“What am I doing”: The bands George Harrison thought were his polar opposites
George Harrison was always known to march to his own beat, whether within or outside The Beatles. He never shied away from wearing his emotions on his sleeve, and while that did lead to him sounding a bit blunt when talking about some of his least favourite aspects of the industry, it’s almost refreshing to hear someone be honest about their status than having to see them put on a smile and force their way through every press run. But while ‘The Quiet One’ was riding high after leaving his old group, the well did seem to dry up over time.
That didn’t mean that he stopped making great music. Across almost every one of his albums, some tunes are highlights, whether that’s hearing him pick up the acoustic guitar or experiment with writing a silly love song in the same way that his old band used to do. But a lot of his success had to deal with seizing the moment, and that was never easy for someone who couldn’t have cared less about what the trends were at the time.
Harrison’s music was already one of the things in demand in the industry when All Things Must Pass came out, but he never even bothered to be concerned with genres like punk. He knew that his best material came from genres as far-reaching as Indian music, folk music, and old rock and roll, so it’s no surprise that he was making sentimental tunes like ‘Blow Away’ at the same time Sex Pistols were tearing up the charts.
Those tunes were all well and good in the 1970s, but the minute the 1980s began, Harrison felt that he had lost touch with what people wanted. Everyone was bound to be listening whenever any ex-Beatle made a tribute song to John Lennon, but when approaching Somewhere in England, it was clear that Harrison was being forced into a corner when making some of his tunes.
Some tracks are clearly made to cash-in on traditional pop rock, but while Harrison was ahead of the game in many respects by making music videos for tunes like ‘This Song’ and ‘Crackerbox Palace’ from his previous albums, hearing the sounds of synthesisers clogging up the airwaves was not where he wanted to go. He saw the instrument as a texture, but compared to the new wave bands cropping up, he felt the new school was using it as a crutch.
When talking about making Somewhere in England, session drummer Dave Mattacks even said that Harrison considered the biggest names at the time to be the anti-version of him, saying, “It was the rise of the machine, and there was a real sea change in popular music. Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, he felt that was all at the opposite end of the spectrum, and he was railing against it. I don’t think he was disillusioned, I just think he was sad about what was going on around him. ‘What am I doing? I don’t feel a part of contemporary music.’”
That’s probably why he ended up rallying against the big machine of the music industry on ‘Blood From a Clone’, but that doesn’t make it any fun to listen to. It might have been hard for artists of Harrison’s generation to adapt, but while a song written as a fuck-you to big business can work in practice, making it sound like cheesy 1980s movie soundtrack fodder was never going to go over well.
No matter what Harrison spat out in response to Somewhere in England, it was never going to make kids suddenly throw out their copies of ‘Tainted Love’ or ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’. This was the new trendy approach to music, and while Cloud Nine would eventually put the guitarist back on higher ground, it’s a little disconcerting seeing him look like an old man yelling at the new kids in town to get off his lawn.
