‘My Sweet Lord’ – All Things Must Pass

Everyone knew that The Beatles’ solo careers would be good, but what would George Harrison sound like on his own? He had given us teasers of what his music would be like on tracks like ‘Something’ and ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ but what would he do now that he didn’t have the other ‘Threetles’ by his side? Well, for anyone doubting whether he could put out the same quality, those dual guitar harmonies lifted us up to heaven the minute that ‘My Sweet Lord’ graced our eardrums.

While the song has a checkered history thanks to the plagiarism lawsuit of Harrison’s song and ‘He’s So Fine,’ hearing him make his guitar cry feels like him reaching out to his higher power. He already demanded to be let into our hearts on ‘I’d Have You Anytime,’ but this was his call to action for all of us to tap into our own spirituality while still being a way to introduce us to his slide guitar for the first time.

Regardless of one’s spirituality, ‘My Sweet Lord’ is enough to get anyone believing in a higher power of some sort, be it God, divine intervention, or the power of love that the Fab Four preached about. The first few years after The Beatles were bound to do a number on all of them, but after being kept down by his peers, this was the moment where Harrison finally found his artistic sense of peace.

‘Til There Was You’ – With The Beatles

When The Beatles first got signed, they were nothing more than a simple garage band. A shit-hot garage band, no doubt, but one that needed a bit more polish if they were going to reach the big leagues with George Martin. But even if Please Please Me was regarded as the band’s unintended live album, you’d swear that Harrison grew up as a guitar player within the span of a few months on ‘Til There Was You.’

Despite it being a cover from their early years as a bar band, the nuance that Harrison put into his solo is incredibly sophisticated by rock and roll standards. Compared to every other group coming out of the British Invasion, no one was using the kind of inversions and jazz chords that are found in this song, much less outlining diminished chords halfway through the piece before going right back into the main melody.

It’s possible that he might have transcribed this solo, but chances are this was an amalgamation of the kind of breaks that were heard in many of the tunes that the band were listening to when putting together show tunes for their live act. It’s not exactly traditional rock and roll, but anyone who wants to take a look at the guitarist’s eclectic side will have a field day trying to get this one under their fingers.

‘Handle With Care’ – Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1

By the end of the 1980s, Harrison seemed to finally rediscover his love of playing music again. There had been moments where he seemed to be forced into making music, so having to throw together whatever music that he could to satisfy his record company felt more like completing a chore than any kind of passion project. As it turns out, all he needed was the right people to bring him back, and since he always loved being in a band, The Traveling Wilburys was his way of putting his fame up on the shelf.

Sure, he was still one of the biggest names in the group, but he was never going to be the centre of attention when Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison were at his side. And with ‘Handle With Care,’ Harrison had the perfect vehicle for the supergroup to work off of, featuring a little bit from every member with Orbison’s gorgeous pre-chorus line and Bob Dylan tunefully croaking his way through his section with Tom Petty.

But the icing on the cake is Harrison’s slide solo at the end of the tune, virtually copping the vocal melody while also adding little flourishes, including a few extensions that sound like he’s trying to make the guitar laugh. Considering the whole band was one big joke that got a little too out-of-hand, that musical laugh might as well be Harrison’s excitement being able to work next to his heroes.

‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – A Hard Day’s Night

If the first few Beatles albums were the proof of concept for the group, A Hard Day’s Night was where they would become a household name. The wave of Beatlemania had already been spreading like a disease, but the minute that opening chord launched everyone into the film of the same name, every single teenager fell in love with the four moptops all over again. And despite having a great solo, Harrison’s performance on this song has everything to do with the guitar he’s using.

After favouring his Gretsch guitar throughout most of their early years, this was the debut of the Rickenbacker 12-string electric guitar. Even if Harrison does nothing but a few noodles on the song, the jangly tone of the guitar became the go-to guitar sound for anyone who was remotely interested in making something even mildly interesting after The Beatles. Outside of the 12-string itself, Harrison didn’t know the power he wielded with this one guitar performance.

Because if he hadn’t taken on this instrument, there would be no Byrds, no Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, no REM, and The Smiths would look like a completely different band as well had the instrument not debuted with Harrison first. The solo might not be the hardest thing in the world to get under one’s fingers, but if you take it out of the equation, an entire subgenre of rock and roll would cease to exist.

‘Isn’t It A Pity’ – All Things Must Pass

All Things Must Pass functioned more as a mission statement than Harrison’s proper solo debut. He had more fantastic songs than he could count, but given how much was packed into that triple album, it was more of a reminder of how much he had been keeping at bay while at the mercy of Lennon and McCartney during The Beatles’ tenure. ‘Wah-Wah’ may have been Harrison’s overt shot at McCartney, but ‘Isn’t It A Pity’ is all the statement he needed.

Outside of the guitar performance, the song is among Harrison’s best messages, lamenting how tragic it is that everyone hurts each other in this world without even thinking about it. When he does break out the guitar chops in the outro, it gets that much more vindicating when you start hearing the backing vocals behind him, which might sound more than a little bit familiar.

In case it wasn’t clear, this is basically Harrison’s take on ‘Hey Jude,’ but whereas that song had him stifled when McCartney asked him not to play, this is him proving that even a version of the tune with guitar solos works equally as well. It might not have been the most mature of them dealing with their problems, but as it stands, this is still one of the most spiritually uplifting forms of pettiness in the entire rock canon.

