The box set's packaging included a 64-page book containing photos from the concerts the album cover, designed by Tom Wilkes, consisted of an image of a malnourished child sitting beside an empty food bowl. Minimal post-production was carried out on the recordings, ensuring that the album was a faithful document of the event. Besides the main performers, the musicians and singers include Badfinger, Jim Horn, Klaus Voormann, Alla Rakha, Jim Keltner, Jesse Ed Davis and Claudia Lennear.
The event brought Harrison and Starr together on a concert stage for the first time since 1966, when the Beatles retired from live performance, and represented Dylan's first major concert appearance in the US in five years.Ĭo-produced by Phil Spector, The Concert for Bangladesh features his Wall of Sound approach in a live setting. The shows were a pioneering charity event, in aid of the homeless Bengali refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War, and set the model for future multi-artist rock benefits such as Live Aid (1985) and the Concert for New York City (2001).
The album followed the two concerts of the same name, held on 1 August 1971 at New York's Madison Square Garden, featuring Harrison, Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Leon Russell and Eric Clapton. The Concert for Bangladesh (originally spelt The Concert for Bangla Desh) is a live triple album credited to " George Harrison & Friends" and released on Apple Records in December 1971 in America and January 1972 in Britain.