Martin Scorsese's George Harrison documentary 'Living In The Material World'

On HBO 'in the autumn' then on DVD from October!
http://www.nme.com/news/george-harrison/58015

If it's half as good as No Direction Home, consider me psyched.

wtf

http://www.guitarworld.com/files/imagecache/featured-node/georgeharrison.jpg

super-stoked but also totally surprised by this

ok wau

bit gutted this is on HBO before coming to DVD. is there anywhere you can pay for/stream/ watch HBO if you're in the UK?

I hope we get an extended Paul monologue in which he finally admits how much he hated George's guts.

haha aw c'mon now. we'll get Macca on *mega* respectful form i'm guessing.

Sound more appealing to me than the Dylan doc tbh, since Harrison seems like much less of an already-analyzed-to-death figure.

I love that poster.

was reading a bit about this in a recent conversations w/ scorsese book, i think he said it was kind of like a sequel to Kundun, haha.

it was Lennon that hated Harrison's guts iirc

I think George hated Paul far more than the other way around. Paul was casually dismissive, and when George finally told him to go fuck himself, Paul was all, "Whuh? What'd I do? Oh, right, I ignored you and belittled your talents."

treated him like a little kid, refused to play on his songs, etc.

I think it was only later when Paul became totally overbearing that they became united in their disdain

I think George hated Paul far more than the other way around.

also this

The song "what is life" has been kicking my ass this week. Will watch this.

haha I can understand why John and Paul would belittle him or at best underestimate him. What's the Lennon quote? "It wasn't a conspiracy to keep him out -- it's that his songs weren't up to scratch."

John actually refusing to work on George's stuff is such a dick move tho

Looking forward to this, but I have a little less faith in Marty after his Stones doc. Also, the subject matter is dead, so who knows how this will go.

I don't know if he refused; he just wasn't in the room when "I Me Mine" and "Here Comes The Sun" were recorded.

I'm thinking of stuff earlier than that...?

I'm not sure I would play on "I Me Mine" either.

Lennon's not on Long, Long, Long

What's the Lennon quote? "It wasn't a conspiracy to keep him out -- it's that his songs weren't up to scratch."

if lennon actually said this then some annoyance on george's part is understandable, considering by the last year or so of the group's existence george was coming up with things like 'something' and 'here comes the sun' while john was coming up with things like 'dig a pony' and 'dig it.'

or Savoy Truffle

xp

I sympathize with George. The most terrible part about being George Harrison is becoming friends with bandmates you met when you were twelve and then realizing that two of them wre going to keep talking to you as if you were twelve for the rest of your life.

In related news, Gretsch announced this week the new George Harrison signature model Duo Jet, which he is holding in both these pictures:

http://beatlesblogger.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/harrison-gretsch.jpg

http://www.fakeplasticrock.com/wp-content/uploads/harrison-gretsch.jpg

xxxp Yeah, much more important for everyone to spend time on a 30-minute version of fucking "Dig It" than on "I Me Mine."

the three songs suck

'i me mine' is excellent!

I'll take "It's All Too Much" or "Long Long Long."

http://www.fakeplasticrock.com/wp-content/uploads/harrison-gretsch.jpg

can't wait for intel inside to issue their tie-in signature george harrison disgusting chipset shirt

'i me mine' is excellent!

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, July 14, 2011 6:03 PM Bookmark

I always hear it as a complaint about his bandmates, which gives it a nice bite.

the irony of which is that without Paul's tempo change the thing would be a dirge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnx87LIDO9k

First time I've heard him speak. Not exactly chock-full of charisma is he? And they're his best sound bites?

Yes, those are his best soundbites. You learned more from that 2-minute video than anyone else who has spent a lifetime keeping up with George Harrison.

The only anecdotal evidence I've read of how much fun Harrison could supposedly be is in Tom Petty's Conversations With, in which he describes what a hoot the Wilburys sessions were, thanks to George in large part.

George could be pretty funny: his little skit with Lorne Michaels on SNL, appearing in The Rutles, his guest voice on the Simpsons...

George has always been my favorite for that reason.

I like that trailer--I love No Direction Home, and the trailer makes me optimistic.

I'm assuming Marty was in on the ground floor of this one.

Relative to the Dylan doc, yes, he was.

You must mean something a friend told me, that No Direction Home was completely orchestrated by Dylan. Whatever the case, a great film came out of it.

