The 1981 Bob Dylan song George Harrison said was out of everyone’s league
George Harrison didn’t want to take the conventional route when he made some of his classics.
The Beatles had taught him about what was a work job and what wasn’t, so when he made his own solo records, a lot of his best work was usually when you could feel him and the rest of his band having fun in the studio whenever they were playing those songs. Everything needed to come from a genuine place, and a lot of Harrison’s best friends were usually the ones who could only be themselves whenever they made records.
That’s half the reason why many of the Traveling Wilburys worked so well together. Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty had their signature sounds about them, but even with those new kids in the band, it was all about finding people who didn’t take shit from anybody. Harrison didn’t like those that pandered to whatever was popular at the time, but aside from the musical side of things, his lyrics were what he held above all else.
He knew everything needed to have a message to it, and while his fans might have been sick of hearing about his mantras and every single religious practice he was involved in, he wasn’t about to apologise. He liked the idea of giving his audience a challenge, and that all came from well before he started talking about his spirituality. Rock and roll was supposed to push the envelope, and Bob Dylan was already poking the bear long before The Beatles had even started.
Dylan was always in the same circles as the Fab Four, but whereas John Lennon got into a friendly rivalry with the wordsmith, Harrison had a great respect for everything that Dylan wrote. He was still quoting some of his best work in the decade leading up to his passing, and even when Dylan was getting up on his high horse, Harrison was willing to do everything he could to support his friend.
A lot has been said about how Dylan had a bit too much of a wilderness period when he started making gospel records in the 1980s, but it’s not like every one of them was devoid of great songs. Mark Knopfler was doing everything he could to bring an album like Slow Train Coming to life, and even when looking at Shot of Love, Harrison felt that a song like ‘Every Grain of Sand’ captured everything great about Dylan in one tune.
Especially compared to the superficial lyrics that were coming up throughout the 1980s, Harrison felt that there was no one else on the planet that could match what Dylan was doing on songs like this, saying, “I mean, you tell me one person other than Bob Dylan who has a moral message in a tune that’s improved upon Bob’s words in his song ‘Every Grain of Sand’: ‘Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistakes/Like Cain I now behold this chain of events that I must break/In the fury of the moment I can see the Masters hand/In every leaf that trembles/In every grain of sand.”
But the reason why many of Dylan’s gospel songs work to a certain degree is the same reason why Harrison was so good with words. Any average gospel song would be about preaching the word of God rather than actually saying something about life, and when Harrison and Dylan are singing their tunes, they’re more or less reciting what they believe rather than trying to make the most intense sermon that anyone has ever heard.
Anyone would get pissed off if they heard their favourite artists preaching from a pulpit, but Harrison figured that this kind of music was the duty that every songwriter of their calibre was supposed to do. Dylan had already beat the listener up when it came to righteous political causes, so if ‘Masters of War’ was considered one of the greatest tunes of its time for breaking down the unjust wars across the world, why couldn’t his songs about his struggles with faith do the same thing?
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