As of November, George Harrison is the first ex-Beatle to conduct a formal American tour. Harrison started in the northwest and will finally wind up On the other side of the continent at Christmas time for three shows at Madison Square Garden and two shows at the Nassau Colisseum — an optimistic prediction of audience turn-out for an artist whose last album sold disappointingly and who has been largely out of the public eye. Robert Stigwood, Eric Clapton’s manager, felt that Eric’s protracted layaway had only enhanced his appeal, and the enormous success of his comeback tour proves Stigwood correct. Perhaps the same syndrome will benefit Harrison; undoubtedly, Harrison and his business associates are counting on it.

But Clapton and Harrison, great friends and great guitarists, are very different animals. While both were last seen in this country, until this year, at the Concert for Bangla Desh in August, 1971, their absences meant different things. Harrison established himself as a name in his own ^right (with All Things Must Pass) a year after Clapton had unofficially buried his. Harrison has always been an elusive figure, overshadowed by John and Paul and shut away since 1966 in the studio. Clapton, through extensive touring, a rapid succession of album releases, and numerous shifts of band affiliation, which could only signify a career in constant flux, was as prominent as a musician could be who was chiefly known as a guitarist. The hiatus of the past three and a half years for Clapton amounted to a striking reversal. For Harrison, they were a period which he spent carefully constructing a formidable reputation. Harrison’s November tour, therefore, is only the next logical step in his quest for artistic manhood, not the perilous, unanticipated, defiant adventure it has been for Clapton.

Not only is George’s decision to tour no surprise, there seem to be no surprises promised for it. The junket is organized by Bill Graham. Along with Harrison is his mentor Ravi Shankar, and most likely Tom Scott and his L.A. Express, who have won national attention as Joni Mitchell’s back-up band. Graham is eager to dispel the apprehension that Harrison and Shankar together will mean interminable ragas (this isn’t 1967, you know). Shankar’s presence may represent only George’s debt to an old friend, or possibly his still unquenched desire to instruct and uplift, In any case, Shankar is a safe choice. George does not seem about to relinquish a hard-won idehtiflcatiori for the sake of pop’s addiction to novelty. Scott is also a safe choice. His band consists of proven competents who are completely faceless. They are not the amorphous, democratic, odd assortment of individuals who played with Clapton. One can expect the L.A. Express to be distinct from and subordinate to Harrison, with little likelihood of upstaging him. A portion of the gate will be donated to the Hare Krishna movement, an album of whose chants George produced several years ago. He has also been donating the royalties from certain songs to various causes.

So, the outstanding features of his post-Beatles career — his religiosity, and his respect for musicianship uncomplicated by group dynamics or infusions of personality — still stand. Together, they are merely aspects of a single character trait, first exhibited on Meet the Beatles. In his songwriting debut George laid down his life’s credo: “Don’t Bother Me.” George’s search for privacy, and its companion, .anonymity, led to his becoming the musical technician of the Beatles, lost in his craft, supremely adaptable to the designs of Lennon and McCartney.

Because of his self-effacing bent, Harrison’s role as a rock innovator has often been overlooked. The sneering feedback which begins “I Feel Fine,” the sitar-like burst which punctuates “Taxman,” the orchestral overdubs of “Apd Your Bird Gan Sing” — all pursued new avenues of sound in their day. But, more commonly, George was the chameleon, who could be a riffer one moment (“Day Tripper”), pick like Carl Perkins the next (“What Goes On”).

His guitar took on the musical coloration of its surroundings. On “Every Little Thing,” George took a classical cue from the kettle drums and pretended his instrument was a harpsichord. On the break at the end of “Got To Get You Into My Life,” the guitar is tonally almost indistinguishable from the trumpets which quickly drown it out; By constantly trying different combinations of guitars and amplifiers at different settings, he was able to invent the unique sound, then marry it to the line and harmonies ideal for whatever song was the project before him.

Resistance to domination does not automatically determine fitness for leadership.

With the exception of the album take of “Let It Be,” selected and mixed by Phil Spector and hence outside George’s responsibility, his Beatles performances were always flawless — in technique, shape, and fidelity to milieu. Unfortu\ nately, for the last few years, he has refused to play anything but slide. On slide, too, he is an original, revealing no blues debt, which is unheard of among users of • this apparatus. But in contrast to His earlier days, he now always sounds the same. Maybe he finds his new musical settings less variegated and stimulating, less demanding of adaptiveness. (Certainly some of his most arresting playing in recent years has been with Ringo and Badfinger. On his own efforts it is bejewelled but often listless.) Maybe, since he is now on his own, he thinks that this willed inflexibility will entitle him fo be called a stylist.

In fact, George’s recessiveness still continues. With the veil of the Beatles torn away, George had to emerge on his own. Nor was this ventured entirely under duress. George had become by the time of Abbey Road a sporadic but exceptional writer, and was miffed at having to submit to at least McCartney’s purposes, as the film Let It Be attests. Yet a resistance to domination does not automatically determine a fitness for leadership. His first solo outing, while magnificent in scope, and containing adroit, deeply felt tunes like “Beware of Darkness,” was not potent in personality, as we are accustomed to think of personality in rock. George (with Phil Spector) was clearly the mastermind, but he lacked the immediacy of even puppets like Leslie Gore or nebbishes like Arlo Guthrie. The comparatively spare production of his second LP, Living in the Material World, laid this deficiency bare.

Before contracting the spiritual parasitism which has bled him of so much vitality, Harrison expressed that vitality frequently through arrogance and bile. Both ultimately were the by-product of his search for refuge. On Revolver, the taxman was tongue-lashed for his encroachments. On “Think for Yourself,’' George cast away even as he wooed. On “Love to You,” he stated his determination to avoid being pinned down. But because he was a Beatle, complete escape was unrealizable. If he could not advance, beyond the fray, then the only solution was to rise above it. Religion could be his magic carpet. By the time of Sgt.' Pepper, George was secure in his bird’s eye view of the rest of the world. “Within You Without You” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” were piously condescending, albeit musically effective; “Piggies,” although political rather than religious, snipped viciously from an equally lefty platform of moral superiority. On All Things Must Pass, George alternately pitied and admonished the unenlightened. With Living In the Material World he graduated to a more convincing humility. Where before John and Paul had sat atop him, now more heavily sat God.

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Whether intentional or not, this embodied in effect a shrewd professional gambit. His latency was no inadequacy, but rather the function of his piety. In the course of his spiritual pilgrimage he appeared to have more or less purged himself of ego. Oddly, he became a representative creature of the Seventies. Like Alice Cooper and Lou Reed, he is an overwhelmed figure. Harrison himself would suggest that he is actually invigorated by these larger forces. At the Concert for Bangla Desh, his role as impresario, MC, and most of all benefactor conferred a stature normally unavailable to him. ft remains to be seen whether George’s simple, unembellished presence on a November stage will for the first time be enough to carry him through. !§>