On May 19, 1979 Eric Clapton married Patti Boyd, the inspiration for her ex husband George Harrison's "Something", "I Need You" and her new husband's "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight". Eric and George remained the best of friends despite what happened. At the reception, three of the Beatles reunited on stage for what were reportedly drunken and very loose versions of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "Get Back" and "Lawdy Miss Clawdy". Only John Lennon was absent.
Enjoy the wedding album below:
There's Paul and Linda McCartney ( dragging on a cigarette unfortunately) at :42 in. Apple Publishing manager and longtime Beatles associate Terry Doran, George Harrison and his wife Olivia appear at :44. And there's Paul, George and Ringo together with the King of Skiffle, Lonnie Donegan at :51.
I think what happened between this album and the last album (Thirty Threeand 1/3) is that everything has been happening nice for me. My life is getting better all the time, and I'm happy, and I think that it's reflected in the music -George Harrison
On February 20, 1979 George Harrison released his self-titled album, one of the very best of his career, and one that still gives me great pleasure forty years on. I realize now I bicycled across state lines, a major infraction at my boarding school, to buy a copy of this album in Millerton, New York's Oblong Books and Music store. All I had heard at this point was Top 20 hit "Blow Away", but I was hooked.
With the help of Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood and producer Russ Titelman ( Randy Newman's Good Ole Boys, Ry Cooder's Paradise and Lunch), Harrison gives us ten catchy songs that reveal his domestic bliss with new wife Olivia and the recent birth of his only child Dhani.
Critics were for the most part pleased. In his review for Rolling Stone, Stephen Holden calls George Harrison his finest album since All Thing Must Pass:
George Harrison is refreshingly lighthearted. The austere, pontifical tone is gone, and the singer sounds more like a happily eccentric gentleman/mystic than a burningly devout Krishna advocate.
Robert Christgau is less kind, grading the album a C:
In which Harrison returns to good old commercial rock and roll, he says, presumably because he shared songwriting on one track with Gary "Sure Shot" Wright and let Russ Titelman produce. Well, there is a good song here -- "Faster," about a kind of stardom. He remembers!
Although better known for embracing the cultures of India and Hindu, George Harrison was also an avid fan of Formula One racing. Especially after he befriended three time World Champion Jackie Stewart, who inspired the 1979 single "Faster" and even appeared as the chauffeur for the video.
" It's fascinating when you know the drivers and the teams and all their problems, and you can see them as people, " Harrison once said. " Because they are just people, but to go to work they have to get in this car and do 180 miles an hour."
For most of us, this was the first time we got to hear Harrison's White Album era "Not Guilty", which may in fact be guilty of airing some of The Beatles dirty laundry with lines like:
I won't upset the apple cart
I only want what I can get
I'm really sorry that you've been misled
But like you heard me said Not guilty
My favorite deep cut is "Dark Sweet Lady", his love song to Olivia, which ends with the simple line "I love you dearly".
This week in 1977, George Harrison's "Crackerbox Palace" entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #66. A more or less cheerful Harrison was busy promoting the new album Thirty Three and 1/3rd, visiting Europe, recording a short video for a Capitol Records convention ( in which he plays a snippet from Fleetwood Mac's latest single) , and doing interviews with the likes of Circus Magazine.
Q: "Which of the Beatles albums do you still listen to?"
GEORGE: "I liked when we got into 'Rubber Soul,' 'Revolver.' Each album had something good about it and progressed. There were albums which weren't any good as far as I was concerned, like 'Yellow Submarine.'"
"We put all the songs together into an album form-- I'm talking about English albums now, because in the states we found later that for every two albums we had, they (Capitol) would make three... because we put fourteen tracks on an album, and we'd also have singles that weren't included on albums in those days. They'd put the singles on, take off a bunch of tracks, change all the running order, and then they'd make new packages like 'Yesterday And Today,' just awful packages."
