George Harrison lost his battle with cancer 21 years ago this week, on November 29th, 2001, at the age of 58. The following year, Harrison’s widow Olivia and Eric Clapton organized a tribute concert to honor Harrison.
The Concert for George featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Gary Brooker, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Jim Capaldi, the Monty Python troupe and Ravi Shankar.
Clapton talked about organizing the event. He said, "I had no idea how big it should be, but it kind of took shape very quickly. I thought the Albert Hall would be good and it was easy to pick the people 'cause there was a definite group of people that were always involved in George's life at one stage or another and came and went."
Eric also talked about what Harrison would’ve thought of the event. He said, "I actually thought that he'd probably say, you know, 'Thanks very much Eric but I don't really want this,' you know, I mean that's the kind of George I knew. He could be very contrary, you know. And just when you think you were doing him a huge favor he'd kind of say, 'No, actually that's not what I want at all.' You never really knew if he was a 100-percent satisfied. But, I thought, 'What would I say if he said that?' and I thought, 'Well, I'm doing this for me actually. And that's more to the truth because I need to do this for him. But it is for me most of all. I need to be able to express my grief in this kind of way."
The event was recently re-mastered in Dolby Atmos Immersive Audio and was screened in theaters around the world this week.
[Source: Classic Hits Today]