John worries the concert is a ruse to trick him into a Beatles reunion and refuses to appear, though Yoko is inclined to perform in support of the charity event—despite not having been included in the invitation. The couple fights over it bitterly. “She wants to go onstage at George’s Bangladesh thing. I’m not gonna do it,” John complains to Yoko’s friend Dan Richter (now serving as the couple’s butler at the Tittenhurst estate). “If she wants to go on without me, let her. I’ll be in Paris.”

In the end, neither goes, and the story circulates that John snubbed the invite because George hasn’t included Yoko.

“We are not trying to make any politics,” Shankar says when he greets the twenty thousand concertgoers who attend each sold-out show. “We are artists. But through our music we would like you to feel the agony…in Bangladesh.”

When Bob Dylan steps forward, the mood at the Garden rises from elated to euphoric. He’s making a surprise appearance after a self-imposed four-year absence from live performances to play an acoustic set of his beloved older songs, including “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” Originals and covers by renowned session keyboardists Leon Russell and Billy Preston, along with Eric Clapton, Shankar, Ringo, and George, make enough music to fill a triple album.

“What Woodstock was said to be,” states a glowing review, “the Madison Square Bangladesh concert was.”

To the media, manager Allen Klein—whom George asks to help produce the concert—declares that the entirety of the $250,000 ($1.5 million today) they’ve raised in ticket sales will go to charity. “It was so much easier for me to say I’m not taking anything, so I don’t have to answer any questions to anybody. Isn’t that easy? If you do it, you do it; if you don’t, you don’t. I made it clean. It was easy,” Klein boasts. (All very well in theory, though in reality Klein takes so much that he’s eventually embroiled in several lawsuits—including one filed by George—and eventually serves prison time for making false statements on a tax return.) Furthermore, Apple plans to have Spector rush out a concert album, whose proceeds will all go to support the cause, as well as a concert film. Apple’s The Concert for Bangladesh hits number 1 in the United States, number 2 in the UK.

Though John sits out both Woodstock and George’s Concert for Bangladesh, he’s still searching for ways his music can make a difference. Just such an opportunity may present itself with the September release of Imagine.

Chapter 43

Chapter 43

I think I’m falling

In love too fast.

—“Help Me”

You could say I fell in love with New York on a street corner,” John declares.