Crackerbox Palace, as I may mentioned before, was Harrison's nickname for Friar Park, the estate on which he lived from 1971 to his death. The video, which made its debut on Saturday Night Live, was directed by Eric Idlen who makes a cameo with fellow Rutle Neil Innes. The single would peak at US #19.
And here finally is Harrison's silly Capitol Records video.
It should have come as relief to millions of Beatles fans to see George Harrison grinning ear to ear in the video to his first single on Thirty Three and 1/3, released in November of 1976. By all accounts it had not been an easy year for the quiet Beatle, still stinging from bad reviews of his American Tour and for albums like Extra Texture. His record label sued him for "non-delivery" of an album, he had a bout of hepatitis to battle all Summer, and the owner of "He's So Fine" successfully sued for more than $1.6 million over similarities to "My Sweet Lord."
"(The ordeal) has put me through a real bad period of paranoia though," Harrison told NME."Every time I pick up the guitar to play something I think 'Uh-oh, this sounds like...'I can't help it. I do it all the time now."
Still, there's George making light of the whole thing on the video to"This Song":
This tune has nothing Bright about it (the case was called Bright Tunes Vs. Harrisongs)
This tune ain't bad or good and come ever what may
My expert tells me it's okay
The song that delighted my thirteen year old self ( and my 11 year old son these days) is "Crackerbox Palace". My kid asked me what the song was about and I said I thought it was a whimsical tune about Harrison's huge estate, Friar Park. Turns out it's about Harrison's favorite comedian, Lord Buckley's, nickname for his Los Angeles home.
Both "This Song" and "Crackerbox Palace" videos made their debut on the November 20, 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live.
Overall, the critics weren't much kinder about the new album, which nonetheless peaked at US #11 and sold enough copies over the holiday season to go gold.
From Robert Christgau :
This isn't as worldly as George wants you to think -- or as he thinks himself, for all I know -- but it ain't fulla shit either. "Crackerbox Palace" is the best thing he's written since "Here Comes the Sun" (not counting "Deep Blue," hidden away on the B-side of "Bangla-Desh," or -- naughty, naughty -- "My Sweet Lord"), and if "This Song" were on side two I might actually play the record again. B-
From Ken Tucker of Rolling Stone :
The most accessible tracks on Thirty-Three and 1/3 are "Woman Don't You Cry for Me" and "This Song," the latter an attempt to make light of George Harrison's recent plagiarism case. To the extent that he includes these fast, cheerful numbers, and smiley oddities such as Cole Porter's "True Love" and the impenetrable fable "Crackerbox Palace," Harrison seems hoping to achieve fresh popularity. In pursuit of the commercial, the sitar is banished and replaced by a horn section. But Harrison's concept of the popular also leads him to use Tom Scott as an "assistant" in producing the album, and the overall sound of Thirty-Three and 1/3 hums with Scott's presence: it is music with the feeling and sincerity of cellophane.
Also unfortunate is George's persistent preaching.
He essays his lessons in "See Yourself," "Learning How to Love You" and "It's What You Value," each of whose melodies is superseded by a fatuous pronouncement on morality or fidelity or worldly gain or something. Now more than ever, George is living in the material world, and if anything, seems less reconciled to it.
A palate cleanser following the poorly received Dark Horse album and tour, George Harrison's Extra Texture is his only album recorded in Los Angeles. Despite the hit single that kicks things off ( the #20 US/ #38 UK "You" with those hard charging and very flat sax solos), Extra Texture is a bit of a ponderous bore with most songs running one to two minutes longer than necessary.
Although Harrison did a surprising amount of press for the album (including the Melody Maker interview with the hopeful headline "George Bounces Back!") eventually he, too came to the conclusion that Extra Texture "was a bit depressing, actually".
The highlight of the album for me is "Tired of Midnight Blue", which actually has some bounce to it.
“Tired Of Midnight Blue was originally called Midnight Blue and as soon as I had it ready Melissa Manchester put out a song with that title and so I changed it to Tired of Midnight Blue.
