Welcome to Nothing is Real, a podcast about the Beatles. Everybody thinks they know the Beatles, but how much do we really know?

My name's Jason Carty. My name's Stephen Corkroft.

And we're live on tape from Dublin and Belfast.

On the 1st of August, 1971 in Madison Square Garden, a concert took place, two concerts actually, labeled George Harrison and Friends, but now known more commonly as the concerts for Bangladesh.

Although credited as a precursor to live aid and other

charity gigs, it was a rock and roll star-studded event, which could have been a precursor to

a different kind of solo George Harrison, perhaps. We kind of look back on Bangladesh pretty fondly

as a gig, don't we? Yes, I think so.

I think it did a lot for George's reputation.

It was sort of the big, first time I suppose you had that notion of a band with people coming on and off and playing with the same band rather than individual people coming on doing a set.

But yeah, and it was literally George stepping out onto the stage as a solo artist

after all things must pass.

So what we're going to talk about in our episodes on this is how the concert came together,

where George was, what actually happened on the day, all the after effects and, you know, the big million

dollar question of what did it all mean? What did it all mean, Stephen? You know, what did it all mean?

Well, I think we can, it means we're still talking about it all this time. Well, that is true. And it did,

I think what we'll kind of talk about is musically, it's still a pretty good gig you know it wasn't a bad gig it was a rather good

good gig was a rather good gig um so where to begin should we start off by doing a full two or three

hours on the socio geopolitical aspect of what was going on in Bangladesh east pakistan uh ind, all that kind of stuff.

I think so. I have two lines of notes on that.

So I think we could probably spin that out 10 a hour or so.

Well, it's, I did go off and try and understand some of this because I thought it's a bit

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