Hear the acoustic demo for George Harrison’s angry jibe at The Beatles ‘Sue Me, Sue You Blues’
When The Beatles broke up, all the love they had shared, the music they had created and the cultural shift they had driven started to turn a little sour. The group may have officially split in 1970, but their writing was on the wall from a few years prior as different factions within the group began to split. Ringo Starr was becoming less and less humorous about his role in the group, John Lennon seemed intent on artistic enlightenment through chemical destruction, and Paul McCartney was making a play for the Fab Four throne. During this time, George Harrison was busy writing songs.
The previously quiet Beatle had begun to flex his songwriting technique in 1966, but by the time had broken up four years later, he was as talented and cultured as the band’s principal songwriters, Lennon and McCartney. Tracks like ‘Within You Without You’, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and ‘Something’ all pointed to Harrison being one of the group’s more gifted songsmiths, however, he was still down in the pecking order. Harrison even tried to get most of what would become his debut album All Things Must Pass into The Beatles’ set, but he was consistently rejected.
The truth is, though, that these weren’t the real reasons for the souring of the band’s impact. The above can all be filed under ‘creative differences’ and as quickly forgotten about with time and care. No, the real reason things turned sour for The Beatles was the influx of lawyers that followed the group’s split, with Paul McCartney leading the litigious charge as he became determined to ensure his rights, and the rights to his music remained under his control. It was a move that has since been reconciled with the Fab Four’s fanbase as a necessary one, however, at the time, it was a dastardly move.
The Beatles had been proponents of the power of harmonious love and were now seemingly happy to throw it all the way in the name of cold hard cash. McCartney was happy to hide behind Linda’s father and family as they prepared for his continuous litigious behaviour. Lennon equally duelled with McCartney within the courtroom experience, even throwing a few thinly veiled barbs in his songs too. But the need for so many lawyers was unbearable for one of Macca’s fiercest opponents. George Harrison wouldn’t show his hand in front of a judge; he made his feelings clear on ‘Sue Me, Sue You’.
“Around that time, we had millions of suits flying here, flying there,” recalled McCartney to Rolling Stone in 1973. “George wrote the ‘Sue Me, Sue You Blues’ about it. I’d kicked it all off originally, having to sue the other three Beatles in the High Court, and that opened Pandora’s box. After that, everybody just seemed to be suing everybody.”
The song is, therefore, some of Harrison’s most pointed works. However, while the originally released track is buoyed with a sense of electric purpose, it is within the acoustic demo below that we can truly devour the brutal lyricism. “You serve me/ And I’ll serve you/ Swing your partners, all get screwed/ Bring your lawyer/ And I’ll bring mine/ Get together, and we could have a bad time,” sings Harrison. The acoustic demo below also has some classic Harrison bends, brought to the twangy fore with a steel guitar.
It’s one of Harrison’s best compositions, not only because it draws on real-life events within that classic blues style but because it sees Harrison putting his fervent emotions on the line without a care for how they may be received.
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