The unlikely moment that inspired George Harrison’s final single
Inspiration can come from anywhere, but it’s much more likely to hit when things are looking up, such that the world feels like it might turn forever, and it’s something George Harrison knew better than anyone else.
Another truism about inspiration is that it can, eventually, dry up. Not always, of course, for there are plenty of artists who only got better with age: think of David Bowie, who released the epic album Blackstar shortly before his death. Or think of Robert Plant, whose experimental rock, blues, and folk fusions have taken his career down a completely different, but not unwelcome, path.
For most, though, inspiration is harder to come by as your back starts to hurt and you can’t quite party into the anything-is-possible euphoria like you used to. Hence, it becomes necessary to move away from known constraints and seek a tranquil environment where inspiration can hit you unexpectedly.
In 1988, the close to 45 Harrison was in Hana on the island of Maui in Hawaii with his family, where he had a vacation property. Ever the multi-tasker, apart from unwinding, he was also there to shoot a music video for the song ‘This Is Love’ from his 1987 album, Cloud Nine. The sun was shining, the ocean rippled a deep, magnetic blue, everything was in its right place, and ageing was a peaceful inevitability, like falling asleep at night.
One such peaceful morning, the songwriter decided to take a walk with his son, Dhani, and while scuttling along together, the pair soon came across a sign near the beach that read: “If the wind blows, you can always adjust your sails, but if you don’t know where you’re going, then any road will take you there”. The sentiment greatly appealed to the Beatle, who garnered a great interest in Eastern philosophies after a 1996 Beatles tour.
If the words seem familiar, that’s because Harrison couldn’t let them rest, and certainly couldn’t let them stay forever on a nondescript sign, on some nondescript beach. Think of the amount of ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ signs littering your local charity shop, so when Harrison found his own version of a mantra which summated his general approach to life, the words became the basis of a new song, ‘Any Road’.
Harrison wrote the song almost immediately after spotting the sign. On the track, the musician sings easing lines such as “And I’ve been travellin’ through the dirt and the grime / From the past to the future, through the space and the time”, over a spritely, beach-inspired guitar backing, transporting us as we become interlopers on the Island of Maui that day, learning something so obvious, yet so hard to glean, about our existence.
However, he didn’t release the song into the world for some time, holding the song close until it had its place and later recorded it on and off between July 1999 and October 2001 for his 12th and final album, Brainwashed. In a video surrounding the new project, Harrison nodded towards the philosophy shared in the etchings: “The past, the present, and the future is just one cycle. I believe as most Buddhists and Hindus believe that it’s us coming back”.
‘Any Road’ was Harrison’s final single, and he went out with a bang. The song was nominated for a Grammy for ‘Best Male Pop Vocal Performance’, while his instrumental B-side ‘Marwa Blues’ won ‘Best Pop Instrumental Performance’. Thank God he chose that path that day.
