until the contest ends on September 9th.  Just click these words to help me out, I really appreciate it!

Wait, don’t go just yet.  As a bonus I’ve included another ultra rare performance, this time its none other than George Harrison taking his shot at singing lead at “Get Back.”  He was doing as a guiding track for Doris Troy’s cover version that she was cutting for Apple in 1970.  George isn’t as intense as John or Paul, but he’s having a good time leading this funkier version of “Get Back,” plus he even tries to make up his own new melodic section at the end before he gives up.  AWESOME!

I normally don’t update twice in one day, but news such as this demands action on my part.  I am a massive George Harrison fan, and when I heard a few years ago that Martin Scorsese was putting together a three and a half hour George Harrison documentary, I started counting down the days.  At last, the film is finished, and will get its premiere on HBO on October 5th and 6th in two parts.  To casual fans of rock and roll, George Harrison is known as the “Quiet Beatle,” but hard core Beatle fans know he was anything but.  In many ways, George was the most radical Beatle, refusing to conform to any traditional system of life living.  He was a rule breaker and a seeker, blazing new frontiers in his own quest to figure out why the world was so miserable, and what he could do about it.  Lastly, he was a beautiful musician, criminally overshadowed by his Beatle friends, who unfairly excluded him from the tight partnership thing that Lennon and McCartney formed in the early Beatle days.  Paul McCartney even admitted that there was nothing stopping him and John from excluding George, other than feeling superior to him via their dominant personalities and older ages.  Also, it is really hard to blame Paul and John because when they were young boys making these decisions, it was impossible for them to know what impact such choices would hold in music history.  Its a silly footnote in rock history, but one made all the more remarkable as George blossomed his own unique musical genius with little help from his friends.  (Zing!)  Anyway, I’m the sure the documentary will cover these issues with greater complexity, so I’ll leave my own historical commentary to a minimum for now.  Enjoy the trailer, and don’t forget you can vote for me to be CBS’s top NY blogger!  Already voted?  Well, don’t let it stop you because you can vote once every day!  Just click these orange words, it only takes a second!

It’s a star studded part 97 on my youtube countdown, and the stakes are getting higher, and the stars are getting hotter as we close in on 100!  This time I have the undeniably fantastic performance of Carl Perkins and his super friends from the 1985 concert Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session.  Get this.  It’s iconic 50s guitar master Carl Perkins leading Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr, psychedelic Cream guitarist Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash’s daughter Rosanne, Dave Edmunds, and a SLEW of other slick stars of rock and rockabilly through a medley of joyous numbers.  Carl calls it his rock school, and boy, he is the greatest headmaster ever.  The greatest thing about this jam is that everybody, especially George Harrison, is just beaming with enthusiasm and excitement as they rock and bash their way through “It’s Alright Mama,” “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Night Train to Memphis,” and “Whole Lotta Shakin Going On.”  It’s just about the greatest fun in rockabilly ever caught on film, and you’ll want to replay it over and over.  So don’t let me stop you now.  Go cat go!