The company’s archival research has also turned up a trove of unissued George Harrison material. “We have people digging through mountains of tapes, and they keep coming,” says Dhani. “Boxes and boxes of them.” This year marks the 50th anniversary of All Things Must Pass, and Dhani and his archivists have unearthed hours of unreleased material and unheard songs from those sessions. “A lot of it has been bootlegged, but we have better versions,” says Olivia. “We have all the 24-tracks of All Things Must Pass, and we found lots of different takes and talking in the studio.”
Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of the Concert for Bangladesh, followed in 2023 by the five-decade mark of Living in the Material World. Each of those projects could be accorded expanded editions, although the specifics aren’t worked out.
Dhani says he is asked on a regular basis about his father’s controversial 1974 tour more than any of Harrison’s other undertakings. Dhani says he’s listened back to tapes of all the shows and agrees that his father wasn’t in the best of voice, but still feels the shows revealed another aspect of George’s music. “His voice is pretty tired, but in my opinion, it sounds great,” he says. “It’s raspy, and it has grit to it. You can hear the fragility in all the songs. It’s a different take on a lot of his music.” Olivia says several of the shows were also filmed, onstage and offstage, and the material has the makings of a documentary. “I think it would make a great tour movie,” she says. “The backstage footage is amazing and hysterical. Things went on backstage that don’t happen now. Now everything is so cut and dried, the opposite of spontaneous.”