It was great, definitely. It's just that most of it -- the archival stuff, obviously, but also the later interviews -- was shot before Scorsese came on board as "director."

marty was in the ground floor of everything: he helped make woodstock

he liked 'the ladies' shock horror. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/04/beatles-george-harrison-martin-scorsese

According to Charlie Watts (in Peter Doggett's depressing but indispensable You Never Give Me Your Money), the attack on George by the intruder was far worse than it was made out to be at the time.

Two of the former Beatles being murdered would have almost defied credibility. It really is a weird world.

Also this is why McCartney tours all the time now and lives in the ass end of nowhere. "Nobody's getting' close to me, mate!"

yeah Dogget's book is an amazing thing; properly eye-opening.

why the guy needed so much spiritual healing

He was, I think, a devout Hindu and Hinduism actually has an answer for this: that birth is the root cause of suffering. That may not explain the details of his particular situation, but it does explain the larger issue.

I like the part where Olivia says something like "He had to work out alot of karma over his life. If you asked someone if they wanted to live a standard life or go through 5 lifetimes to work the karma out, he would have chosen the latter." Sort of touches on that.

She actually says he would have chosen the former, right? I saw that clip.

Also, I think suffering can be day-to-day and not tied in with specific traumatic events. So the question is how one would deal with that in a documentary context.

Yeah, well I meant living 5 lives worth of karma in one. That's what he would've chosen.

Wish someone would dig up that "Something" harpsichord rehearsal from the "Piggies" sessions...

So, it was because he was born?

Getting out of the birth-and-death cycle of samsara ain't nothing.

karma's a bitch

What about cesarian?

How long did Wyman want this to be? Some of his objections seem pedantic. It's made pretty clear that GH slept around - do we have to have names and numbers?

There could have been more on the music I guess but I found all the non-musical activity filled out his personality and said more about how he saw his role as an ex-Beatle, ie using clout to get shit done while also having fun. I can't say that at any point I found myself thinking, "Fuck this, where's Jeff Lynne?" The studio footage of the Wilburys, with its horrific leisure wear and rich-guys-goofing-around vibe, told me more about them than Lynne could.

Put it this way: I'd rather watch Scorsese's take than Wyman's.

The studio footage of the Wilburys, with its horrific leisure wear and rich-guys-goofing-around vibe, told me more about them than Lynne could.

That they were confident about their ability to write funny, sharp tunes without putting on airs?

I didn't even mean that negatively (apart from the leisure wear). I just mean you get a powerful sense from the footage of why they were doing it and how much they enjoyed it - it doesn't need earnest talking-head explication. It is intensely redolent of life in the rock elite in the late 80s though.

srsly, if you want a full exposition of his life, influences and situations, buy the book.

If there is one, of course. The McCartney one "Fab" is excellent, is there one for George?

Well, for a documentary so interested in biography at the expense of music it's obvious that a few quotes from the Wilbury years would have illuminated how and why Harrison bloomed in their company – aesthetically too – and not, say, Paul's.

Maybe. The chemistry made sense to me just from the studio footage and Petty's comments but then documentaries, like biographies, are always going to have omissions that seem minor to some and egregious to others.

bloomed in their company – aesthetically too – and not, say, Paul's.

Weary of this meme. I suppose they had their differences.

Have to say, Paul gives 100% on bass and background vocals on George's Beatle songs.

^^^^ Seriously, Paul's work on "Something," "I Want To Tell You," "Think For Yourself, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Piggies," etc. is superlative. If asked to name Paul's greatest bass work in The Beatles, most people would almost certainly say "Something" or "Taxman."

Plus that blistering solo on "Taxman" which is also Paul.

That's not at all what I meant, which is my fault for not being clear. A more probing approach to this biography would have gotten to the roots of the Paul-George tension: interviewing Petty, Eric Idle, Lynne, and Clapton about why he loved their company.

Because those guys got to hang out with a Beatle, then found that they shared a sense of humour and/or outlook, and such like, and became firm friends.

As opposed to 'got a kid to join the band, became mates, spent a lot of time living in each others pockets, had a 'bro' relationship with all that entails, etc'

Didin't manage to stay up for all of last night's but this is quite interesting.

In the two-hour chunk I saw on Saturday, only one talking head (Clapton) made this explicit. I liked his remarks about the horror show he would have entered had he joined the Beatles.

Do they talk about Handmade Films at any point?

Yes they do, with some of the Pythons.

