THE George Harrison Project celebrates “the quiet Beatle’s” best-loved hits from the Fab Four, his solo career and The Traveling Wilburys at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, on May 10 at 7.30pm.
Alongside John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Harrison helped The Beatles become the best-selling music act of all time with 600 million units shifted worldwide.
After the Liverpudlian four-piece called time on Beatlemania, Harrison released 12 solo studio albums, including 1970’s triple disc All Things Must Pass, 1973’s Living In The Material World, 1974’s Dark Horse, 1987’s Cloud Nine and 2002’s posthumous Brainwashed, following his death on November 29 2001.
The George Harrison Project’s artwork, featuring multiple Harrison song titles
In 1988, in Malibu, California, Harrison co-founded the British-American supergroup with Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison.
Returning to York as part of the tribute act’s 2025 tour, The George Harrison Project combines such songs as Taxman, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Something, Here Comes The Sun, All Things Must Pass, My Sweet Lord, Blow Away, Handle With Care and Got My Mind Set On You with video footage and interesting facts about Harrison and his music.
Bootleg Beatles: Get back to York Barbican tomorrow night
LET’S start at the end: the “final” Beatles song, Now And Then, the Fab Four’s 18th chart topper and first in 54 years since 1969’s The Ballad Of John And Yoko.
Yes, the fastest-selling vinyl single of the 21st century will be incorporated into the Bootleg Beatles’ perfectly timed return to York Barbican tomorrow night (13/12/2023).
“It will feature towards the end of the show, in the section when we’re covering the final years of The Beatles,” says Steve White, who is entering his 12th year as the tribute band’s Paul McCartney.
“We hope people are moved by it, the way we present it with the lighting. I’ve seen a video of our performance and it’s really quite haunting.”
First watching the documentary that accompanied the reawakened ghost of John Lennon’s ballad, with its combination of Lennon’s original late-1970s’ demo, 1994 guitar lines by George Harrison and new parts by McCartney and Ringo Starr, Steve felt the hair on the back of his neck standing up on encountering Lennon’s vocal, separated through the magic of AI.
“It’s a melancholy song, appropriate for the end of The Beatles, and then having to learn it, I could have broken down in tears when we played it for the first time at The Crown in Melbourne on our Australian tour,” he says. “The moment we started the first chord, the crowd just stood up. It was an amazing feeling.”
The song’s title could not be more apt: the now and the then of The Beatles. “We have lost two already, and there are two to go, so to speak. We’re never gonna see anything like them again. Never ever going to see the real thing again,” says Steve.
“With every year that ticks by, we appreciate more than ever that Paul and Ringo are part of the UK’s fixtures and fittings. I’m dreading when they go. Paul is my absolute hero.
“I don’t know him and yet I feel like I know him, and it will feel like losing a member of the family when the day comes. I just hope that I get the chance to say hello, shake his hand and thank him for all the music he has brought us, telling him ‘you are the most amazing musician there’s ever been’. That’s all I’d want to say. He means so much to me.”
Nottinghamshire musician Steve had first been a member of The Beatles Experience with three friends. “We didn’t set out to be a Beatles band but a Sixties’ covers band, but we were all huge fans of The Beatles and kind of based ourselves on them,” he recalls.
“We used to do a few Beatles songs in the set, and someone asked if we could play just Beatles songs at their 60th birthday party, then a wedding anniversary, and it began to overshadow our Sixties’ tribute show.”
At the time, Steve was the band’s rhythm guitarist, “effectively John Lennon”, he says. “But people kept saying you have to be Paul, because you look more like him – I’m blessed with the eyebrows! – so me and the bass player switched over.
“That meant I had to learn to play [guitar] left-handed, being a right hander. To get to a very crude level of playing took me three months, playing six to eight hours a day, then gradually getting more professional to fill in the blanks.”
Steve went on to audition for the Bootleg Beatles, first sending in a video, then auditioning in person, the process whittling down the applicants to “serious contenders to play with the rest of the band to see how we gelled”.
White, who had seen the Bootleg Beatles many times, was the right fit and continues to travel the long and winding road through the Fab Four Sixties after more than a decade of Bootleg service.
