george harrison albums ranked worst to best

GEORGE HARRISON ALBUMS RANKED WORST TO BEST FULL

The two vintage Beatle songs are “Run of the Mill,” a song of poignance and McCartneyesque lyricism and “Wah Wah,” a grand cacaphony of sound in which horns sound like guitars and vice versa.įinally, defining the musical core of the album are George’s brooding essays on living, loving, and dying. The song itself is George’s affectionate appreciation of his famous fans, and the first, song of the Seventies to recapture those dewy-eyed Sixties. One of the most wonderful cuts on the album, however, is the Dylan-inspired “Apple Scruffs.” Done with harmonica and acoustic guitar, it sounds as if it was recorded while Spector was out for coffee. There is also “If Not For You” and an inexplicable bit of C&W schlock, “Behind That Locked Door” (it has a lovely, lilting background vocal, though). Harrison and Dylan co-authored “I’d Have You Anytime,” the album’s opening cut, but the two together don’t come up with much. “Awaiting On You All” is a Lesley Gore rave-up in which George manages to rhyme “visas” with “Jesus.” “What Is Life” is an ambiguous number on which he is not really asking what life is, in the big sense, just “What is life/without your love?” The music is sweetness and light, pure Shirelles, until he throws us the curve, “But if it’s not love that you need then I’ll/Try my best to make everything succeed.” Or “My Sweet Lord,” an obvious re-write of the Chiffons’ “He’s So Fine.” Here “doo-lang” is replaced by “Hare Krishna” - a sign of the times. There are the bopping early-Sixties tunes songs either authored, co - authored or influenced by Dylan Beatle music and the new, dirge - like Harrisonian holy music. The songs themselves are a very mixed lot. Most of it is the usual 4/4 three-chord bashings about, competent and often boring.

Eric takes over on lead much of the time but really it is often impossible to tell who’s playing what. Here, he’s playing with Clapton and Dave Mason and a lot of other people. It would have been interesting to hear how George improvises.

In this context the two-sided jam lies outside the context of the rest of the record. If Paul’s studio is his home, George’s is his cathedral. George’s religiousity, his quest for egolessness, are fitting in a sound in which individual elements are subordinated to the whole.

There is a monolithic sound which peculiarly reinforces the message of many of the songs. Individual instruments, even vocals, perhaps because George is not a strong singer, don’t count for much in this music. Everybody’s favorite sidemen - Whitlock, Gordon, Radle, and Clapton - along with Klaus Voorman and Alan White, fragments of the Plastic Ono Band - play almost indistinguishably from the staples of earlier Spector production: Larry Knetchel, Joe Osborne, and Hal Blaine, on many of the tracks.Īt its best, Spector’s production is the sound of one instrument, the mind of its producer. The sound is often so glossy and dramatic it is difficult not to be seduced by it, and one tries vainly to discover just what George’s music would be without it–a futile and probably destructive exercise anyway.

The production is of classic Spectorian proportions, Wagnerian, Brucknerian, the music of mountain tops and vast horizons. His words sometimes try too hard he’s taking himself or the subject too seriously, or, if the subject is impossible to take too seriously, he doesn’t always possess the means to convey that impression convincingly.

GEORGE HARRISON ALBUMS RANKED WORST TO BEST FULL

Often too, there are unresolved sentence fragments (“Eyes that shining full of inner light”), funny word uses (“Another day for you to realize me”), and conscious attempts at literary effects (“beware of soft shoe shufflers/dancing down the sidewalks”). Often there are more syllables than notes, and lines have to be hurried in order to get it all in. They are displayed prominently on the album sleeves and appear to have been written before the music. In this extravaganza of piety and sacrifice and joy, whose sheer magnitude and ambition may dub it the War and Peace of rock and roll, the music itself is no longer the only message. It is both an intensely personal statement and a grandiose gesture, a triumph over artistic modesty, even frustration. Not surprisingly, his ambitions have remained unfulfilled by this role and what presumably has been welling up in him since at least Let It Be, perhaps since Meet The Beatles, comes pouring out on All Things Must Pass.

George harrison albums ranked worst to best