Bob Dylan And Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Thunder Revue—Harvard Square Theater, Cambridge, MA, November

Another favourite moment from ‘Get Back’ is when George is complaining about delaying takes for ciggies, tea and wine so they immediately turned the recording light on him. He was ready tho.

Miss O'Dell: Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton / Romeo and Juliet; Dire Straights / If Not For You; George Harrison and Bob Dylan / George Harrison for Creem magazine; 1987 / Tom Petty for Rolling Stone; 2002 / Romeo and Juliet; Dire Straights / Bob Dylan for Rolling Stone; 2001

George making Bob smile

The Basement Tapes (Trailer, 2015)

Okay I’m curious, what exactly is the story of George Harrison at Woodstock?

I will try to be brief.

Ok, so in 1968, right after the white album was released, George was invited to go to woodstock for the thanksgiving. As he said on I Me Mine; "I was invited there by The Band. It was Thanksgiving time and I'd just finished producing a Jackie Lomax album, directly after the Beatles 'White' Album."

He also mentions in an interview — I think it's for Musician, in 1987? — that he thinks he was invited there by Robbie Robertson.

Robbie mentions the visit in his memoir, Testimony, and he says that he had to convince Albert Grossman to let George stay at his house, and also that "Bob [Dylan] was keeping a very low profile, and when I asked him if he wanted to see George while he was in town, he too was a little iffy at first."

It's a very known fact that George was a big fan of Bob Dylan — he mentioned that in a lot of interviews, and everyone around him mentioned that too, besides the fact that he was always quoting Bob —, and during that time in Woodstock, he wrote two songs with Bob.

The first one is I'd have you anytime:

I have a post about the unused lyrics for that song that might be interesting for now.

George mentions in I Me Mine that "He [Bob] seemed very nervous, and I felt a little uncomfortable — it seemed strange, especially as he was in his own house.", and he also says that the song was written in the third day there. Later, Olivia mentioned that, when George wrote the lines 'Let me in here, I know I've been here, Let me into your heart', he was "directly talking to Bob".

The second song that they wrote together was...

One thing about this song: it wasn't finished. There are only demos of it. But it still is a very interesting song... in the lyrics on I Me Mine, there is this unused part:

That was substituted with "I get tired of being Beatle Jeff" / "I get tired of being Beatle Ted".

One fun fact about that song is that it had different names through the years. This was mentioned the George Harrison website: "Nowhere To Go was a collaboration between George and Dylan from their 1968 Thanksgiving visit that also yielded ‘I’d Have You Anytime’. It was first called ‘Thingymubob’, then ‘When Everybody Comes to Town’. ‘I Get Tired’ was also a working title and finally, by the time of the All Things Must Pass sessions, it is titled ‘Nowhere To Go’."

George mentioned the song using the title 'Thingymubob' in a letter to Bob, where he wrote the chords of the song.

Going back to The Band, Robbie said this, on testimony: "I was very curious about recording techniques the Beatles had discovered. George described their process as extremely experimental and sometimes accidental. I could definitely relate to that. When George inquired about the Band’s recording methods, I could barely keep up with him. For every question I posed to him, he asked me two about [Music From] Big Pink and The Basement Tapes [...]"

He also said this: "But George was one of the most open people I’d ever met, and Pattie was one of the prettiest and sweetest. George spoke incredibly candidly about the problems within the Beatles. John, he said, was far out on a limb, testing his balance. “Kinda crazy,” he laughed. And our dear Ringo was following in the tradition of many a hard-drinking Brit—apparently he had threatened to quit the band at one point. George was quick to admit there were serious tensions between Paul and him. 'Whenever I present a tune, the Lennon and McCartney songwriting team will ignore it as long as they can,' he said. 'Sometimes I even have to fight for my guitar parts. Paul has such a clear idea of how the song should go that he tells me what to play, or he wants to play it himself.'"

Two very interesting things here: the fact that George was talking about the problems in the Beatles, and also the fact that he was very interested in asking about the band records.

From I Me Mine; "When I wrote 'All Things Must Pass', I was trying to do a Robbie Robertson-Band sort of tune and that is what it turned into." He also mentioned that, while writing the song, he always thought about Levon singing it. (I'm not sure about where he mentioned that, tho.)

There are some songs that Bob showed to George on that time and he played later — for example, I threw it all away, a song that was released on Nashville Skyline, was played by George during the get back sessions, in january 1969, even before Bob recorded his version, and also I don't want to do it, that was released by George in 1985 —, and that travel was basically the start of a long collaboration in music, between George and Bob.

Also, George talking about the problems in the Beatles during that travel makes Nowhere to Go have even more sense. And then, when the beatles got together to record an album, it was on the get back/let it be sessions.... when he famously quit the beatles for some days.

Well, i think I've talked a lot, but that's basically the story. George also gave a guitar to Bob, but I'm not sure about when that happened — especially because he used that guitar during the get back/let it be sessions, and then on the abbey road sessions...

Anyway, here are two pictures; in the first, Bob and George, and in the second, Robbie and George.

AND THAT'S IT! i think. Sorry if this wasn't brief at all. It took me one hour and a half to write all this, so i think i probably got lost somewhere and maybe i am forgetting something.

The First U.S. Visit (1964)

top ten thing s on this earth i feel sooo normal and regular about actually . so.

George Harrison & John Lennon | 1971

"I think that one of the things that I developed just by being in The Beatles was being bold and I think John had a lot to do with that. Because John Lennon, if he felt something strongly, he just did it. I picked up a lot of that by being a friend of John’s. Just that attitude of, 'Well, just go for it, just do it.'" ~ George Harrison

George Harrison during the recording of the song How Do You Sleep? (1971)