#tom sheehan

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Radiohead — US tour, LA, june 1993 © Tom Sheehan
(more of the set here)

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#radiohead #tom sheehan

@дженис джоплин, тирекс и дорс!

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 16:45:38

George Harrison and Bob Dylan performing at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (1988)

“After the first of Bob Dylan’s two concerts at Wembley Arena in October 2000, legendary rock photographer Tom Sheehan and I head backstage, where Tom has earlier left his camera bags. We head first for the backstage bar, a surprisingly cavernous space that’s empty when we walk in apart from a solitary figure sitting hunched at a table in the middle of the room. Said figure has so much the bedraggled appearance of a bedraggled old crusty that I’m sure that if I look under the table he’s sitting at I’d find a couple of cans of cider and a dog on a string. I pay him no further immediate attention, as I have more urgent business to attend to with the barman. Sheehan, though, thinks he recognises the gnome-like individual at the table.

‘Jonesy,’ Sheehan whispers to me then. ‘That wouldn’t be The Quiet Beatle, would it?’

I take another look, and, fuck, it’s George Harrison, looking, you’d have to say, somewhat forlorn, disconsolate even, sitting on his own, no hint of the retinue of loyal retainers and pampering flunkeys you might expect him to be surrounded by. George just staring into the middle distance at something only he can see, as if in some lonely trance. Tom goes off to get his cameras. When I look back at the table where George has been sitting, he’s gone. I have no idea where.

I order another drink and wait for Sheehan, who finally returns beaming, smugly. Why?

'I’ve just met Bob,’ he says with a smirk that makes me want to slap him. Turns out when he gets there that Dylan’s holding court in the dressing room where Tom’s left his stuff and he’s been asked to wait outside with, of all people, George, with whom he’s just been chatting for the last 20 minutes about this and that, but mostly George’s favourite radio show, which turns out to be Gardener’s Question Time, Tom and George exchanging knowledgeable opinions on rhododendron clusters and soil enhancement. Bob had finally appeared to greet George, giving Tom a limp handshake as he does so.

Anyway, I mention this because I kept being reminded of the sight of him sitting alone in that vast Wembley bar as I was reading David Cavanagh’s brilliant cover story on George and what he did after The Beatles, which is a lot more than is often these days thought.”