The one song that made George Harrison hate music: “It saved many a heroin addict’s life”
Following the demise of The Beatles, George Harrison raced out of the gates to establish himself as a solo star. While he wasn’t much of a songwriter during their first few years in the spotlight, Harrison came into his own by the end of their tenure and had bundles of material ready.
Harrison was the first member of the band to release a solo album, 1968’s Wonderwall Music, which he followed up a year later with Electronic Sound. However, both records were side projects that allowed Harrison to experiment and were released to little fanfare. His third album, All Things Must Pass, was a record in the more traditional sense and became a huge commercial success for the Beatle.
It was released mere months after The Beatles split, and his former band had rejected many of the tracks on the record. Harrison didn’t intend for these songs to launch him into solo superstardom, but it’s where he unexpectedly found himself. However, the success of the album’s chart-topping single, ‘My Sweet Lord’, would come with unwanted consequences.
In the wake of the album’s triumph, a money-induced incident would turn Harrison’s world upside down, leaving him questioning whether he even wanted to listen to music again, let alone make it.
Harrison was a true original who viewed songwriting as a necessary tool to express himself. Therefore, it came as a shock to Harrison’s system when he was accused of plagiarism on ‘My Sweet Lord’, a track that had sold millions of records worldwide.
Typically, an artist brings plagiarism cases forward, but this didn’t occur with ‘My Sweet Lord’. Instead, Bright Tunes Music brought the legal filing, claiming it sounded too similar to The Chiffons’ 1963 hit ‘He’s So Fine’, which was released through their company. Although this should have been a simple open-and-shut case in Harrison’s favour, it took several years for a resolution to be reached, causing unthinkable anguish. As the court case slowly rumbled on, Harrison’s heart fell out of love with the art of making music.
At the time the case was filed, Harrison’s manager, Allen Klein, dealt with Bright Tunes on behalf of his client. However, Klein, who was once on Harrison’s side, later became his worst enemy. Bright Tunes filed for bankruptcy, which should have ended the sorry saga, but Klein had other ideas.
In 1973, Harrison fired Klein, and the split was not amicable. Rather than move on to a new chapter in his life, Klein later started to work as a consultant for Bright Tunes. To put the case behind him once and for all, Harrison offered to settle for $148,000. However, Klein had other ideas and pushed through a legal battle. The trial eventually took place in February 1976. Primarily, it focused on the musical pattern of the two songs, which were both based on two musical motifs, ‘G-E-D’ and ‘G-A-C-A-C’, that appeared in the pair of tracks.
While the judge concluded Harrison didn’t deliberately copy ‘My Sweet Lord‘, they did find him guilty of “subconscious plagiarism” on August 31st, 1976. Furthermore, Harrison was ordered to pay around $1.6 million in damages, significantly higher than he ever envisaged. Following the legal conclusion, an inescapable dark cloud lingered over him, and the musician began to retreat within himself creatively.
Harrison later reflected in an interview with Rolling Stone about the arduous set of events: “It’s difficult just to start writing again after you’ve been through that. Even now when I put the radio on, every tune I hear sounds like something else. I wasn’t consciously aware of the similarity to ‘He’s So Fine’,” he wrote in his autobiography.
The guitarist added: “Why didn’t I realise? It would have been very easy to change a note here or there, and not affect the feeling of the record. I don’t feel bad or guilty about it. It saved many a heroin addict’s life. I know the motive behind writing the song in the first place far exceeds the legal hassle.”
To pile on his misery even further, John Lennon threw Harrison under the bus in an interview with Playboy in 1980, remarking, “He must have known, you know. He’s smarter than that… He could have changed a couple of bars in that song and nobody could ever have touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off.”
Subconscious plagiarism is a grey area. Harrison was unaware of the similarities and didn’t consider making any significant changes to differentiate the two tracks. If he had been conscious of these resemblances, Harrison would have undoubtedly adapted to avoid the scenario he found himself in. After the judgment of the legal battle, Harrison didn’t write a single song and deliberately avoided music at all costs for over a year. During this time, his life changed dramatically as he became a father to his son, Dhani, which proved to be the perfect antidote to the soap opera of the music business. Thankfully, it also inspired him to pick up the pen again, resulting in his self-titled 1979 album.
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