The one punk artist that George Harrison loved: “Very good”
George Harrison didn’t really have any business in trying to be trendy after 1971.
He had reached the peak of his songwriting expertise, and even though his former bandmates were going to continue chasing after the next big hit, he wasn’t suddenly going to try to make new songs that sounded more in line with what the next generation wanted. He knew what his music was supposed to sound like, and it was going to take a lot for the next generation to win him over whenever he made a new record.
Then again, it’s not like rock and roll stopped being good after a certain point for Harrison or anything. He still had friends like Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne who were doing good work, and he felt that someone like Dave Stewart had what it took to be a great songwriter, but there was also a lot working against him in the 1980s. There was hardly anyone less equipped for MTV than Harrison, and while he did lean into it, the fact that he was forced to make pop songs on Somewhere in England was one of the worst decisions of his career.
Which probably explains why he sat out most of the 1980s. He didn’t blend in with the Madonnas and Michael Jacksons of the world, but it’s not like the 1970s were known for treating him well. He willingly admitted that records like Extra Texture were far from the best thing that he ever made, and while he was content to keep making music that sounded closer to dad rock on his self-titled record, that wasn’t what was going on in the streets.
England was already disowning some of the biggest bands in the world when punk started to become one of the biggest genres on Earth, but Harrison wasn’t all that impressed with anything that he heard. John Lennon had said that punk was simply a more brash version of what The Beatles had done in Hamburg, so why would Harrison want to spend his next album trying to relearn what he already knew?
That didn’t stop Paul McCartney from making tunes like ‘Spin It On’ from Back to the Egg, but Harrison figured that artists should be doing more than simply trying to provoke. All of his favourite artists needed to have good songs behind them, and compared to bands like the Sex Pistols, Harrison was much more interested in what someone like Elvis Costello was doing whenever he performed.
Costello might have had a greater respect for songwriting, but Harrison could see what he was going for a lot better than the usual punk crowds, saying, “Well, musically the punks have been and gone, haven’t they, and it all seems to be very musical again. Elvis Costello is very good – very good melodies, good chord changes. I’m pleased about his success, but I never liked those monotone kinds of yelling records.”
And given the fact that Harrison was looking out for the little guy, a lot of Costello’s songs fell more in line with what the former Beatle had to say. Harrison was always known for his wit every single time he made one of his upbeat tunes, and while Costello’s fingerprints are all over ‘Radio Radio,’ the message of labels only forcing a single type of music onto the listener sounds like something Harrison would have written himself if he had the time.
So while ‘The Quiet One’ wasn’t going to put a safety pin through his nose or start snarling about generic rebellion, he knew that the future was in safe hands if Costello was the one leading the charge. He may have been a bit strange compared to everyone else, but there was still a lot of passion for songwriting underneath those Buddy Holly glasses that Harrison knew worked wonders.
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