I had been to a Los Angeles club - ended up in the back room with a lot of grey-haired naughty people and I was depressed by what I saw going on there.”
- George Harrison, I Me Mine
After Marshall Sehorn threw a Mardi Gras party for the visiting McCartneys, who had recorded Venus and Mars at the New Orleans studio he owned with Allen Toussaint, Paul McCartney returned the favor the following month in Long Beach aboard the Queen Mary.
The guest list was spectacular : George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Marvin Gaye, The Faces, Phil Everly, The Jackson Five, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Cher, Derek Taylor and Mal Evans.
The event was the first time Paul McCartney and Harrison had been seen in public since The Beatles' break-up.
The party saw musical performances from Lee Dorsey, Ernie K-Doe, Professor Longhair, The Meters and Chocolate Milk. Professor Longhair's set was later released as the album Live On The Queen Mary, which was co-produced by McCartney and released on his MPL label. The Meters show was released by Rhino. Unfortunately, the label decided to fade out some of the extended jamming to squeeze everything on one CD.
On December 19, 1974 George Harrison and Paul McCartney met in a Plaza Hotel suite in New York City to sign documents formally ending The Beatles. Ringo had already signed the papers in England. Watch below as Harrison chants "krishna krishna krishna" as he gives his signature.
So, let's see. Who's missing? John of course. Lennon told May Pang "the stars were not right" to attend the meeting. That pissed George off so much he cancelled Lennon's appearance on stage that night. Julian went to the concert though, and even got to go backstage where George sent him home with a message : "All's forgiven, George loves you and he wants you to come to his party tonight."
After the concert John, Paul and George met at the Hippopotamus Club and "hugged it out".
On December 29, Lennon finally filled out his paperwork, seated inside the Polynesian Village Hotel at Disney World where he had taken Julian.
On December 13, 1974 George Harrison and members of his band, including Billy Preston, Tom Scott and Ravi Shankar visited President Gerald Ford at the White House. Invited by Ford's son Jack, the musicians apparently had a swell time with "the accidental president". Both were beaming despited muddling through difficult times and bad press. Some clips of the visit appear below.
On December 9, 1974 a hoarse-sounding George Harrison released his fifth studio album, Dark Horse. It's an album that plays like a series of journal entries in one of Harrison's most tumultuous years. He called 1974 "a bad domestic year". And that's an understatement.
He indulged in naughty adventures with alcohol, and drugs which led to affairs with the wives of some of his friends ( Maureen Starr and Ronnie Wood's wife Krissy). These are referenced in the songs "Simply Shady" and "So Sad". ( He feels so alone /With no love of his own/ So sad, so bad, so sad, so bad).
Harrison and Peter Sellers walking around Friar Park
His wife Pattie described the year in this way: "That whole period was insane. Friar Park was a madhouse. Our lives were fuelled by alcohol and cocaine, and so it was with everyone who came into our sphere ... George used cocaine excessively and I think it changed him."
Boyd would leave Harrison for his best friend Eric Clapton.
In his cover of the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love" Harrison makes a not so subtle reference: "There goes our lady, with a-you-know-who / I hope she's happy, old Clapper too". Both Patti and Clapper sing back-up. Ouch!
There were some good reviews for the album but it is the Rolling Stone critic Jim Miller's review that left its mark:
Yet it is only in the wake of his disastrous tour and Dark Horse, his disastrous album, that George Harrison finally stands naked. For his new record, Harrison hired a band of merely competent studio pros, saddled himself with a passel of preachy lyrics and then cut the album hoarse, his voice whining offensively, turning each idiot phrase into a prickly barb. Harrison's modest skills suddenly dwindle, overshadowed by the misplaced pride that permitted him to release such a shoddy piece of work.
In November of 1974, George Harrison became the first former Beatle to tour North America. Beatle fans got to hear George perform "Something ", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and Lennon's "In My Life" with the lyrical change "In my life, I love God more..."
