The terrible song George Harrison didn’t “give a shit” about
In the immediate aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup in 1970, it appeared that George Harrison was eclipsing his former band’s principal songwriters in solo acclaim.
Harrison had always peppered most albums with his lyrical presence, but by The Beatles’ 1968 double album, Paul McCartney and John Lennon were now seriously contending with a writer who was matching their quality.
Over the next two years, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, ‘Here Comes the Sun’, and ‘Something’ would stand glowingly at the very peak of the Fab Four’s dazzling songbook, and in the solo blitz unleashed after the band’s break-up, Harrison’s triple All Things Must Pass opus would top the UK and US album charts before any other Beatle, likewise its title track single.
Dark Horse was an apt title for his fifth solo effort in 1974, including his two previous Moog synthesiser electronic albums. Harrison was indulging in something of a “Lost Weekend” akin to Lennon’s hedonistic break from his wife and muse Yoko Ono, Harrison lost in a whirlwind of drink and drugs around the time of his dissolving marriage to Pattie Boyd.
Often tagged with the dark horse moniker due to his surprisingly growing songwriting stature, the album and title track name were in fact a sly nod to his own infidelity, reflecting a messy chapter when the ‘quite Beatle’ was rumoured to be sleeping with Faces guitarist and future Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood’s wife Krissy, Ringo Starr’s wife Maureen, and the model Kathy Simmons.
While the album was led by ‘Ding Dong, Ding Dong’ in the UK, ‘Dark Horse’s US release was accompanied by a scrappy B-side recorded with little care, and sounded like it. A country-tinged number cut in Hollywood’s A&M studios, ‘I Don’t Care Anymore’ marked a raw and slapdash sound for Harrison, owing much to the last-minute rush of the recordings, and a shredded voice box hoarsened by his plentiful partying and imbibing to the point of laryngitis.
Produced by Harrison himself, as was the album, there were no Phil Spector-style sonic touches to mask the shoddiness. “I had to come up with a B-side and I did it in one take,” Harrison confessed to Musician in 1987. “I don’t give a shit!”
Critical reception largely agreed. Deeming the title to say it all, Harrison’s sloppy country strum, open drawled gibberish, and ignoble defence of his adultery popped a certain bubble he’d enjoyed since the end of The Beatles, a spiritual edge and increasing songcraft sophistication that had finally snagged just as Lennon was enjoying a US album number one with Walls and Bridges and McCartney was entering a period of sorely needed renewal with Wings’ Band on the Run the previous year.
Harrison would continue to drop moderately successful albums, but wouldn’t reach similar commercial heights as All Things Must Pass until 1987’s Cloud Nine. But ‘I Don’t Care Anymore’ illustrates a chaotic chapter for the former Beatle both creatively and personally, an artistic wobble where airing dirty laundry flashed another side contrary to the mystical impressions embellished by the press of the day.
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