CONCERT FOR GEORGE
November 29, 2002
Royal Albert Hall, London, England

The Concert for George was held on Friday, November 29th at London's Royal Albert Hall. The concert was organized by Olivia Harrison and Eric Clapton. Proceeds from the concert will be donated to the Material World Foundation.

George Harrison established the foundation in 1973, the year he released the album "Living in the Material World." "George gave the song royalties from that album to the foundation in order to allow people to explore other philosophies and cultures," Olivia Harrison said.

The following artists appeared at the Royal Albert Hall: Eric Clapton, Joe Brown, Jools Holland with Sam Brown, Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney, Billy Preston, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Ravi Shankar with Anoushka Shankar, and Ringo Starr.

"It was easy to pick the people for the show," Eric Clapton said. "A definite group of people were always involved in George's life at one stage or another."

The show was Eric's and Olivia's idea to start with," Jeff Lynne explained. "And I feel honoured to be among them."

The main backing band was led by Eric Clapton and featured:
Jeff Lynne, Andy Fairweather-Low, Albert Lee, Marc Mann and Dhani Harrison on guitars, Jim Keltner and Henry Spinetti on drums; percussionist Ray Cooper; Chris Stainton and Gary Brooker on keyboards; Jim Horn and Tom Scott on horns; Dave Bronze on bass; Katie Kisson and Tessa Niles on backing vocals.

Additional musicians include Jim Capaldi and Klaus Voormann.

The concert was performed in two halves: Eric Clapton introduced the evening. This was followed by an original composition for George by Ravi Shankar performed by a 40 member Indian and Western Orchestra, including Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and conducted by Anoushka Shankar. During this segment, they were joined by Jeff Lynne on guitar and vocals and Eric Clapton on backing vocals for "Inner Light." Ravi also spoke about George.

Former Monty Python members Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin started the second half performing the classics "Sit on My Face" and "The Lumberjack Song." This was followed by:

PRESS RELEASE PAUL McCARTNEY ROCK TRIP NAMED BILLBOARD'S TOUR OF THE YEAR (AND CORRECTS YOKO ONO)

Said Paul: "I'm thrilled with the success of this tour and with this accolade from Billboard. But I'm also pleased that we had so much fun doing the tour. I'd like to thank the band, our crew and all the crowds who helped to make it fun. We originally set out to play only a few weeks of gigs but it all grew to become something very special to me. So now we're looking at taking this show to new places for new fun in 2003".

Paul McCartney's new band features Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray on guitars, Paul 'Wix' Wickens on keyboards and Abe Laboriel Jr. on drums.

Capitol Records' 2-CD live album souvenir of the tour, 'Back In The U.S.' has just entered the Billboard Top 10 and a DVD concert film of the same title, which includes onstage, backstage and offstage footage, went straight to No.1 in the U.S. music DVD chart.

Paul McCartney's 2002 tour was promoted by London-based Marshall Arts in association in the U.S. with Clear Channel, Concerts West and The House Of Blues.

Tour director Barrie Marshall said: "In 40 years of the music industry I have never experienced a tour such as this. After a lifetime of making musical history, Paul not only re-made it to the top all over again but in doing so he made nights of magic for a million people to share and remember always".

While fans wait for a New Year announcement of 2003 concert dates, Paul McCartney has instituted an extra Christmas gig on the Internet. Through the especially-encrypted 'Back In The U.S.' DVD, fans can now gain access to a 'Secret Website' featuring a bonus, 30-minute show of Paul and his band playing through not-seen numbers and new songs.

Said Paul: "Everyone who came to the concerts made this a great year for us, so the secret website show is a little Christmas gift from me to you to say thanks for making this tour such a trip".

In reference to Yoko Ono's recently-reported disquiet about the "reversal" of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting credits on his new live album 'Back In The U.S.' - on which Beatles songs written by Paul McCartney are creditted "by Paul McCartney and John Lennon", Paul today issued the following statement:

"The truth is that this is much ado about nothing and there is no need for anybody to get their knickers in a twist. I'm quite happy with the situation and I'm not worried about what Yoko Ono is saying - as I am more excited about now, rather than then, having finished a great tour and winning No.1 tour of the year. The people whose opinion matters to me have had their say.

"But I think it's time that I made it clear what the facts are over this long-running and rather silly dispute.

"John and I wrote many songs together but in an article in Playboy magazine John very accurately divided the credit for each of the Beatles songs between us - 'I wrote this; this one was Paul's' etc. - and when I ran the exercise for myself a few years back for Barry Miles's book 'Many Years From Now' I found that John and I were in complete agreement as to who had done what.

"At the very beginning, the first time this ever came up was at a meeting at Brian Epstein's office in Albemarle Street in London between Brian, John and myself. I arrived at the meeting to find that Brian and John had already independently decided the the billing would be 'songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney'.

"I said 'What about McCartney/Lennon?' They said 'We'll do this for now and we can change it around to be fair at any point in the future'.

"Been reassured by this, I let the matter go and our songs became known as Lennon/McCartney songs, a fact I was perfectly happy about.

"Many years later, when we were involved in 'The Beatles Anthology' project, instead of using the term Lennon/McCartney, the songs were been creditted as 'written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney'. I made a request to Yoko Ono to have my name put first on the song 'Yesterday', which John had often admitted he had nothing whatsoever to do with.

"I felt that after 30 years this would be a nice gesture and something that might be easy for Yoko to agree with. At first she said yes, but then she rang back a couple of hours later and reversed her decision.

"The fact is that it was not a decision that was hers to make, but because of her objection I was not allowed to have my name in front of John's.

"Many people say to me that it doesn't matter and in many ways I agree, but an incident that happened recently made me wonder whether it wouldn't be such a bad idea to have each song labelled accurately so that people would know which of the two composers had the bigger input in which song.

"Late one night, I was in an empty bar flicking through the bar pianist's music book when I came across 'Hey Jude written by John Lennon'. If there is an argument for 'correct labelling' I think this is probably the best one. Computers these days often allow certain space for labelling of any item and as we all know the end of the label often gets cut off a sentence or title. For instance, I recently went to see a film for which the tickets described as 'Miss Congenia'.

"I personally don't see any harm in John's songs such as 'Strawberry Fields' and 'Help' being labelled 'by John Lennon and Paul McCartney' and my songs such as 'Let It Be' and 'Eleanor Rigby' being labelled 'by Paul McCartney and John Lennon'. It lays out the information so that no one is in any doubt as to who did what - and I have also point out to Yoko Ono that I'm happy for our co-written songs to have John's name in front of mine.

"I think it is fair and accurate for the songs that John declared were mine to carry my name first. This isn't anything I'm going to lose any sleep over, nor is it anything that will cause litigation, but it seems to harmless to me after more than 30 years of it been the other way for people like Yoko who have benefitted, and who continues to benefit from, my past efforts to be a little generous and to not have a problem with this suggestion of how to simply map out for those who do not know who wrote which of the songs".