Recording Studios: (continued from part III…) All of which proved to be a great boon to Harrison. He immediately assembled a studio band consisting of Ringo Starr, guitarist Eric Clapton, keyboardist Billy Preston and others to record all of the songs that had never made it on to the Beatles catalog. The result was 1970’s three-disc album, All Things Must Pass. While one of its signature songs, “My Sweet Lord,” was later deemed too similar in style to the the Chiffons earlier hit “He’s So Fine,” forcing the guitarist to cough up nearly $600,000, the album as a whole remains Harrison’s most acclaimed record.
Not long after the album’s release, Harrison brandished his charitable leanings and continued passion for the East when he put together a series of groundbreaking benefit concerts held at New York City’s Madison Square Garden to raise money for refugees in Bangladesh. Known as the Concert for Bangladesh, the shows, which featured Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Badfinger and Ravi Shankar, would go on to raise some $15 million for UNICEF. They also produced a Grammy Award–winning album, and lay the groundwork for future benefit shows such as Live Aid and Farm Aid.
Recording Studios: Post Beatles Life
But not everything about post-Beatles life went smoothly for Harrison. In 1974, his marriage to Pattie Boyd, whom he’d married eight years before, ended when she left him for Eric Clapton. His studio work struggled, too. Living in the Material World (1973), Extra Texture (1975) and Thirty-Three & 1/3 (1976) all failed to meet sales expectations.
Following the release of that last album, Harrison took a short break from music, winding down his self-started label, Dark Horse, which had produced works for a number of other bands, and started his own movie production company, HandMade Films. The outfit underwrote Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the cult classic Withnail and I and would go on to release 25 other movies before Harrison sold his interest in the company in 1994.