The tour got off to a rocky start when, the night before his first show, in Vancouver, the hard partying George lost his voice. He'd never recover fully despite gargling a "secret mixture of honey, vinegar and warm water" recommended to him by Eric Clapton and Barbra Streisand. ( see the video below at 1:00 in)
George also insisted on handing over the spotlight to Ravi Shankar and other classical Indian musicians. For what must have seemed far too long to many concertgoersAs one reviewer put it "Tragically, Shankar's beautiful music was wasted on a noisy minority of meatheads".
All of which led to George's often grumpy appearance onstage. From the stage in LA, he croaked "I don't know how it feels down there, but from up here you seem pretty dead!"
Who knows what those shows might have been like without Billy Preston's vocal and emotional support? While overnight reviews from newspaper critics were mostly positive, Rolling Stone called the tour "disastrous", an adjective critic Jim Miller also used to describe Harrison's new Dark Horse album. That, perhaps unfairly, is the way history remembers the tour. Harrison wouldn't tour again until Clapton forced him to play some shows in Japan. Seventeen years later in 1991.
One fun footnote : drummer Jim Keltner asked George for a Mercedes 450SL in lieu of payment for the tour. This would inspire one of his better songs "It's What You Value".
Bobby Bland was having a hell of a year, releasing Dreamer and touring off his classic California Album. But the blues was hitting a slump with audiences , so Bobby joined "B"on tour. This double album documents their friendship and knowledge of the blues lexicon. Contrary to reviews I've read, this doesn't sound at all like they've been playing together for years. It sounds like two immense talents hanging out informally on stage. And that's pretty cool.
Al Green's Hi Records label mate Syl Johnson gets the Willie Mitchell/Memphis Horns treatment on Diamond in the Rough. Setting himself apart from Green wouldn't be easy, especially after his biggest hit was a 1975 note for note cover of "Take Me to the River".
The most accessible of Carlos Santana's highly spiritual journey into jazz fusion, Borboletta has a Brazilian vibe courtesy of Return to Forever percussionist Airto Moreira and his wife Flora Purim. Bassist Stanley Clarke also performs on a number of songs. Try this one before Caravanserai, Welcome or Lotus. If it's not your cup of tea, you're not alone. The record label would soon force Santana to go back to the Latin rock that won millions of fans.
The most enjoyable recording from George Harrison's nascent Dark Horse label is Splinter's The Place I Love. Harrison produced and played on the duo's debut album, which sounds not unlike, well, George Harrison. "Costafine Town" was a Top 20 hit in the UK.
Paul Simon produced this album by the Argentine/Peruvian band he first met when they played with him on the recording "El Condor Pasa" and then when they joined him on his 1973 Live Rhymin' Tour. Instrumentals all recorded in New York with Phil Ramone engineering.
"Only one artist in the world performed at the three most significant musical events of all time: Monterey Pop, Woodstock, and The Concert for Bangla Desh. Dark Horse Records is proud to present his new music."
-Billboard Magazine ad
Ravi Shankar, the man George Harrison crowned 'The Godfather of World Music" released his most successful foray into pop, Shankar Family and Friends, on Harrison's Dark Horse label in October of 1974. The album broke into the Billboard 200, peaking at #176.
The album is a meeting of East and West with Shankar and members of his actual family, along with some Indian superstars, recording on an album produced by Harrison with the ex Beatle's favorite musical friends including Tom Scott, Billy Preston and a drummer by the name of Ringo. To Harrison, this was nothing less than having the world's greatest composer agreeing to jam with pop musicians. You can hear his reverence in this snippet from a radio interview:
Harrison would even bring Shankar and family on his much maligned 1974 tour. Maligned first and foremost because Harrison lost his voice before the tour ever started. But also because he would leave the stage after a few songs so Shankar could perform a long, many thought too long, set. Audiences grew restless with the unfamiliar song structure. But more on that tour later.
