The 1970 George Harrison song that proves he’s right “up there with” Brian Wilson and Debussy
If George Harrison was such a good songwriter, then why didn’t he write so many songs for The Beatles? You’ve all heard this argument before, but what were the real reasons for his considerably less sizable contribution to the band?
You can make a case for the fact that even though he only contributed around two dozen tracks to their discography compared to the three-figure counts of both John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s respective outputs, the songs that he did conjure up were just as good, if not better and more consistent. Harrison didn’t feel the need to be as self-indulgent and embittered as Lennon did, and he didn’t feel the need to resort to kitschy gimmicks like McCartney; he was simply gifted at songwriting without falling back on either of these things, but just not recognised for it.
First of all, Harrison was not the face of the band to quite the same degree as the other two. He was always a lot shyer, and therefore, as the one who spoke less in the press, it was probably better that the majority of the limelight was left to be hogged by the two more prominent figures.
It would have been unusual to have had Lennon and McCartney handling so much of the talking in public situations, but to have Harrison serve as the spokesperson for all of their activities. Harrison enjoyed being in the background to a degree, but it came at a cost.
There’s also an element of arrogance about both Lennon and McCartney that they couldn’t let go of, and so in order to get the majority of the attention, they used to wrongly limit the amount of contributions from Harrison to a couple per album. They did this to Ringo Starr as well, albeit with much more justification, but there were evidently way more up Harrison’s sleeve that he was waiting to unveil to the world at some point.
His first album after the breakup of the band was 1970’s All Things Must Pass, a phenomenal triple album that shows off just how much Harrison had prepared on the side, and had the others been prepared to listen to him, perhaps these could all have existed as Beatles songs rather than his own.
An album like this only goes to show the depth of his songwriting ability, and while many people use this as an example to argue that he’s as good as, if not better than his bandmates as a songwriter, acclaimed British songwriter and humourist Neil Innes, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, once proclaimed that one song from the album shows he’s even above some of the greatest songwriters to have ever walked the planet.
“George’s stuff didn’t always grab you the way the other two’s did,” Innes argued, “but if you listen to something like ‘Beware Of Darkness’ – the chords in that – I mean, he’s up there with Brian Wilson, he’s up there with Debussy. More people should cover his songs.”
More people should cover his songs, and more should realise that quantity does not necessarily always equate to quality, with Harrison’s slender offerings to the Beatles’ catalogue just as sturdy as the weightier contributions from his bandmates. What Harrison did in only a small percentage of The Beatles’ work was immense, but what he showed himself to be capable of in his career after that rightfully cements his status as one of the all-time greats.
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