‘Sue Me, Sue You Blues’: George Harrison’s most vicious song
The word “vicious” isn’t one you’d typically associate with someone widely dubbed ‘The Quiet Beatle’. Compared to bandmates Paul McCartney and John Lennon, fair enough—George Harrison wasn’t the most talkative. Tom Petty, however, would certainly have disagreed, once noting of the guitarist, “Well, he never shut up”.
As documented in The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After the Break-Up, Harrison himself reflected on the moniker: “They always dubbed me the Quiet One, the Reclusive One, the Business One. Just because I wasn’t in the nightclubs all the time, they thought I was some kind of freak or something.”
Despite not being particularly impressed by the connotation, in true Harrison fashion—ever cunning—his 1974 solo album Dark Horse seemed to flip the narrative on its head. Lyrics on the title track, such as “You thought that you had got me all staked out / Baby, it looks like I’ve been breaking out,” suggest a self-proclamation that indeed labels him a “dark horse”. Perhaps a direct retaliation to critics who claimed to know him well enough to bestow the unfavoured tag upon him, some could also interpret it as a nod to the Lennon and McCartney-shaped songwriting shadows he may have felt cast into during his time with the Fab Four.
Petty, who became a true friend of Harrison’s during their time in The Traveling Wilburys—the supergroup that brought them together with Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison—made his views on the matter clear. “George had a lot to say. Boy, did he have a lot to say. That’s hysterical to me, you know, that he was known as the quiet one. I assume he got that name because the other ones were so much louder. I mean, they were very loud people.”
Harrison’s wife, Oliva, along with producer George Martin, also knew Harrison was not afraid to shy away from a blunt, unfiltered comment. “George was bold, and he was very provocative,” his wife Olivia told the LA Times. “I don’t know how many times I jabbed him in the ribs at some function when he’d make one of his comments. I’d tell him, ‘Don’t go there, don’t start,’ but he liked to have fun with people. He always could break the ice.”
During one of the first recording sessions with the group, Martin invited them to come into the control booth after they’d run through some takes, telling them to let him know if they didn’t like anything. Harrison responded, “Well, I don’t like your tie, for starters”.
Bringing together his solo and band work, Harrison’s catalogue is certainly one synonymous with the much more fitting term, “dark horse”. From the Frank Sinatra-endorsed ‘Something’ (“the greatest love song of the past 50 years”) to ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, right up to ‘I Me Mine’—the last song The Beatles ever worked on—setting aside 2023’s AI-aided ‘Now and Then’, that is.
In the years following The Beatles’ breakup, Harrison put his sharp tongue to paper with vicious effect, releasing ‘Sue Me, Sue You Blues’ in 1973. With the dismantling of such a successful group came a turbulent storm of paperwork, lawyers, and courtroom visits. The legal mess was infuriating for Harrison, who channelled his frustration into lyrics like “It’s affidavit swearing time / Sign it on the dotted line” and “…in the end we just pay those lawyers their bills”.
Throughout the song, layered over a satirically jaunty instrumental, Harrison repeatedly returns to the idea that they’re all caught in a legal game—until he finally relinquishes his anger in a weary confession: “I’m tired of playing the sue me, sue you blues”.