For the past six years, he has been accompanied on the nostalgia trip by Tyson Kelly’s John, Steve Hill’s George and Gordon Elsmore’s Ringo as they re-create the sound and look of each Beatles’ phase in fastidious detail.
“We always go through the Beatles’ career from start to finish, picking out the key points, and so many are iconic, but you can switch the material, like the choice of psychedelic songs,” says Steve. “This show is markedly different: different costumes, guitars, material – and Now And Then of course.
“As usual, we’ll be travelling with our resident orchestra too, four brass and four string players, and another guy, who plays keys.”
The Beatles are back with Now And Then and expanded reissues of their Red and Blue compilations, just as old rivals The Rolling Stones resurface with Hackney Diamonds, their first album of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang.
Steve will always be in the Beatles camp. “The Rolling Stones, no discredit to the Stones, as they’re an incredible, iconic band, but they do have a ‘sound’, more of a blues edge. Early on The Beatles were more popified, the ‘unclean’ Stones were more edgy, still are, but The Beatles went on to be so diverse in such a short time together, spanning pretty much everything,” he says.
“How could you ever pigeonhole The Beatles? You couldn’t. It’s impossible.”
Bootleg Beatles, York Barbican, December 13, 7.30pm. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.
Laura Cantrell: Leading off her summer tour in Leeds on Friday
NEW York country singer Laura Cantrell opens her 14-date British summer tour at Leeds Brudenell Social Club on Friday.
She will be promoting her first studio album in nine years, Just Like A Rose: The Anniversary Sessions, released on June 9 on the Propeller Sound Recordings label.
Nashville-born Laura, 55, is joined on the recordings by longtime friends Steve Earle, Buddy Miller, Rosie Flores and Paul Burch.
Featured too are musicians Mark Spencer(Son Volt, Lisa Loeb),Jeremy Chatzky (Ronnie Spector, Bruce Springsteen), Kenny Vaughan (Marty Stuart’s Fabulous Superlatives), Fats Kaplan (John Prine, Jack White), Dennis Crouch (Robert Plant, Diana Krall) and Jen Gunderman (Cheryl Crow, Jayhawks).
Cantrell’s co-writers include Mark Winchester(Randy Travis, Carlene Carter), Fred Wilhelm (Rascal Flats, Faith Hill) and Gary Burr (Patty Loveless, Ringo Starr). An unreleased Amy Rigby song and a new recording of When The Roses Bloom Again, adapted by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, are further highlights.
Originally, the album was intended to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Cantrell’s debut, Not The Tremblin’ Kind,in 2020, but recording was delayed by Covid restrictions. Eventually, the new collection was completed in studios in the New York City area and country capital Nashville.
“I thought I had figured it all out,” Laura muses, as she recalls her initial puzzlement in 2019 at how to acknowledge the approaching 20th anniversary of her first album. “I wanted to salute different aspects of my music life for the last two decades, to create more of a celebration than a traditional album.
“The idea of recording and releasing a series of singles in real time was intriguing, so I started a crowd-funding campaign and launched it on March 1 2020.”
Within days, the world was a very different place, however. Cantrell duly placed her plans on hold while the pandemic raged in her neighbourhood in Jackson Heights, New York, and throughout the world.
Slowly and fitfully, she pushed on as restrictions and delays changed the timeline and shape of her plans. “We moved so slowly I thought ‘this isn’t even happening’. But with the help of many great ‘music people’ the songs emerged,” says Laura.
The cover artwork for Laura Cantrell’s Just Like A Rose, her first studio album since 2014
“There was a risk working with different producers that the results would feel disjointed, but I love where the album landed. Having come through the gauntlet of the pandemic, I felt so much joy in the process, I hope people hear and feel that in the tracks themselves.”
The material spans Cantrell’s latest songwriting and songs she has been humming to herself since before she had had her own band or played her own shows. “It is interesting maturing into your musical worldview,” she says.
“You still have songs that hit you like you’re a teenager with your first crush, and others that reflect more experience and nuance, or frustration with tough realities, and then those you just love purely as music – there’s a bit of it all on this album.”
Since 2000, Cantrell has released the albums Not The Tremblin’ Kind, When The Roses Bloom Again (2002), Humming By The Flowered Vine (2005), Kitty Wells Dresses: Songs Of The Queen Of Country Music (2011), No Way There From Here (2014) and The BBC Sessions (2016).
