Having watched a video of the Project before last night's gig at the Grand, I realised that these guys were not your typical tribute band like The Bootleg Beatles. There would be no costume changes or dodgy scouse accents but rather a celebration of George’s music played by a five-piece rock band.
As I have been a fan of Harrison’s music for most of my life, I reckoned I would know most, if not all, of what they would play. And this was the case with the set list ranging from early Beatles numbers such as Do You Want To Know A Secret and Don’t Bother Me via songs from his solo albums “All Things Must Pass” up to “Brainwashed” and three numbers from the two Travelling Wilburys releases. The one song I didn't know was a Bob Dylan number which I think George covered for a film soundtrack.
But I was pleasantly surprised to hear the song Photograph which I’d forgotten George co-wrote with Ringo and was on the latter’s self-titled 1973 album. There were some lovely photos of the two of them projected onto a large screen at the back of the stage.
If I have any criticism of the gig it would be that the sound was not so good in the first half and I was sitting just down from the sound desk. The keyboards were barely audible while the lead guitarist was in danger of drowning out the rest of the band especially when he was playing slide guitar. This was a shame as George was known for his delicate slide playing especially on a song like If Not For You.
This wasn’t a problem when they did While My Guitar Gently Weeps with the guitarist doing a great job of playing the Eric Clapton part. As I commented to my wife at the end of that song, he makes a much better Eric Clapton than a George Harrison. And this was, in a way, a good description of his playing - that it was like Clapton playing Harrison’s guitar parts.
But this comes back to my original comment about how they are not a tribute band. They weren’t pretending to be Harrison and whoever he played with be it John, Paul and Ringo or Jeff Lynne & co in the Wilburys. With the improvement of the sound after the interval I relaxed more and enjoyed the gig for what it was - a bunch of guys who obviously love George’s music and were not only playing the songs but also giving us a bit of chat about how some of the songs came about.
Personal favourites from the set list would include All Things Must Pass, Beautiful Girl, Something, When We Was Fab and a great version of the Carl Perkins song which The Beatles covered, namely Everybody Wants To Be My Baby. That last one got us up and dancing.
When music is as important as George Harrison’s is to me, it’s perhaps inevitable that you feel protective towards it. But despite those few minor quibbles, I have to say the guys in the Project are doing a great job of keeping George's music alive.
So would I recommend you go along and see them? Yes, absolutely. But if you’re expecting them to put on orange robes for the Hari Krishna chants in My Sweet Lord I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.
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PS I've sat down and made a list of all the songs they played last night and reckon it was over 30 so we definitely got value for money. One or two like What is Life were cut a bit short but otherwise it was pretty much what you would hear on the original records.