‘Nowhere Man’ – Rubber Soul

The Beatles were never destined to play the same bluesy rock and roll numbers the rest of their lives. By the time they hit on Help!, they had already begun moving away from the typical sounds of Little Richard and Chuck Berry, and John Lennon had already been flirting with them moving towards folk-rock. Even if they were jumping into unchartered territory, Harrison still knew the best way to serve the song.

Despite his fantastic performance on the sitar for the song ‘Norwegian Wood,’ ‘Nowhere Man’ is one of the finest moments of him playing to his strengths by playing the bare minimum. He could have easily played something that was more in line with what Carl Perkins or Scotty Moore might have played, but every note felt like it was carefully crafted to fit the song, outlining every one of the chords beautifully and even listening to when the A major changes to A minor before bringing it back home with the harmonic.

While this is far from the best Harrison solo from a technical standpoint, it’s the best showcase for what he could do with any of The Beatles’ songs. By this point, he had turned into a complex musical thinker, and that meant he had to listen to the song and play what was needed rather than use it as an excuse to play the most complicated lick of all time.

‘Free As A Bird’ – Anthology

When it came time for the band to make new songs for the Anthology project, Harrison was the one who always seemed the most hesitant. He had been happy to look back on the past with some reverence, but getting together to make new songs with John Lennon’s demo could very well have dug up some old wounds that never properly healed. Once Jeff Lynne was brought onto the project, though, Harrison’s solo absolutely soared before anyone got to sing a word.

While the focus was always on preserving Lennon’s original vocal take and building parts around it, Harrison is the one who crosses both sides of their sound. He had spent years honing his craft as a slide guitarist, and when introducing what could have very well been their final song, his solo has all the emotion that it needs, whether that’s the happiness of working with Lennon again or the bittersweet feeling knowing that he’s not really there.

It’s easy to call ‘Free As A Bird’ the third-to-last official Beatles song, but no matter how much McCartney tried to play in the style of Harrison on ‘Now and Then,’ there’s no substitution for the real thing. This is what Harrison was always best at, and even if this wasn’t his final bow, this is the optimal way of listening to his swan song with his best mates.

‘Let It Be’ – Let It Be

By the time everyone landed on Let It Be, it was clear that most of the band were over playing with each other. This was supposed to be a shelved project, and despite wrapping things up perfectly on Abbey Road, their label still felt the need to take those tapes off the shelf and slap together something that resembled a finished album. If Harrison was going to tidy things up, though, he was going to make sure that one of their last masterpieces had the right guitar solo to match it.

Even though ‘Let It Be’ technically has two different solos to it, the single version has more gravitas behind it. After playing nothing but the pentatonic scale, Harrison’s raw showmanship as a guitar player is on full display, taking the kind of scale that everyone learns in their first guitar lesson and outlining everything that he can do to get some kind of emotion out of every note.

And while the album version doesn’t have as many memorable parts as the single version, it has a lot more bite to it, especially when it snarls in and brings some vibrancy to the track before crashing out at the end. Let It Be…Naked may have offered everyone yet another version of what the solo could have sounded, but in terms of the definitive version, you can’t really go wrong with the album or the single version.

‘Marwa Blues’ – Brainwashed

The entire road to making Harrison’s Brainwashed album feels bittersweet to look back on. It was clear that the cancer he had battled for the last years of his life was going to get the better of him, but he was still determined to get one final album out before he bid us all farewell. He might not have been around to see the record’s eventual release, but ‘Marwa Blues’ left us off with one fine piece of spirituality for us to latch onto.

Despite many of the songs on the record being taken from various points in Harrison’s career, this was one of the only instrumentals he made completely by himself. Whereas a track like ‘Hari’s on Tour’ saw him working beautifully off of Joni Mitchell’s band, this is his way of putting his final prayer into song, being adapted from the kind of mantras that would be played when the sun set at the end of the night.

The title track of the album may have been a way for Harrison to officially close the book with one final mantra, but ‘Marwa Blues’ reminded us of one cardinal rule he always adhered to. It was always going to be hard for him to express what he felt in his heart, but if he couldn’t do it through words, he knew that breaking out his guitar was the next best thing.

‘Something’ – Abbey Road

Towards the end of 1969, The Beatles knew they couldn’t leave their audience on a musical cliffhanger. They had been given a taste of certain pieces of Get Back, but if they wanted to leave a lasting impression, they’d want it to be one final classic for fans to chew on. Lennon could still write classics like ‘Come Together,’ and the medley at the end of the record was incredibly forward-thinking, but Harrison walked away with the most lyrical guitar solo ever made.

Despite his self-deprecating comments about his guitar playing in the Get Back about his inability to be as good as Eric Clapton, ‘Something’ is proof enough of why Harrison should be so revered. Outside of playing the song on the studio floor with the orchestra, Harrison made a solo that could have been any other song’s main hook, taking bits and pieces from people like Clapton while also throwing in pieces of beauty like the opening motif and bringing it back to that signature lick in the final moments of the tune.

Even though Harrison was still finding himself as a songwriter at this stage, this is where he ascended to a higher status and reminded everyone of why he deserved to be part of the conversation towards the end of their career. Lennon and McCartney may have both thought that Harrison’s songs weren’t nearly on their level before Abbey Road, but with this song alone, Harrison wasn’t only at their level. He was even better.