One of the biggest cities in the world, New York City is a place where every famous Rock star eventually plays or visits. Although the city receives millions of tourists every year, it’s really not for everyone’s taste, since it is really big and noisy. The Beatles co-founder, guitarist and singer George Harrison visited the city many times and in an interesting interview with Al Aronowitz in 1992 gave his opinion about New York in the early 90s.
Obviously, since 1980 when John Lennon was murdered in front of the Dakota building where he lived, the feeling about the city changed.
What was the opinion of George Harrison about New York City in the early 90s
“Well, a city where a Beatle has been shot is obviously not going to be one of my favorite cities to visit. (…) I think they should pull a lot of it down and plant some trees in it. Thin out the people a bit, ship a few people off into different places. I don’t think it’s very healthy at all. It’s crumbling, it’s tired. But it still has a kind of atmosphere. In the ’60s and ’70s for me, it was kind of interesting when we used to hang out. We used to go in weird places.”
“Then there’s that kind of thing where you can get into feelin,’ ‘Hey, man, yeah, we’re in the city and this is city life and we’re cool.’ But for me, I have no desire to be in any city, even a small city. I don’t like cities. I want to be as close to nature as possible. Purely just because I want to survive and I think it takes its toll on you. The pollution, the noise, the uptightness, the hostility. And all it does is it fries your nervous system and knocks years off your life,” George Harrison said.
At the time he was in the city to be part of Bob Dylan‘s “30th Anniversary Concert Celebration”, which celebrated his three decades as a recording artist. Harrison performed that night the tracks “Absolutely Sweet Marie” and “My Back Pages” (This one alongside many others).
Besides Dylan himself and George Harrison many other famous artists played Dylan tracks that night. Some of them were Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Chrissie Hynde, Neil Young, Johnny Winter, Eddie Vedder, Stevie Wonder and Lou Reed.