“You just popped over, had a little toot and continued”: Robben Ford recalls “a box of cocaine on every shelf” while jamming with George Harrison in the ’70s
Guitar multi-hyphenate Robben Ford has been looking back on what it was like to jam with George Harrison in the 1970s, and by his account, things were very rock ‘n’ roll.
Ford has worked with a wide span of huge artists, including Joni Mitchell, KISS, Bob Dylan, and Harrison, who Ford would later tour with in 1974 for Harrison’s Dark Horse tour. Their first encounter occurred earlier in that very same year though, when Ford was touring with Mitchell.
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In the new print issue of Classic Rock, Ford recounts, “I was touring with Joni Mitchell, and we did two shows in London in 1974. I’m hanging out backstage, and I turn around and standing before me is the album cover to All Things Must Pass [Harrison’s first post-Beatles solo album and third studio release overall] – you know, he had the hair, hat, gardening boots, big plaid coat.
“Next day, the whole band, including Joni, went out to his place in Henley-on-Thames. We got there about one in the afternoon. George was still asleep. At about four, he came into the kitchen, smoking a Gauloises, making tea – he only drank Typhoo.
He continues, “Joni finally split, and at one in the morning the band all went up to the studio. Everyone had been drinking, smoking something, snorting something. So we’re all set up in the studio, and there’s a shelf running along all four walls of the control room, with a box of cocaine on every shelf. So if you felt like it, you just popped over, had a little toot and continued. And we did that until the sun came up.”
After releasing a number of solo albums, Harrison joined band again in 1988, when he co-founded supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. The group consisted of Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, and came together as a result of Harrison and Lynne dreaming up a new band during the sessions for Harrison’s 1987 album Cloud Nine.
In a 2007 Uncut interview, Lynne said: “We were three-quarters of the way through Cloud Nine, and every night, as we were relaxing with a few drinks after mixing a big epic or whatever, George and I had the same conversation: ‘We could have a group, you know?’ ‘Yeah, we could.’ He didn’t like the idea of being a solo guy – that’s what he told me. He was never comfortable with it. He wanted a group, and, of course, George could do anything he wanted.”
The post “You just popped over, had a little toot and continued”: Robben Ford recalls “a box of cocaine on every shelf” while jamming with George Harrison in the ’70s appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
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