The Concert for Bangladesh took place 55 years ago today.
“To me [the starvation] was something happening in the newspapers. To [Ravi Shankar], a Bengali, it was intolerable. He was going to do the show, I was just going to introduce him. But then [I decided] to plug it into the Beatles concept, particularly John Lennon’s idea that you might as well make a film and a record and get some money going.” - George Harrison, Musician Magazine (March 1990) “Also, it [the Concert for Bangladesh] was actually Ravi Shankar’s idea to do what evolved into the Concert for Bangladesh and so whatever praise people put on me for what happened because of that show, it was really Ravi’s idea and all I was doing was trying to assist him in getting something that seemed to need to be done at that time. Anyway, that concert really helped to encourage similar other kind of benefits, good charitable causes and obviously it’s good that now people just accept charity and that kind of thing that we can all help each other, the less fortunate.” - George Harrison in his acceptance speech for the Billboard Century Award, Billboard Music Awards (December 9, 1992) “George Harrison brought the attention of the world to what was happening in Bangladesh during the independence war because of his concert on behalf of the country in New York in 1971. Without his effort, much of the suffering endured by the Bangladeshi people at the time would have gone unnoticed.” - Masood Sobhan, BBC (December 11, 2008) “George Harrison was a very powerful and influential man, and a good friend of Bangladesh. I was in the war, fighting on the front against the Pakistani Army. We had only a one-band radio and that was for getting information from the outside world. After liberation, we came to know that a concert for Bangladesh had been held in Madison Square Garden. That concert acted like a catalyst. The U.S. government did not support Bangladesh, but we got the people’s support, and that concert helped a lot.” - Mahbubul Alam, Los Angeles Post Examiner (December 5, 2013)
