The mystic James Taylor lyric that sparked The Beatles “best love song ever” in 1969
Swooning and sumptuous, ‘Something’ is without doubt one of the top five songs by The Beatles, and I’ll fight the man who says otherwise even if he has a perm.
Purring with romance and sexiness, George Harrison’s unconventional anthem is the ultimate gift that a lover could ask for. It is oozing with a sense of ethereality, the unfurling verses could give goosebumps to a blade of grass, and then there’s that middle eight that could knock the socks off of Mahatma Gandhi.
Pattie Boyd was the benefactor of that loving gift, and it is perhaps indicative of the song’s pining clutch that it represents the dying embers of their relationship. As she writes in her memoir, “George wrote a song called ‘Something.’ He told me in a matter-of-fact way that he had written it for me.”
While Boyd would eventually end up with Harrison’s pal, Eric Clapton, she recalled the sweetness of ‘Something’ being presented to her fondly. “I thought it was beautiful, and it turned out to be the most successful song he ever wrote, with more than 150 cover versions. George’s favourite version was the one by James Brown,” she wrote. “Mine was the one by George Harrison, which he played to me in our kitchen.”
Despite the sadness of what she writes afterwards, it is always important to remember the beauty of the prelude in a relationship and not the final chapter. The vignette of Boyd being serenaded by Harrison in the kitchen is certainly the romantic image that I cling to when I listen to the track, albeit she adds, “But, in fact, by then our relationship was in trouble.”
They had come together when they were essentially kids in the middle of a whirlwind, and it had eventually taken its toll. “Since a trip to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in India in 1968, George had become obsessive about meditation,” she recalled.
“He was also sometimes withdrawn and depressed.”
Nevertheless, the track is a beauteous ode to love and devotion, and that notion seemed to seep into Harrison over time. He had been wrestling with songwriting for a while, and it took him a while to refine his thoughts. It may also have taken some very direct ‘inspiration’ to the point that some may claim it verges on problematic.
You see, prior to the Quiet One writing the song, Harrison and Paul McCartney had been auditioning a young James Taylor for their Apple Records label. And his track ‘Something in the Way She Moves’ clearly had a sizeable subliminal influence on the guitarist. In fact, Taylor’s titular lyric became his chorus.
However, as far as Taylor was concerned, there was no issue with this direct influence. He told Guitar World in 2021, “I felt hugely flattered. I had played this song for George and Paul as my audition, and I think it had just sort of stuck in his mind. But he didn’t realise that.” This is even evidenced, to some degree, by the Let It Be documentary, where Harrison is still evidently toiling with the lyrics to his would-be track.
Taylor even added, “I think all music is reiteration. I think we just pick stuff up and use it again. I mean, there are just 12 notes.” And as it happens, in a circle of fate, even Taylor’s own track contains a line from the 1964 Beatles song ‘I Feel Fine’. As they say, great artists steal. Perhaps the best don’t even realise that they’re doing so.
As fate would have it, Apple Records signed a superstar in James Taylor, who would go on to sell more than 100 million records worldwide, and Harrison’s subliminally imbued ‘Something’ went on to be John Lennon’s favourite track from Abbey Road, and the anthem that Elton John would hail as “probably one of the best love songs ever, ever, ever written.”
But above all, we are all the benefactors of the Quiet One, borrowing a line to kickstart his lilting gem that still moves the masses to this day. Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley agreed that it was The Beatles’ best, Paul Simon called it a “masterpiece”, but above all, it may have even edged Harrison towards a successful solo career to boot.
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