The tender final release of George Harrison’s career
After first battling throat cancer in 1997, George Harrison was acutely aware of his own mortality. Following the ordeal, Harrison made a pact with himself to return to the studio, and the final release of his life was a fitting way to end his career.
Harrison’s final album was the posthumous release, Brainwashed, which was released toward the end of 2002. However, the former Beatle sadly didn’t survive to see it released for public consumption. Harrison spent years working on the record in the background while his health was suffering and packed everything into one last parting gift to the world before moving on.
Brainwashed marked Harrison’s first album since 1987’s Cloud Nine, which was technically the final record of his career. Despite not releasing an LP for 15 years, that doesn’t mean Harrison wasn’t keeping himself busy. He released two albums with The Travelling Wilburys, toured with Eric Clapton in Japan, and Anthology, a victory lap with the surviving members of The Beatles.
Looking back wistfully at The Beatles in Anthology wasn’t the only reflective project undertaken by Harrison, who decided to re-record one of his most beloved songs, ‘My Sweet Lord’. Harrison had a complicated history with the original, as it was at the centre of a plagiarism case that led to him falling out of love with music.
“I am a bit out of touch with the other music,” he admitted to Rolling Stone after being found guilty of unconscious plagiarism. “There’re certain artists that I always like to listen to, but I don’t listen a great deal to the radio. I just got out of it – I was ‘skiving,’ as the English say. Everybody else doesn’t notice, because if your past records still get played on the radio, people don’t notice that you’re not really there. But I just got sick of all that,” he added.
However, as his breakthrough solo album, All Things Pass, celebrated its 30th anniversary, the musician wanted to do something special and decided to revisit the hit song. To commemorate the occasion, Harrison re-recorded ‘My Sweet Lord’ and released it as a bonus track on the reissued version of All Things Must Pass.
Harrison explained in the liner notes for the album why he decided to revamp ‘My Sweet Lord‘: “To create something extra for the Anniversary issue, I decided to have a new look at ‘My Sweet Lord’ and change it from the original version.”
Despite featuring new instrumentation, Harrison’s vocals are the most notable difference between the two versions of the track. Heartbreakingly, you can hear the pain in his voice on each line, which gifted an extra layer of authentic poignancy to ‘My Sweet Lord’ and acted as the perfect sign-off for an all-time great.
