George Harrison
Solo Work
George's solo work is no where near extensive as Paul's, it is more along the lines of John's. George would contribute songs in spurts and his career is like a rollercoaster like John's. However, like John and Paul, George grew considerably as a song writer as a solo act, and his songs have much merit.
George's first album was a triple album called "All Things Must Pass", and many consider this to be his best album. It contains his first number one, in fact, the first number one of any solo Beatle, which is "My Sweet Lord." Unfortunatley George was sued for this song, for plagarism. He was sued by the Chiffons, who felt that "My Sweet Lord" was a re-write, if unintentionally, of their song, "He's So Fine". If you listen to both of them one after the other, you can see there is definitely a stronge resemblance. George lost the law suit, but, nonetheless, "My Sweet Lord" was a great song. The album was a masterpiece and it uses Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" concept, in which all of the songs have a really thick backing sound. The idea was great for George's work and he has some beautiful pieces on this album. The album on the whole is rather mellow and melodic. It contains great songs like "If Not For You" which is a remake of a Bob Dylan song, "What is Life", a great, upbeat hit of George's, "Beware of the Darkness", a sort of stark but philosophical number, and "Isn't it A Pity (Version 1 and 2), also stark but with beautiful chord arrangments, as well as an amazing title track. This album is probably George's finest, although he would have hits later, this is probably his best body of work.
The next album was his concert for Bangladesh. George started a trend with this idea. Ravi Shankar, as George said in the song, approached George about the conditions of Bangladesh and asked him to do something. George decided to do a concert whose profits would go to help Bangladesh. Now this idea has been repeated numerous times, but George was the first to do it. He brought along friends like Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton. There are really really great songs on this album, some of the best of each act.
George's third album, Living in the Material World, was not as strong as the others but it did have one great song, "Give Me Love", which is soft,and melodic and typical of George's style. Dark Horse, appropriately titled, was his next album, which was also weak, and by this time, George was also having serious throat trouble and it shows on the album. His voice is very rough and it is hard to distinquish that it is in fact George. The work would have been stronger had his voice been in better condition, the only song that made an impact was the title track and even that was not that great.
George's next album, Extra Texture, was also lacking, although it did have one good song, "You". The next album released by George was a compilation of his hit songs from 65-76. The album has a few Beatles classics along with the best of his solo work, namely the songs mentioned here. Thirty Three and a Third was George's next album and it was a bit stronger then his previous albums, although it was not as strong as the solo work of Paul. The song that deserves mention is "Crackerbox Palace" which is one of George's finest moments in his solo work. The next album was considerably weak, such as his self titled album, which features Beatles ideas on it, like "Not Guilty" which was written during the White Album, and "Here Comes the Moon", and obvious parody of "Here Comes the Sun".
His next album released in 1981, just after John's assassination, showed he still had a gift for song writing. He had a tribue to John on it called, "All Those Years Ago", which is great song, and it reached number 3 in the UK. Gone Troppo, the next album, also had some good songs on it, but it was not up to par with his first solo songs. In 1987, George hit big with, Cloud Nine. Namely his cover of "Got My Mind Set On You" was the best song on the album, and is certainly a great song to her. Many of the tracks were good, and George was entering a period of great writing again in his solo work. His next album on his own, was a compilation of some of his later songs like the Best of George Harrison earlier, this one is also very good and captures the highlights of George's career.
In 1988 George joined one of rock's supergroups called the "Travelling Wilbury's". In this group there was Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne. Great songs are on the first volume of this album, including "Handle With Care", "End Of the Line", and "Last Night". The album doesn't disappoint the fans of any of these amazing artists and it contains great songs. The Wilbury's continued collaborating, but they did not reach the success they had previously and much of this is probably due to the sudden death of Roy Orbison.
Since the Wilbury's George really hasn't released any solo work and as been living life rather reclusively, although he did contribute to the Beatles anthology singles, "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love". His work deserves to be looked at and he most certainly is the "Dark Horse" of the group. His career began remarkably, with stellar songs from "All Things Must Pass", and his career continued to rise and fall, from then on, with some fantastic songs released during his solo career.