The song George Harrison wrote as revenge: “A bit of light comedy relief”
Once The Beatles had finally bitten the dust in 1970, laying down the final tracks they’d ever record in January for ‘Let It Be’ and ‘I Me Mine’ while John Lennon was on holiday, all respective members entered the new decade with a strong start.
Paul McCartney released McCartney, featuring the classic piano stomper ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, while primal therapy and lyrical self-dissection reaped rewards on John Lennon’s raw and unfiltered Plastic Ono Band. Meanwhile, Ringo Starr’s Sentimental Journey—a collection of old standards—made it into the UK Albums Chart top ten.
Lead guitarist George Harrison was no exception. By the end of The Beatles’ tenure, Harrison was quickly giving the Lennon-McCartney partnership a run for its money, writing some of the band’s best-loved songs, including ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and ‘Something’. The latter was famously praised by Frank Sinatra as “one of the best love songs I believe to be written in the past fifty or a hundred years,” without realising Harrison’s authorship.
Having compiled a wealth of demos and material dating back as far as Revolver, Harrison entered EMI Studios in May to realise all the ideas he had been kicking around for four years, cutting the All Things Must Pass triple LP.
It took producer Phil Spector to convince Apple Records to issue ‘My Sweet Lord’ as a single, distributed for the most part worldwide following the album’s release and granting Harrison the first post-Beatle number one in the UK and America. It seemed he was on a winner. Yet his smash hit would trigger legal issues years later, finding himself in a New York court for a week convincing Manhatten’s District Court Judge Richard Owen that he was innocent of subconscious plagiarism.
In 1971, Bright Tunes Music Corporation filed a suit claiming that ‘My Sweet Lord’ bore far too much resemblance to The Chiffons’ 1963 hit ‘He’s So Fine’, going to trial in March 1976. Pushing for both parties to settle, Owen ruled that he had indeed unwittingly violated the Copyright Act after the plaintiff had presented a rigorous breakdown of each song’s components, labelling them “motifs”, successfully arguing the case that each pop piece was too similar. It’s a case that still prompts debate in the field of jurisprudence as to where the line between honest inspiration and plagiarism lies.
The legal strife would inspire Thirty Three & 1⁄3‘s lead single, released a few months after the ruling. “I wrote ‘This Song’ as a bit of light comedy relief – and as a way to exorcise the paranoia about songwriting that had started to build up in me,” Harrison revealed in 1980’s I Me Mine. “I still don’t understand how the courts aren’t filled with similar cases – as 99% of the popular music that can be heard is reminiscent of something or other”.
Despite lumbering on until 1981 after further complications with former manager Allen Klein’s purchase of Bright Tunes’ publishing, Harrison was able to see the funny side. He penned the sardonic pop tune, taking a potshot at the litigious greed he was in the middle of, and corralled everybody from Ronnie Wood to Harry Nilsson to appear in its lampooning video.
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