Dark Horse and its subsequent tour arrived 50 years ago amid a period of conflict and uncertainty for George Harrison.
His first marriage and Apple Records were crumbling. Meanwhile, Harrison had been led away from his spiritual center by the pressures of starting his own label, also called Dark Horse, and mounting the first U.S. tour by any member of the Beatles since their final 1966 jaunt.
A bout of laryngitis and Harrison’s determination to expose American audiences to Ravi Shankar as a co-headliner only made matters worse for some critics. Harrison and a touring band featuring talents like late-period Beatles collaborator Billy Preston, ace sessions drummer Jim Keltner, Tom Scott and Robben Ford bore the brunt of their disappointment.
“George liked people who could play different styles of music,” Robben Ford tells us, in an exclusive Something Else! Sitdown. “He said I did a good job of working with them. I was surprised by that, because I felt out of my depth, honestly, in some ways. It was very intense.”
Released in December 1974, Dark Horse barely cracked the U.S. Top 5, and didn’t even chart in the U.K. – a huge let down after two chart-topping albums. The title track single only reached No. 15.
Lost in the shuffle was an album that found Harrison beginning his initial experiments in funk and soul. Like its predecessors, Dark Horse drew an A-list group of collaborators. Among them was George Harrison’s former bandmate Ringo Starr, Preston, Harrison’s friend Gary Wright, Keltner, and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones. Together, they created another patented blend of reflective pop, with influences that also included Indian sounds and gospel on songs like “Far East Man” and “It Is ‘He.'”
The massive tour played a forgotten role in paving the way for Western acceptance of world music, too. Despite some unfavorable reviews, Ford says he looks back on that period with fondness.
Harrison hosted a congenial get together after their string of concerts together, then made a memorably touching gesture: “We finished right around Christmas in New York City, and he had a little party for everyone,” Ford tells us. “He gave me a picture of a guitar, and said: ‘This is my Christmas present to you; it’s being made by Gibson.’ He had custom ordered it. It came to me later in the mail. He was such a warm person.”
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