Duo shows in Sussex celebrate the genius of George Harrison

The All Things Must Pass duo will once again be celebrating the glorious legacy of the late, great George Harrison at Sussex venues this autumn.

They will be performing on Wednesday, November 13 at Lewes Con Club, 139 High Street, Lewes, BN7 1XS; on Saturday, November 23 at Rottingdean Village Hall, 20 Park Road, Rottingdean, Brighton; and on Friday, November 29 at Felpham Village Hall, 17-19 Vicarage Lane, Felpham, PO22 7DZ. Doors open 7.30pm; first set 8pm for each gig. Tickets via wegottickets.com.

The duo members are Bernd Rest and Alex Eberhard, front men of the ten-piece All Things Must Pass Orchestra, and they are delighted with the way the duo shows are taking off.

“It's a logistical thing as well,” explains Alex. “It is just so much easier than getting the ten-piece together which is like herding cats, trying to get ten people in the same place at the same time.”

This year will have seen something like 14 or 15 duo shows with four or five from the full orchestra, numbers Alex would expect to take into next year as well.

“And it's great because the duo gives us the tunes from a slightly different angle. You can't have the bombastic arrangements of a ten-piece. I think the duo just really shows the tunes well. It gives them a more intimate flavour, and Bernd enjoys the fact that he can do whatever he feels suitable without worrying about treading on people's toes. It gives him a lot of freedom and it's quite refreshing to play these tunes differently. But the thing that amazes me is that I just never get bored of the songs even though I've been doing them for a while now.”

And that's obviously quite apart from the songs that they haven't yet played. For the latest shows, they will be including for the first time I Dig Love from the All Things Must Pass Album: “At some point we would like to do most of the songs from the All Things Must Pass album. I tried to work out I Dig Love and even with just a guitar and vocals it was starting to sound good.”

There is a poignancy to the duo shows this year in that they happened indirectly through Herbie Flowers who has recently passed away: “Our first drummer was Marianne Hillier-Brook and she was in a band with Herbie Flowers who lived in Ditchling and she lived quite close by. And because Herbie was friends with Sam Brown (daughter of George Harrison’s close mate Pete Brown), we got in touch with Sam and asked her if she would join the concert that we were doing in Henley (where George Harrison lived) in 2015, and we also did some other concerts with her including Bognor Regis at the Alexandra Theatre. She said yes because of the Herbie Flowers connection and when The Crooked Billet in Stoke Row (nearly Henley) wanted a George Harrison set to mark the 50th anniversary of All Things Must Pass, she gave our name to them and it was them that asked us to do a duo show.”