“I have a problem with all that”: The song George Harrison never wanted to be released
If George Harrison was going to put out his own record, he was going to make sure it was done right. The whole point of him leaving The Beatles was feeling stifled by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and getting the opportunity to do his own thing meant getting the best musicians he could think of to make a special record that showed his talents as a songwriter. However, that didn’t mean that every solitary thing that he wrote needed to be unleashed upon the public.
Then again, Harrison was never afraid to show his freaky side when he wanted to. Outside of introducing Indian music to the world, hearing him make something like Electronic Sound threw everyone for a loop, especially when people heard nothing but abject noise from a synthesiser when they expected him to make a solo record.
But even for a triple album experience, All Things Must Pass is still one of the most dazzling albums that any former Beatle ever made. There are pieces that may have stuck out as a bit more single-ready than others, but listening to the record as a whole, Harrison seemed to have the album act more as a statement than a collection of songs. This is what he could do when left to his own devices, and it helps that every song on the first two discs is a classic.
Ignoring the jam disc for a second, Harrison manages to make everything from silliness on ‘Apple Scruffs’ to praise-and-worship songs like ‘My Sweet Lord’ and ‘Awaiting On You All’ work in the right context. But all of that time away from The Beatles gave him much more wisdom, and his best moments come from him living up to his reputation as the wise sage of the group half the time.
Outside of his exploring his own mind, songs like ‘Run of the Mill’ are bold explorations of how people approach their own lives, which would become a recurring theme once Harrison hit on Living in the Material World. And even though ‘Beware of Darkness’ is among one of the finest compositions that he ever made, it took him a while to crack it, and hearing the demos of it wasn’t what he had in mind for his fans.
While All Things Must Pass has gone through multiple different reissues over the years, Harrison admitted thinking that people didn’t need to hear ‘Darkness’ in its hibernation stage, saying, “I didn’t even know it was recorded at the time. It came out later on a bootleg, and it’s strange when something you didn’t ever consider to be a record is suddenly something somebody digs out and plays as what’s supposed to be the record. I have a problem with all that.”
Even though it can feel a bit voyeuristic, this is a gold mine for anyone looking to see how any member of the band approached writing their own songs. We are fortunate enough now to see footage of McCartney writing ‘Get Back’ on the spot thanks to the documentary of the same name, but those quiet moments where one of them is tinkering away on guitar until a melody pops out will never cease to be fascinating.
Because when you think about it, a lot of the best songs in the world aren’t pulled out of the air that quickly. They take years to gestate before they are ready to be heard, and even if it took a while for Harrison to get his songs out, ‘Beware of Darkness’ would have been worth the price of admission alone.