Side One opens with the single "I Am Missing You". This is about as mainstream pop as the album gets . Vocal performances fill out the rest of the side. Side Two is more intriguing and more welcoming to these ears. Originally a score for a ballet split into three parts( DREAM, NIGHTMARE and DAWN), Shankar mixes Eastern and Western music to great effect.
Five years later Shankar produced something even more widely welcomed by Western ears: a daughter who would grow up to record by the name of Norah Jones.
On May 23, 1974 George Harrison announced the formation of his own record label, Dark Horse Records. For Harrison, who had helped nurture the recording careers of Apple artists Badfinger and Jackie Lomax, this was a way to continue helping artists he admired. The first release from Dark Horse was the Ravi Shankar single " I Am Missing You"
The logo featuring a seven headed flying horse was inspired by a trinket Harrison saw in India. His name is Uchchaisravas, the king of horses. Harrison considered himself a dark horse in comparison to fellow Beatles Lennon and McCartney.
On April 22, 1974 Joni Mitchell wrapped up her first 1974 tour with a three night stand at the New Victoria Theatre in London. All of the shows sold out. The final night was filmed by the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test. The performance would air in November.
Back in the US her album Court and Spark was making itself at home in the Billboard Top 10 album chart.
Among those who attended the show was George Harrison. It was backstage that Harrison met Tom Scott and impulsively invited Scott and the LA Express to record at his mansion the next day. The results were two forgettable tunes that would appear on Dark Horse : the instrumental "Hari's On Tour" and "Simply Shady".
In September Joni would return to London where she would perform with Crosby Stills Nash and Young at Wembley Stadium
On September 24, 1973 Ringo Starr released the future #1 single "Photograph" which he wrote with George Harrison, setting high expectations for the Ringo album that would follow six weeks later. After all, the word was out that all the Beatles played on the album...if not at the same time. The single debuted on the charts at #74 and needed just seven weeks to go Number One.
The bittersweet lyrics ( Every time I see your face /It reminds me of the places we used to go /But all I've got is a photograph /And I realize you're not coming back anymore) had deeper meaning for Ringo and fans when he performed "Photograph" at the Concert for George in 2002.
"What a night. I loved George and George loved me," he told the crowd.
It's easy to see why so many fans consider Living in the Material World George Harrison's most spiritual album. The album cover is a Kirlian photograph of Harrison's hand holding a Hindu medallion in his palm.
And then there are the songs.
There's the future #1 single "Give Me Love ( Give Me Peace on Earth)" which Harrison called "a prayer and a personal statement between him, the Lord and whoever likes it". Just as Harrison had slipped some of the Hare Krishna mantra into "My Sweet Lord", he managed to incorporate the sacred word OM into the single. (It comes just before he says "My Lord").
There are other songs of devotion: "The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)", "The Light That Has Lighted the World" and the title cut most obviously.
Perhaps turning 30 was a big deal for the youngest Beatle. He would have known it was at that age that the Buddha left his palace to seek the truth and Jesus started his public ministry.
The album isn't all spiritual. "Sue Me Sue You Blues", written in 1971, is one of the most caustic statements about the Beatles break up.
Well, you serve me and I'll serve you Swing your partners, all get screwed Bring your lawyer and I'll bring mine Get together, and we could have a bad time.
After All Things Must Pass, Harrison's career was considered the most promising of all the former Beatles. But after waiting two and a half years, critics couldn't muster up a lot of enthusiasm for Living in the Material World. While Rolling Stone hailed it as a pop classic others tired of the album's "preachy overtones". "So damn holy, I could scream" said the NME reviewer. The album still managed to top the US charts and peaked at a respectable #2 in the UK.
40 years later, it sounds a bit monotonous to these ears. Harrison sounds whiny at times and so does his slide guitar. But there are some very nice moments as well: the single, "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" and the beautiful "That is All.". Still, I'd rank it among his best, after All Things Must Pass and the overlooked 1979 lp George Harrison.
