The doomed solo tour that George Harrison hated performing | CPT PPP Coverage

As each of the respective band members embarked upon their solo careers, McCartney, Lennon, and even Starr all performed live regularly. Harrison, on the other hand, tried to keep live appearances to a minimum wherever possible. Seemingly, the quiet, relaxed, and peaceful nature of Harrison’s character was completely at odds with the realities of loud, excitable live performances, so the guitarist simply did not tour very often. After all, it is not as if Harrison needed to tour; his reputation as a former Beatle alone was enough to perpetually sustain a music career.

Nevertheless, Harrison was beloved by millions of fans and musicians alike, so he was pretty in demand in terms of touring. As a result, his long-time friend and occasional collaborator Eric Clapton finally convinced Harrison to embark upon a tour in 1991. However, the results did little to ease Harrison’s hatred of live performances.

Reflecting on the experience with Rolling Stone, Clapton recalled, “George and I have been friends for a great long time, and we’ve always seemed to be around when one of us needs the other one. And when I was on the tour last year […] people kept asking me about George, about how he was and what he was doing. And when I got back to England, I reported all this to George, and we started talking, on a very light-hearted level, about going out on the road.”

The selling point for Harrison was his apparent lack of required effort. “All he’s got to do, essentially, is walk out on the stage and strum an acoustic guitar, and we’ll do everything else,” Clapton shared, “Nothing for him to worry about. And I put it to him, and he was delighted and scared at the same time – really scared to death. Because it’s been a long time, I mean fifteen years or so, since his last American tour.”

Contrary to Clapton’s promises, the tour did not exactly go to plan. “He had an awful time,” the legendary guitarist remembered, “I think he lost his voice on day one, and there was a lot of dope and drink and all kinds of mad stuff going on, which didn’t help him to recover his voice.” For all its issues, however, the doomed American tour did not completely destroy Harrison’s appetite for touring. That same year, he and Clapton performed across Japan.

“He changed his mind about five different times,” Clapton said of the Japan tour, “saying he’d do it and then he wouldn’t do it. It was almost definitely off, and at the last minute, he changed his mind, so now it’s back on again.” Although the Japanese tour went considerably better than its American counterpart, it ended up being Harrison’s final solo tour before his tragic death in 2001.

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