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While waiting to buy the video (which I will be doing this week), I thought we'd start a discussion about it, such as George's band, Bob Dylan and all that.

Here's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from the concert:



Something I never knew: Eric Clapton used a hollow body Gibson Byrdland for the whole show. He seems to be struggling to reach the 21st and 22nd frets. He should have used George's Les Paul (sitting as a spare for George), like he did on the original recording. Drugs were really screwing the Eric, I think.

He talks about how screwed up and addicted he was in his book. Poor Eric, his performance was a lowlight of the show. Made up for it with his superlative efforts in Concert for George though!

Concert For Bangla Desh has always been one of my favorites. Quite a variety in that show.

It was the first concert of its kind, organized to benefit a charitable cause as it was. Never mind that Allen Klein pocketed most of the proceeds; it was still an historical first.

To be honest, I never thought Eric's performance deserved the amount of scorn it has received through the years. I believe he was perhaps troubled by his poor choice of weapon and he sounded too quiet and wimpy in the mix, but his playing was all right, I thought. He kept up, took decent leads when it was his turn, and didn't make any major blunders or distract from the show, pass out or throw up, etc. I always thought he did a pretty good job of it overall, and hearing the new remixes of some cuts on the recent Harrison compilation doesn't make me change my opinion that he did a decent, workmanlike job of the shows.

I'm pretty sure that George didn't even know if Clapton was going to show up at all for the gig. Jesse Ed Davis (playing the sunburst Tele) had rehearsed as the lead guitarist for the show and wasn't expecting Clapton to show up either. This made for a somewhat uncomfortable set for all.
Also, check out the Four (4) Fender Champ Amplifier Stack that George is playing through! He used the same setup on the Dick Cavett TV Show a few days after the concert - Cool...

JakeK wrote:While waiting to buy the video (which I will be doing this week), I thought we'd start a discussion about it, such as George's band, Bob Dylan and all that.

Here's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from the concert:



Something I never knew: Eric Clapton used a hollow body Gibson Byrdland for the whole show. He seems to be struggling to reach the 21st and 22nd frets. He should have used George's Les Paul (sitting as a spare for George), like he did on the original recording. Drugs were really screwing the Eric, I think.

If you watch the bonus disc, Clapton says in the interview that he made things very difficult for himself playing that guitar.
He says that he should have used a solid body guitar like a Strat of a Les Paul. He said it was due to him being in a "bad way."

Clapton DID collapse at one point...

also, I think he blames the guitar too much. A true professional should be able to use any guitar, and Byrdlands don't exactly suck - my $0.02.

But great video...one of my favorite concerts as well.

dpowell wrote:Clapton DID collapse at one point...

also, I think he blames the guitar too much. A true professional should be able to use any guitar, and Byrdlands don't exactly suck - my $0.02.

But great video...one of my favorite concerts as well.

Well, Byrdlands are short scale (Shorter than a Gibson, longer than a 325) AND have restricted access to high frets, I can see how he would blame the guitar at least for some of it.

It at least sounds better than "Man, have you ever mixed alcohol and cocaine???"

JakeK wrote:...Something I never knew: Eric Clapton used a hollow body Gibson Byrdland for the whole show. ...

I'm not sure when he switched but, at least on the opener, Wah Wah, Eric was playing a sunburst Strat!

Also, don't forget that there were two shows that day, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.

All the video footage and the album are from the evening show.

If I recall the DVD I got had extras in it where they talk about how George couldn't get Eric on a plane to make it to the concert. He also talks about how messed up on drugs he was and how he picked the wrong guitar. As was pointed out earlier, you need to access some frets pretty far down the fretboard for this song. It wasn't the right tool for the job.

That sunburst Strat might be the one Eric gave to Pete Townshend in 1972...

Maybe it broke a string after "Wah-Wah" and Eric switched to the Byrdland?

Good news: I'm planning to buy the DVD today! I'm looking forward to it, and according to Kira, I'm gonna love it.

Got the DVD, watching it tomorrow

Yeah, you gotta see it.