Hear George Harrison’s magnificent isolated vocals for ‘All Things Must Pass’
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The 1980s pop band George Harrison tried to copy
The 1980s were a difficult time creatively for George Harrison, even if life was bliss domestically. Making music was no longer his main focus in life, but he found the Eurythmics inspiring and began writing in the style of their honcho, Dave Stewart.
Harrison grew close to Stewart during this period, and their friendship lasted until the very end. It was an honour for the Eurythmics man to get to know the person behind some of his favourite songs, but he never expected to influence the Beatle. He once told Forbes, “I became really great friends with George Harrison in the ’80s and all the way through until he got very ill.”
Stewart continued: “In the Martin Scorsese film you see a lot of interviews with George, that’s me interviewing him. Some of it’s my footage of him. But George was a really big influence on me, not musically, although he was an absolute genius musically and I’d have this amazing time sitting around in the kitchen with him playing and going on holiday with him and his family, Olivia and little Dhani.”
It was 1986 when Harrison decided to showcase his inner Dave Stewart, and it was a sound which ended up forming a large proportion of his album, Cloud Nine. It was his first record in five years, and the former Beatle was a rejuvenated artist whose passion had returned.
Harrison revealed ‘Devil’s Radio’ was directly inspired by watching the Eurythmics live. He once revealed: “I have to go past this little church to take my boy to school and they have a little billboard just a little board outside the church saying, ‘Gossip: The Devil’s Radio … Don’t Be A Broadcaster’. That’s all. So I thought, that’s good, that’s a song, and I wrote it going to one of the Eurythmics concerts.”
The guitarist added: “I sort of spent a bit of time with Dave Stewart, checking out his live show on what was that tour called? Revenge. The Revenge Tour was coming around England and I went to a couple of shows and I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this. I can write these.’ So I wrote a couple of rockers.”
Harrison had largely checked out from the popular musical trends, and it was unusual for him to be inspired by contemporary artists. Yet, there was something different about the Eurythmics which captured his imagination. The Liverpudlian used the influence expertly on ‘Devil’s Radio’ and avoided sounding like he was overtly ripping Stewart off, but made a track that felt extremely in line with the trends of the day.
