“I had no control”: The artist George Harrison ripped off for an entire album
The Beatles were never shy about wearing their influences on their sleeves. Looking through some of their best stuff, it’s easy to see that they worshipped Chuck Berry in their early years, were into the avant-garde scene by the time they started working on Revolver, and had even started taking cues from people like The Band by the end of the Let It Be sessions. Then again, George Harrison did end up flying a little close to the sun when he started to venture out into his solo career.
Before Harrison exploded as a solo artist, though, he knew he was going to make a great album. All Things Must Pass was the culmination of all those years being stifled by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, so the joy of being able to play whatever he wanted probably never stopped being a thrill for him whenever he got the chance to spread out on record on tracks like ‘Beware of Darkness’.
At the same time, he wasn’t exactly safe from a few hiccups along the way. The biggest hit of his career, ‘My Sweet Lord’, may have been built upon certain worship songs, but when listening to The Chiffons’ ‘He’s So Fine’, it’s clear that there may have been at least a little bit of creative overlap.
Then again, that’s not exactly uncommon among songwriters. It might be frustrating having to throw out an entire song because it sounds too much like someone else, but that is the nature of the beast when working on some of your masterpieces. Because once you muscle past that inspiration, that’s the time when the depth comes in.
Outside of the raw songwriting, though, Harrison was interested in new technology during the end of The Beatles’ run. He had already introduced Indian instrumentation into the mix on many of their albums, but Electronic Sound was his outlet to experiment with the new Moog synthesiser, which resulted in two slabs of vinyl consisting of nothing but ambient sounds that sound like two robots trying to have a conversation with each other.
The practice itself may have been incredibly innovative for its time, but Harrison quickly came under fire by engineer Bernie Krause, who had been working with him getting the sounds for the album, saying, “I had no control over any of it. I didn’t know it was being recorded, I didn’t want it out, and I felt very badly that he had to do that. I guess spirituality comes to different people in different ways. An expression of his seemed to be, ‘Trust me, I’m a Beatle.’”
But while no pop star would ever want to be associated with this bout of strange noise, it did at least lead to some clever ideas later. Harrison wasn’t going to knock it out of the park on his first try, but even if he stepped on his engineer’s toes, it did give way to the textures heard on Abbey Road, like the twinkling pieces on ‘Here Comes the Sun’ or the ethereal bridge of ‘Because’ when the tone completely changes.
More than anything, though, Electronic Sound really is a good lesson for everyone to learn. It’s about treating everyone in the studio with respect, and while Harrison may not have put his best foot forward when releasing this album, he did at least grow into a much more humble presence after the fact.