She was a favourite of the late pioneering radio presenter John Peel, who called Not The Tremblin’ Kind “my favourite record of the last ten years, and possibly my life”. She recorded several Peel Sessions for the BBC from 2000 to 2004 and appeared on the first Peel Day programme on BBC Radio One commemorating the first anniversary of Peel’s death.
She presented a weekly country and old-time msuic radio show on WFMU, The Radio Thrift, and since August 2017 she has hosted Dark Horse Radio, SiriusXM’s weekly programme featuring the music of George Harrison on The Beatles Channel. Her show States Of Country streams on GimmeCountry.
Away from music, Cantrell held a day job as a vice-president in the equity research department of Bank of America until 2003 and later began working as a recruiter for AllianceBernstein.
Brudenell and Please Please You presents Laura Cantrell, supported by Doug Levitt, at Leeds Brudenell Social Club on Friday (23/6/2023) at 8pm. Box office: brudenellsocialclub.co.uk or seetickets.com.
Track listing for Just Like A Rose: The Anniversary Sessions
1.Push The Swing (Laura Cantrell/Mark Winchester)
2. Bide My Time (Mark Winchester/Laura Cantrell)
3. Brand New Eyes (Amy Rigby)
4. Just Like A Rose (Laura Cantrell/Mark Spencer)
5. When The Roses Bloom Again (Jeff Tweedy/Public Domain)
6. Secret Language (Laura Cantrell)
7. Unaccompanied (Laura Cantrell/Fred Wilhelm)
8. I’m Gonna Miss This Town (Laura Cantrell/Fred Wilhelm)
9. Good Morning Mr. Afternoon (Joe Flood)
10. Holding You In My Heart(Laura Cantrell/Gary Burr)
Under discussion too are: the London lag and York boom after Step 4; Sharon Latham’s Noel Gallagher exhibition at RedHouse Originals, Harrogate; M Night Shyamalan’s hokum new movie Old, plus futurist novelist Julian Barnes on foreseeing no future for the arts in 1980’s Metroland. Should we be worried?
Andy Fairweather Low: Returning to Pocklington Arts Centre next February
ANDY Fairweather Low, the veteran Welsh guitarist, songwriter, vocalist and producer, will play Pocklington Arts Centre on February 11 next year.
Founder and cornerstone of Sixties’ hitmakers Amen Corner, and later part of Fair Weather and The Bleeding Heart Band, he will perform withThe Low Riders: drummer Paul Beavis, bassist Dave Bronze and saxophonist Nick Pentelow.
Pocklington Arts Centre director Janet Farmer says: “Andy Fairweather Low’s pedigree is the stuff rock dreams are made of. Throughout his career, he’s worked with some of the greatest musicians in the world, so we’re delighted that he will once again be performing live here next February. He’s an incredible talent and a truly fantastic addition to our programme of live events.”
Fairweather Low rose to fame as vocalist and leader of Amen Corner from 1966, notching up hits with the chart-topping (If Paradise Is) Half As Nice, Hello Suzy and Bend Me Shape Me. On reinventing himself as a solo artist, he reached number six with Wide Eyed And Legless in December 1975.
Over the years, Cardiff-born Fairweather Low, 72, has played with Roger Waters, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Emmylou Harris, Jimi Hendrix, The Band, Elton John, Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings and Sheryl Crow.
Aa a stalwart of Eric Clapton’s band since the early 1990s, playing on tours until 2003, he has recorded the Unplugged, From The Cradle, Pilgrim, Riding With The King, Reptile, One More Car One More Rider, Me & Mr Johnson and Back Home albums with ‘Slowhand’.
Fairweather Low was a regular player with George Harrison, performing on his Live In Japan album. In 2002, he played several of the lead guitar parts for the Harrison tribute, The Concert For George.
One of his longest-running musical relationships has been with Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, working together since Waters’ Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking tour of the United States in 1985.
Since then, Fairweather Low has contributed to two of Waters’ albums, 1987’s Radio K.A.O.S and 1992’s Amused To Death, and played guitar and bass on the In The Flesh world tour from 1999 to 2002. He then re-joined Waters for the Dark Side Of The Moon tour.
Tickets for Fairweather Low’s 8pm show cost £25 at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
