The one person who got George Harrison through hell: “It all worked out fine”
By the end of The Beatles’ run, George Harrison seemed to finally be ready to become his own songwriter. He had already been one of the greatest composers when working with his mates, but after he didn’t have to take shit from John Lennon and Paul McCartney any longer, All Things Must Pass proved that he was on the same level as his colleagues, if not better in a few places. While he reached for new influences all the time, he knew he was treading down a dark path during the end of his run in the 1970s.
Then again, Harrison was never afraid to downplay his celebrity. He was the last person who wanted to be out front playing the frontman role, but when he was forced to take the reins as a solo musician, the pressures of being one of the biggest names in music started to get to him.
Outside of having to deal with his messy divorce on Dark Horse, Harrison contracting laryngitis when it came time to tour is still one of the darkest moments of his live career. While most people were happy to see him trying to do justice to the tunes he played back in the day, hearing him play songs like ‘What is Life’ live with his band compared to the studio version is like night and day, especially when he sounds like he’s about to croak after every single line he sings.
If there’s one piece that represents the nadir of his catalogue, though, it’s Extra Texture. Harrison may have still been able to make hits like ‘You’ and even a handful of decent album cuts, but he was already ready to pack it in. While he would call the record a “grubby” album later on, it’s heartbreaking seeing him in such a depressed state, going from the wise sage telling us everything will be alright to talk about putting a loaded pistol to his brain.
Even if Harrison’s own version of a “lost weekend” went on a bit longer than normal, it only took Olivia Harrison to help pull him out of the doldrums. While he had already begun seeing her before his divorce was finalised, he ended up taking care of himself a lot more once he finally made it official.
And when he wrote the song ‘Dark Sweet Lady’, for his self-titled album, it was pretty much a thank-you to Olivia for helping him through his personal hell, saying, “I could put back a bottle of brandy occasionally, plus all the other naughty things that fly around. I just went on a binge, went on the road… all that sort of thing, until it got to the point where I had no voice and almost no body at times. Then I met Olivia, and it all worked out fine.”
Listening back to the rest of his albums from around this time, there’s also that feeling of happiness around every one of them. Even if 33 and ⅓ or George Harrison don’t have the immediate hits he had back at the beginning of his career, you can hear that he had finally found some sort of peace with his place in the world.
While Harrison eventually got frustrated with his label and ended up making toothless takes on rock and roll in the 1980s, it didn’t matter as long as he had some stability now. An album like Extra Texture might be hard to listen to knowing what’s going on in the background, but Harrison knew that if he kept his head straight, he could take on anything with his soulmate by his side.
