“Nice sounds”: the artist George Harrison said made “the greatest pop tunes of the 1970s”
There’s a good chance many of The Beatles could have faded into obscurity and still have been considered legends by the dawn of the 1970s. Their work together had already been a run of solid gold, but even after being in their personal orbit for years, George Harrison already had a wealth of songs at his disposal to choose from when he finally got past the shadow of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Then again, the ‘Quiet Beatle’ still had his ear to the ground for when another master songwriter showed their face.
Because when you think about it, Harrison was never meant to be the solo star that he grew into. He was already one of the finest craftsmen in his other band, but despite having his problems with the other Fabs, he was always interested in being part of a collaborative process rather than the band leader telling everyone what to do. And if All Things Must Pass is any indication, Harrison could pick out living legends when he wanted to.
Harrison’s backing band already had Derek and the Dominoes in the mix and even token appearances by people like Phil Collins, but the goal wasn’t to create the great lost Beatles album. The guitarist had spent years playing that kind of music, and this was supposed to be his excuse to start moving in a different direction, more towards the spiritual angle that he had been building towards for years.
Then again, there were bound to be a lot of fans out there wondering when they could hear a more tuneful version of what the Fab Four had done, and if The Beatles themselves weren’t around, Jeff Lynne was the next best thing. He had already had his songwriting chops down from working in The Move, but after birthing Electric Light Orchestra as a space-rock outfit, his turn towards pop picked up right where The Beatles left off in the 1960s.
“It was a great balance working with him, bringing out the kind of sounds that we hadn’t heard for a bit.”
george harrison
And it’s not like The Beatles didn’t take notice. John Lennon mockingly referred to the band as his old band’s spiritual successors, and Ringo Starr even joked that the reason why they broke was because they ran out of Beatles riffs to steal. For all of the cheap jabs, though, Harrison knew that he was dealing with a seasoned veteran of songwriting whenever he heard ‘Telephone Line’ or ‘Evil Woman’.
When talking about his later collaborations with Lynne in the 1980s, Harrison said the frontman was a big part of why the previous decade was so interesting, saying, “Jeff was a big Beatle fan, and he went on to write some of the greatest pop tunes of the 1970s. Jeff is all into those nice sounds and nostalgic sounds as well, and it was a great balance working with him, bringing out the kind of sounds that we hadn’t heard for a bit.”
But while Cloud Nine is viewed as the first time Harrison embraced his Beatles years, a lot of it feels like Beatles by way of ELO in some respects. That’s hardly a bad thing, but when listening to Harrison’s collaboration with Lynne, it was clear that he was the McCartney to Harrison’s Lennon, often tightening up everything to sound a bit sweeter amid the strange chord changes in a song like ‘That’s What It Takes’.
Even if it sounded a bit stilted for their first try, this was only a breeding ground for Lynne as a producer. Whether he was aware of it or not, this may as well have been his unofficial audition before Harrison called upon his services again to help revamp The Beatles’ final songs in the 1990s.
