George Harrison explains why his solo albums went unnoticed: “Everybody wants you to change”
There has never been another band quite like The Beatles. While many modern boybands have inspired a sense of mania among fans, which media outlets have likened to Beatlemania, nothing comes close to the phenomenon that the Fab Four elicited around the world. They were instrumental in facilitating a cultural change, becoming the faces of an era where music was rapidly progressing into more experimental territory than ever before.
The Beatles released some groundbreaking albums during the 1960s, from Rubber Soul and Revolver to The White Album and Abbey Road. The Beatles weren’t afraid to push the musical boundaries by utilising production techniques rarely used before then and introducing non-Western instruments to the mainstream.
Their sound became increasingly inspired by psychedelia as they experimented with LSD and immersed themselves in a world of meditation and enlightened spirituality. George Harrison was the most devoted of all the Beatles, deeply involved in Eastern religion. He was once quoted as saying, “Through Hinduism, I feel a better person. I just get happier and happier. I now feel that I am unlimited, and I am more in control.”
The guitarist started making his own solo music in 1968, beginning with the largely instrumental score for Wonderwall. The album Wonderwall Music consisted of Indian-inspired compositions, reflecting Harrison’s interest in a different culture from the one he was brought up in.
His next album, Electronic Sound, saw Harrison experiment with a synthesiser, and like its predecessor, the record was instrumental. It was a hugely experimental work, especially for something released in 1969. Consisting of two songs, both were lengthy pieces, with ‘No Time or Space’ coming in at over 25 minutes.
It was received negatively by critics, although it has since been reevaluated as an intriguing piece of avant-garde work. Still, it wasn’t until Harrison released All Things Must Pass in 1970 that he started to gain acclaim for his solo work. It contained songs such as ‘My Sweet Lord’ and ‘Wah-Wah’, demonstrating Harrison’s songwriting talents, which he wasn’t always able to display to his full potential in The Beatles.
After that, Harrison moved in and out of making successful albums, with Living in the Material World and Cloud Nine proving successful, while Extra Texture (Read All About It) and Gone Troppo were less favoured. Many of Harrison’s solo records seemed to go unnoticed, and in a 1988 interview for a show called Countdown, he revealed why he thought this might be.
Harrison explained that this was “my fault inasmuch as I got tired with working on my own, and maybe the mixes weren’t as good as they could have been.” However, he asserted, “the music at that time – everybody wants you to change and become the flavour of the month, and I refuse to do that.”
The musician also highlighted his distaste for doing promotion, something he’d had enough of after years of constantly being in the public eye. “I make records. I’m not good at interviews. I don’t like to do that. It’s 25 years of doing that sort of thing, so I don’t feel really at ease about going out, doing television and interviews, and promote myself,” Harrison said. “I’d put a record out, give it to the record company, and they would think, ‘Well if he’s not promoting it, we’re not gonna work as hard on it.’”
Yet, Harrison didn’t seem too bothered about whether people liked his music or not, adding, “I wrote songs, make records, and if the record’s good, then people will like it, and if it’s not, they won’t.”