George Harrison of the Beatles and Ravi Shankar organised two concerts on 1 August 1971 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, as relief for refugees from East Pakistan after the Bangladesh Liberation War-related genocide. The gigs featured Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and Badfinger. We talk here about both the concert film released to cinemas in 1972, and the 2005 documentary on the DVD, The Concert for Bangladesh Revisited with George Harrison and Friends.

We discuss how this set a template for the benefit concert as we know it today, and talk about the white saviour complex and how acknowledging the culture of Bangladesh through Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan's performance arguably sets the concert apart. We also talk about the performances; and the challenges of, and comically rookie errors made while, filming it. And! Is Clapton's lacklustre performance down to choosing a hollow-bodied guitar, or the fact he was boxed on methadone?

• We use clips of the film and concert in this episode, so we've made a donation to the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF, and you can do the same here if you'd like: https://www.unicefusa.org/about-unicef-usa/partnerships/foundations/george-harrison-fund
• The concert on George's official site, with links to buy the DVD: https://www.georgeharrison.com/films/the-concert-for-bangladesh
• John Lennon's benefit gig for Willowbrook State School was released as Live in New York City: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6cgunr
• The Greatest Night in Pop is the Netflix documentary about the recording of We Are The World: https://www.netflix.com/title/81720500
• The documentary we were thinking of is not called “Clapton” or “Slow Hand” but 2017’s Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars: https://g.co/kgs/hAKZ9Tk
• After recording we confirmed that, uncharacteristically, Ed was right: Setlist.fm shows that If I Needed Someone is the only song written by George ever performed live by The Beatles. https://www.setlist.fm/stats/the-beatles-23d6a88b.html

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

The Beatles Films Podcast is hosted by Matt Looker and Ed Williamson. We're both film writers and Beatles fans. Between us we've written for TheShiznit.co.uk, Total Film, Den of Geek and Virgin Media.

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