Episode
Tom Scott: Playing on Pink Floyd, George Harrison's Best Friend, and How John Williams Almost Quit Music
- Published
- Jun 16, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3134
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-church-studio-presents-miss-o-dell-abbey-road-to-tulsa-time-7831410/episodes/tom-scott-playing-on-pink-floyd-george-harrison-s-best-friend-and-how-john-williams-almost-quit-music/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-church-studio-presents-miss-o-dell-abbey-road-to-tulsa-time-7831410/tom-scott-playing-on-pink-floyd-george-harrison-s-best-friend-and-how-john-williams-almost-quit-music.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Tom Scott has played saxophone on records by George Harrison, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Whitney Houston, Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, and dozens more . 15 Grammy nominations and counting. But ask him how he ended up as one of George Harrison's closest friends, and the answer starts with a UCLA summer class on Indian music and a tabla teacher named Harihar Rao. Chris O'Dell sits down with her old friend and fellow survivor of the legendary 1974 Dark Horse Tour for a wide-open conversation: the real reason that tour went sideways, what George Harrison told Bill Graham when fans wanted Beatles songs, the John Williams story Tom has never told publicly, and what Joni Mitchell and Carole King taught him about two completely different ways to be a genius. Plus what Tom is up to now including forensic arranging, jazz radio, and his own podcast hitting episode 260.