The classic George Harrison songs rejected by The Beatles: “Well, who wouldn’t get stuck?”
Very few artists bettered George Harrison as a songwriter during the late 1960s and early ’70s. It just so happened that two of those few artists were in the same band as him. With John Lennon and Paul McCartney ruling The Beatles roost, Harrison found getting some of his songs onto the Fab Four’s records difficult. As Bob Dylan famously noted: “George got stuck with being the Beatle that had to fight to get songs on records because of Lennon and McCartney. Well, who wouldn’t get stuck?”
At the start of their journey as a quartet, Lennon and McCartney would even provide the guitarist with a few scraps to add his name to. Eventually, he would begin to write his own tunes and find the odd spot on the group’s impressive discography. Though he was regularly given a single song spot on the band’s latest LPs, more than a few were rejected by the group.
Harrison had a unique viewpoint on music. He saw pop music as a vehicle for a more resolute and more assertive message of spirituality. It meant that even when The Beatles were in their own sphere of pursuing Eastern spirituality, some of Harrison’s songs were pushed aside in more favourable pop affairs. However, judging by the rejected songs, it’s hard to imagine them not making it onto any other band’s albums. In fact, many of them eventually found their way to Harrison’s own solo records.
Of course, the most famous song to be rejected by the band was the title track of Harrison’s solo LP All Things Must Pass. The track was nearly fully formed when Harrison brought the material to the attention of Lennon and McCartney, only to see it knocked back. Initially recorded by Harrison as a demo for The Beatles on his 26th birthday, the song remains one of the few moments where Western pop meets Eastern ideology. Scrapped by The Beatles, it remains one of the group’s biggest blunders. Lennon and McCartney, perhaps preoccupied or not ready to let Harrison into the fold properly, scoffed at the song when it was performed for them by the guitarist during the Let It Be sessions.
When The Beatles rejected the song during a particularly fractious session, Harrison decided to pass the material along to Billy Preston before rightly taking it back for his debut solo album. If there was one track to confirm that Harrison needed to leave the band and pursue his own material, it is certainly ‘All Things Must Pass’. However, there are many more.
The Fab Four actually picked up another number for a recording session. In fact, rumour has it they gave it over 100 goes, the long-forgotten classic ‘Not Guilty’. Written during the band’s trip to India, a journey that provided a proverbial treasure chest of songs, the band shelved the track at the last minute and kept off the album.
“Actually, I wrote that in 1968,” confirmed Harrison on The Beatles Anthology, where the track was released as ‘Take 102’. “It was after we got back from Rishikesh in the Himalayas on the Maharishi trip, and it was for the White Album,” he continued. “We recorded it but we didn’t get it down right or something. Then I forgot all about it until a year ago, when I found this old demo I’d made in the ‘60s.” The demo was from 1968 and was recorded at Kinfauns, his home in Esher, Surrey, but eventually, an updated vision of the song features was found in the 1979 album George Harrison.
Another Harrison classic left off a Beatles LP was the incredible ‘Let It Down’. Harrison tried on four different days during the January 1969 recording day to get all four members of the band on a session for the song but to no avail. It’s an archetypal tune for Harrison, and it sees him put the everlasting battle between reality and spirituality into a lullaby pop song.
Another track featured on All Things Must Pass and can indeed be considered one of Harrison’s best-ever songs, yet it struggled to find any love from The Beatles. ‘Isn’t It A Pity’ was another victim of the Let It Be sessions, which were beleaguered by Paul McCartney’s ego and John Lennon’s lack of focus. A song which is arguably one of his best struggled to find any room on the Beatles’ floor.
‘Wah Wah’, meanwhile, is another mercurial effort from Harrison left on the editing room floor of The Beatles. “At that point in time, Paul couldn’t see beyond himself,” Harrison told Guitar World in 2001. “He was on a roll, but…in his mind, everything that was going on around him was just there to accompany him. He wasn’t sensitive to stepping on other people’s egos or feelings.” That ego wouldn’t simply inspire Harrison to write the track, but it would also mean that one of the guitarist’s best efforts was forgotten for some years until he picked it back up for his solo work.
The rejection of countless Harrison songs eventually saw the guitarist walk out of the band temporarily. During his mini-break from the group, Harrison also wrote a bitter goodbye to the group ‘Wah Wah’, which he also tried to have the band record but, yet again, with no movement from Lennon and McCartney, Harrison was left to place it on his new solo record.
A session after Abbey Road, the band’s final recorded album, saw Harrison still looking to create as he produced another future All Things Must Pass song, ‘Woman Don’t You Cry for Me’. Elsewhere, Harrison’s track ‘See Yourself’, which the guitarist wrote in 1967 as a response to the criticism of Paul McCartney after he admitted using LSD in the media, was also binned.
Across a range of songs, we can see just how talented George Harrison was as a songwriter. Of course, Lennon and McCartney knew it too. They were more than happy to include some of his finest works—and some of The Beatles’ finest works, too—on the band’s albums. The real issue arises when you consider some of Harrison’s fantastic material that was ditched in favour of sub-par Lennon-McCartney originals to feature on the LPs.
The rejection of Harrison’s best songs can act as a telling reminder for any budding musician. Though you might find the odd blockade when searching for an audience for your creation, the truth is that greatness will always find a way to sow its seed in the rich, fertile soil of a willing set of listeners. If anyone is a testament to trying until they succeed, then Harrison is surely one.
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