“The tune was so obvious”: the song George Harrison thought no one should hear
Every artist is usually afraid of having a few songs that aren’t as solid as the rest of their catalogue. The idea of having a perfect streak is impossible in rock and roll, but sometimes the biggest hurdles for artists to get over are the tunes that drag down the rest of the record once they come on. And while nothing that any former Beatle made in their solo careers was back from front to back, George Harrison had some moments that he would have preferred not to put on his final records.
Looking at how his career shaped up, though, it’s not like Harrison cared about having a solo career in the same way his bandmates did. He had his fill of being in the public eye, and if his label insisted that he make more records, he was going to do it for the right reasons, whether that was his epic debut All Things Must Pass or making The Concert for Bangladesh a massive experience for a good cause.
However, when it comes to his solo catalogue, Harrison’s records tend to work in waves. There will be different periods where his songs seem to be clicking, like in the late 1980s with the Traveling Wilburys, but if everyone rewound to earlier in the decade, you would have sworn that ‘The Quiet Beatle’ had begun to resent the fact that he was expected to make music.
He had bigger ambitions to be a film producer with Handmaid Films, and since The Life of Brian and Time Bandits had done well at the box office, he would never invest as much time into records as Somewhere in England. And when listening to an album like Gone Troppo, it was clear that he was either trying to make something half-assed or being forced to make a record at gunpoint to satisfy a quota.
“I got a bit embarrassed by it and didn’t want to play it to anybody.”
George Harrison
Which is strange, given how happy he seemed to be making music in the mid-1970s. His style was far from the hippest thing in the world ever since punk and hard rock had taken over the world, but Thirty Three and ⅓ was a fantastic record, and his self-titled 1979 record is one of the breeziest pieces of yacht rock ever conceived. However, Harrison did have one complaint about the lead single, ‘Blow Away’.
Written after repairing a leak in his roof, Harrison felt that the song didn’t need to be heard by his core fans, saying, “I came in, found the chords to the tune that came into my head and then some time later wrote the verse. But then I thought that the tune was so obvious somehow, I got a bit embarrassed by it and didn’t want to play it to anybody. But when I recorded it, I actually liked it more.”
Sure, the concept is a little flimsy, but part of the beauty of Harrison’s writing is being able to make something that no one would have thought of. The idea of fixing a leaky roof might be a little goofy, but everyone has had to face hard times, and hearing someone tell them to take time for all of the struggles of life to blow away is far from a bad message to give to the world.
It might not be as cerebral as some of his spiritual songs and nowhere near as classic as his Beatles songs, but there’s more than enough space in rock and roll history for a song like this. And when entering any era when things start to seem more and more terrifying with each passing day, it’s nice to have a friend through the speakers telling us that everything will be alright.