Re: whether or not it's probing enough, I like the way it chooses to show rather than tell. The anecdote about George inviting Hell's Angels to hang out for days on end at the Apple offices and then being called on to get rid of them says so much about his sense of humour and his sense of remove from the business of the Beatles. I got a clear sense that he set out to be a different person after the Beatles, to seek out the right company and pursue his own varied interests. I think the Paul friction was more to do with the situation than the personalities. The strain was intolerable.

For me the first part was about the effect of intense fame and the second was about how you deal with it for the rest of your life.

1. No explanation of why the guy needed so much spiritual healing, despite about 100 minutes dedicated to his meditating and chanting.

this is a stupid question, stopped reading

See, I wanted a five-minute section explaining how George fell in love with Belinda Carlisle's music.

Maybe in the DVD extras?

Apparently he was very fond of her voice

i really want to see this

I liked the TW part alot. Mainly because as soon as I saw Roy Orbison my heart lept. But I like how they described the writing process, sort of like that Metallica movie where everyone throws out words, but with actually good songwriters and no psychiatric involvement.

Also, I got the impression from the film that they wrote "Handle With Care" purely as instrumental and then only came up with the words later, based on Tom Petty randomly seeing a "Handle With Care" sticker. Is that true?

According to Petty in Conversations With..., George already brought the chordal structure and most of the music (it was supposed to be a George b-side), then he and Lynne wrote the music for the Orbison section (Orbison presumably wrote the words; Petty doesn't say). Petty and Dylan wrote their section.

That Orbison section SLAYS.

Also every time I see Bob Dylan in that part it's LOL time.

The rest of the songs were true collaborations. The clip from the Orbison documentary released a few years ago shows George and the rest with legal pads testing rhymes for "Last Nite."

Well, this was pretty underwhelming, not sure what Scorsese was bringing to the party, the BBC docu. on Beatlemania that followed it was better. Maybe I'm just not interested enough in George Harrison. I've not heard any GH solo albums beyond "All Things" because an old flatmate of mine had this book:

http://ca.pbsstatic.com/l/51/0451/9780517520451.jpg

... and they just absolutely flay his solo albums mercilessly as humourless, self-righteous preachy bores.

^^^ I haven't read that book in years – since I was fifteen. It was one of my first exposures to the killing of sacred cows.

I don't at all agree with his hyperventilating over Band on the Run though.

Watched this over the weekend; thought it was rather dull. It does seem like George made some great friends and they miss him dearly, which was nice to see. I didn't feel like those interviewed were at all disingenuous about their affection.

For people who liked the Wilbury footage, I can't recommend the documentary that came with the re-release a few years ago highly enough. One of the few "throw in" dvds that I've watched more than once.

(x post)

Thats the book where (1975 version) they estimate in the afterword that John is down to his last £50k. Only about £200m out.

If I remember correctly he does like George 's 33 1/3.

Ha, I read that 1975 version too, which was of course before Thirty Three & 1/3 (aka Thirty Three & 1/ॐ

i turned it off after about an hour. boring

I thought this dragged a bit midway through the second disc, but for the most part I liked it. It became evident pretty quickly that chronology and facts weren't a big concern--you go from Hamburg to Sullivan in what seems like two minutes. And Scorsese is invisible; I'd read that he was going to be more hands-on here than in the Dylan film, but I couldn't see any evidence of that. Lots of great still images--there's a really beautiful colour one mid-'60s of George with his parents that I wish I could find online. Not that much explanation or analysis of things that have been explained and analyzed a million times already; footage of a bearded David Hemmings arriving at some strange event is sometimes enough. I always love listening to George Martin, and Paul and Ringo speak movingly of George's death.

yeah Ringo on George at the end was especially heartbreaking. most surprising bit = George trying to sue Ringo at one point in the 70s, as retold in that 1980s Micheal Aspel interview. never knew anything about that beforehand!

The one thing that stuck with me on this was the footage on the beach George and Olivia shot near the end of his life. The shots of their shadows on the sand definitely captured something -- a kind of peacefulness and wonder that, frankly, was missing from the rest of the thing.

"George Harrison was a very sensual person. If you ate food he wanted it to have a flavour."

Thought this may have been a Scorsese documentary on Madonna for a second. Read George Harrison last.

http://i.imgur.com/0Psd4.jpg

wow!

Just finished part one of this. Man, this is a slog. And I say this as one who has loved every other Scorsese music doc (yes, even Shine a Light).

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