A slide guitar-based composition, the track also features saxophonist Tom Scott and the latter's jazz-rock band L.A. Express, who were touring as Joni Mitchell's backing group at the time.

Although music critics and Harrison biographers have generally viewed the album track in an unfavourable light, several concert reviewers identified it as an effective opener for the shows.

[27][28] While backstage at her and Scott's show at the New Victoria Theatre, Harrison invited the five members of the L.A. Express to come out to his Oxfordshire home, Friar Park, the following day.

[14] Scott later told music journalist Michael Gross that only a social visit was planned, but the band were impressed with Friar Park's 16-track home studio, FPSHOT, and Harrison suggested they record something.

[14] Harrison played slide guitar on the track, in his preferred open E tuning,[32] adopting a similar sound to the one he had used three years earlier on John Lennon's song "How Do You Sleep?

[34] Harrison's musical biographer, Simon Leng, writes that the tune predominantly uses major chords, with the "main melodic interest" coming with a shift to C♯ minor seventh, which provides "a moment of softening sweetness".

[36] In the same interview with Gross, for Circus Raves magazine, Scott recalled that he was the first Western musician that Harrison approached about joining him and Shankar for a tour of the United States and Canada later in the year.

[42][43] Rather than include Beatles material on the 1974 tour, however,[44][45] Harrison planned to present a varied program combining rock, soul/R&B, jazz, funk and Indian classical music.

[46][nb 3] Eight Arms to Hold You authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter suggest that "Hari's on Tour (Express)" was written "simply as a show opener" for the North American concerts,[34] which would also feature Harrison's former Apple Records protégé Billy Preston.

[69][70] As well as placing further importance on the instrumentals in his setlist,[71][72] which included "Hari's on Tour (Express)" and Scott's track "Tom Cat",[73][74] Harrison's depleted vocals marred the concerts for many observers.

[100] In his feature article on the West Coast concerts, for Rolling Stone, Ben Fong-Torres described the song as a "well-arranged, tension-and-release number",[87] while the Pacific Sun called it "a zingy and classically melodic instrumental ... a touchstone of the Harrison style".

"[102] The NME's Bob Woffinden wrote a notably unfavourable assessment of the Dark Horse album,[103] in which he found "Hari's on Tour" to be "an unevenly paced boogie thing that has George blowing most of his licks straightaway and Tom Scott coming on with a few quasi-Jnr.

[107] Harrison biographer Alan Clayson refers to Hari's on Tour" as "an instrumental that went in one ear and out the other",[93] while in The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler described it as sounding like "a backing track from which the vocal line has mysteriously been deleted".

[109] Echoing the magazine's earlier support for the tour,[101] Brian Harrigan of Melody Maker praised Harrison's "nifty slide guitar" on the opening song and throughout the album, which he felt "should certainly do a tremendous amount to salvage George's battered reputation".

[114] Writing more recently for AllMusic, Richard Ginell describes the recording as "Tom Scott's L.A. Express churning out all-pro L.A.-studio jazz/rock" and adds that the song "gets the doomed project off to a spirited start".

[33] Leng regrets Harrison's apparent abandoning of his "meticulous approach" to recording in favour of uncharacteristic spontaneity, and concludes: "Ultimately, this good-time guitar showcase is as relevant as Dylan's 'Nashville Skyline Rag'.

"[116] Ian Inglis writes of Scott's soprano sax producing an "atmosphere of anticipation" similar to a successful film or television theme, and identifies "Hari's on Tour" as an indication that Harrison, some years before his career became focused on movie production, was able to "effectively incorporate the conventions of a soundtrack within the codes of rock".

[121][132] Surprised at the "good vibes" there so soon after the Watergate hearings,[133] Harrison asked Ford to personally intercede in both John Lennon's struggle to be allowed to remain in the United States,[134][135] and the US Treasury's audit of the funds raised through the Concert for Bangladesh.