I dedicate this post to George Harrison who passed away on this date ten years ago. His last words: "Love one another".
Harrison's Wonderwall Music , released on November 1st of 1968--three weeks before The White Album , is considered by many to be the first Beatles solo album. ( Those people would be Beatle fans and Beatle buffs. Beatle fanatics would argue that McCartney's 1967 "The Family Way" soundtrack was first).
Wonderwall Music IS actually a soundtrack to a little seen 1968 film starring Jane Birkin. At the time Harrison --like Lennon--was playing with tape loops. Most of the album was recorded with Indian musicians already on hand for the Beatles "Lady Madonna" B-side "The Inner Light", but Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and even The Monkees' Peter Tork played on one or more cuts using pseudonyms (Ringo was "Richie Snare" - a terrific name for a cat). Harrison himself did not play on the album. ( So there's a bar bet for you: who was the only Beatle to play on George Harrison's Wonderwall Music? The answer is Ringo Starr.)
Our track, "Party Seacombe", is a first cousin ,once-removed of the Magical Mystery Tour cut "Flying". At 4:37 it's probably twice as much melotron as you need, but there you go.
Although better known for embracing the cultures of India and Hindu, George Harrison was also an avid fan of Formula One racing. Especially after he befriended three time World Champion Jackie Stewart, who inspired the 1979 single "Faster" and even appeared as the chauffeur for the video.
It's fascinating when you know the drivers and the teams and all their problems, and you can see them as people. Because they are just people, but to go to work they have to get in this car and do 180 miles an hour.
-George Harrison
In the Olivia Harrison book George Harrison Living In The Material World [ purchase], Damon Hill--a Formula One World Champion who also formed a punk band called Sex, Hitler And The Hormones--says he once told George his biggest dream was to go on a rocket and blast off into outer space. George replied "No, man. Inner space, not outer space."
George owned a rare McLaren F1. They take three months to build. His was painted purple. 630 horsepower ( my Honda Civic as 140) No power brakes, no power steering, no traction control. George loved the car and he loved the noise it made.
It looked something like this.
Jackie said Formula One Racers and great guitarists are both artists who often live on the edge. For whatever reason, George made friends with all kinds of champion drivers. Here's George being interviewed by his friend Jackie at the 1986 Australian Grand Prix.
I'm reading Olivia Harrison's intimate photo-heavy biography George Harrison Living in the Material World [purchase ] backwards so I've been immediately struck by how much the ex-Beatle loved spending time gardening. There's this quote that leads off the final chapter "Fresh Air":
Sometimes I feel like I'm actually on the wrong planet, and it's great when I'm in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think "What the hell am I doing here?"
His son Dhani says until he was seven he only saw his dad "in jeans, khakis, covered in dirt just continuously planting trees."
Harrison had a 63 acre estate on Maui where he shot the "This Is Love" video in 1987.
He also had a home off the coast of Australia. But, of course his best known crash pad was Friar Park aka "Crackerbox Palace", a huge 120 room Victorian neo-Gothic mansion that came with 35 acres purchased when George was 27.
Olivia told Radio Times her husband "never felt more at peace than when he was gardening. He loved the gardens( at Friar Park)and always said you felt closest to God when you were in the garden."
(It was, after all, in Eric Clapton's garden that George wrote "Here Comes the Sun".)
Friar Park was previously owned by an eccentric millionaire named Sir Frank Crisp. George's sister-in-law Irene says George would point out trees amazed that Crisp planted them as saplings knowing he'd never see them as a stand of trees. That's how George planned his own gardens,she said, doing the best he could...even though he knew he'd never see the final results.
Harrison's Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp ( Let It Roll) is one our fave cuts on All Things Must Pass.
Years after George passed away from lung cancer, his friend Neil Innes (Bonzo Dog Band, Rutles) and wife Yvonne designed a garden in tribute to George for the Chelsea Flower Show. For Neil's designs and memories click here .
