The album that brought George Harrison back to happiness: “My life is getting better all the time”
No other Beatle really needed the band to break up more than George Harrison did.
As much as he liked being the lead guitarist and standing at the back of the stage, he was clearly turning into one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, so having to answer to John Lennon and Paul McCartney was never going to keep him satisfied. But while All Things Must Pass was bound to become a classic when it was released, it’s not like everything was a walk in the park once he was set free from the Fabs’ shackles.
He was still more than happy to work on records by Ringo Starr and Lennon, but over the next few years, The Threetles would find out the hard way that McCartney was right about everything. Allen Klein was a scoundrel looking to get as much money out of them as possible, and in between the various business meetings they had to attend, Harrison tried as best as he could to find some refuge in his music.
Living in the Material World was a pleasant comedown from his mammoth debut, but after going through the Concert for Bangladesh and losing his wife to Eric Clapton, the mid-1970s weren’t going to be kind for ‘The Quiet One’. Not only did he have to deal with losing his voice midway through working on the album Dark Horse, but the lashing the critics gave him for his tour made him sound absolutely miserable going through the next few years of his life.
Extra Texture at least managed to paint him in a better light, but judging by the deep cuts, it’s not like he wasn’t still struggling. The nights out on the town were clearly doing a number on his psyche, and given how he namechecks Rolling Stone in one of his tunes for critiquing his performance, it was clear that he was taking a lot of that criticism to heart. If there was one thing that was going to help him, though, it was him getting the hell out of Los Angeles.
David Bowie already found out the hard way that LA wasn’t helping him on Station to Station, but whereas the ‘Thin White Duke’ shed his skin for Berlin, Harrison reconvened at Friar Park and finally rediscovered his love of playing on Thirty Three and ⅓. He finally realised that music could be fun again, and while ‘This Song’ and ‘Crackerbox Palace’ were fantastic tunes, Harrison felt that his self-titled record showed him finally getting back to why he started making music.
For years, he had been making music because he had to, and after cleaning his act up, Harrison felt that the songs on this record put him back on track, saying, “I think what happened between this album [George Harrison] and the last album [Thirty-Three and 1/3] is that everything has been happening nice for me. My life is getting better all the time, and I’m happy, and I think that it’s reflected in the music.”
George Harrison might not be the most energetic album in his catalogue, it does manage to be consistent all the way through. There aren’t any songs that have the same power as ‘Wah-Wah’ or ‘Let It Down’, but it’s virtually impossible to not listen to a song like ‘Here Comes the Moon’ or ‘Love Comes to Everyone’ without having a big smile on your face by the end of the record.
This might be the closest thing that any of The Beatles ever made to a yacht-rock record, but when put up against all of Harrison’s records, it certainly holds its own as a classic in its own right. He was a long way from the blockbuster success of Cloud Nine, but whereas Harrison seemed bored being in the studio for the past few years, each song on here feels like a hug from an old friend.
