Beathoven

Beathoven

Studying the Beatles

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(c) Ian Hammond 1999
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The Harrisong (10) 1968
The White Album

In 1967 the Beatles, following Patti and George Harrison, adopted the "Maharishi" as their spiritual guide. The significance of this step is difficult to measure but there is no doubt that it did lead to even broader acceptance of Eastern philosophies in the sixties. Harrison has maintained his links to this day.

In 1968 the Beatles travelled to Maharishi's retreat in Rishikesh, India for an extended spiritual break, the only substantial collective time-out the Beatles had in those hectic seven years. While there they produced the finest single set of rock songs ever written. All three writers dined off the harvest until 1971.

Ironically, the Indian trip had the singular effect of terminating the overt Indian influence on Harrison's and Lennon's work. Stuck in a hotel one evening with Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, and influenced by Ravi Shankar's questioning of his roots, Harrison realized he was not the one in a thousand students cut out to be a sitar virtuoso. He returned to rock.

George strapped his guitar back on and reapplied the same diligence he brought to the instrument at fourteen. This time around he added all the superb knowledge and the skills he had picked up in his training with Shankar. Within a year his skills and style were transformed. Having Eric Clapton as best mate clearly wasn't a disadvantage when it came to learning new tricks. Harrison brought Clapton in for a White Album track and wrote some songs at Clapton's house (continuing Harrison's penchant for writing away from home).

Ravi Shankar. Eric Clapton. If you think about it, George had a good knack of finding the world's best teachers. I know some would place Lennon and McCartney in that category too. I think George did his share of giving back in all cases.

Harrison's attitude to writing changes abruptly right here (helped by the formation of his own publishing outlet, Harrisongs). The White Album songs are more ambitious than their predecessors. Harrison uses his voice as a percussive instrument ("In the sky with all their blacking..." , "Cream tangerine"). Melodically he begins to explore the upper area of his range -- a region he had largely avoided.

Changing gears from precocious to prodigious, five songs were presented at the Esther demo sessions. Three of these and two new songs were recorded for the album (one was not released). Other new songs, including Something, were written or started at this time.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Harrison tricked his recalcitrant comrades into doing a better job by bringing in his mate Eric Clapton. The other Beatles, said George, behaved like obedient school children.

The song builds brilliantly, everything falling into place in George's visionary architecture. We can see him marching, stoically into the distance all the way through the song. Is this only time that another Beatle gave him a decent verse harmony? I think so, except perhaps for Something.

Listen to that repeated A on the piano in the introduction, a Harrison fingerprint, used at the end of the bridge of I Want To Tell You, and on the trumpets in Only A Northern Song.

Harrison's song is a masterly update on the I'll Be Back and Things We Said Today model, with the A minor verse and A major bridge. The verse chord sequence owes something to the House Of The Rising Sun. Harrison reuses it in Something, a song he started writing around this time.

What better song for a Guitar Hero to show his stuff with a legendary solo than this? Harrison's gift to Clapton is a triumph of his own spirit. Clapton does his best to get a Beatles sound and doing so provides George with a new model for a Beatles lyric solo. Clapton uses almost no blue notes, relying instead on diatonic sequences with well placed bends and slides. Harrison's solo work on Let It Be and Abbey Road grows partly from this lyric insight.

The missing phrase of the last verse is a real coup de theatre. The trick is used to some degree in other Beatle material but never as well as here where it expresses something close to cold, quiet rage. I don't think I'd want to be on the wrong side of Mr Harrison.

The bass/guitar doublings in the bridge are particularly effective. Harrison's trademark strumming is superb throughout. The closing massed choir is probably a multitude of Harrisons.

I've said many times that Harrison is a master of song architecture. Part of the majesty of this song comes from the space that we envision from the first note of this proud guitar anthem. There's something very British about this addition to the British Blues scene.

Piggies
George Taxman Harrison wrote this biting ditty with his mom. The ridiculous notion of the song roused all his beast friends into action. It's funnier than Bungalow Bill or Rocky Raccoon.

Maestro Chris Thomas sits at the harpisichord, often following Harrison's distinctive strumming. Just how Paul McCartney got his bass to sound like an oinking pig is beyond me. Lennon apparently sought out the real oinks that join in later in the verse (and toward the end of the song).

Thomas's Handel-style strings fill out the second verse and take center stage in the bridge. Listen to Harrison's go into character mode on "damn good whacking".

As would become usual at this time for Harrison, the instrumental grows out of the bridge. Thomas beats George Martin at his own game with taut string chords and polyphonic keyboard figuration.

The last verse is a Mad Hatter's triumph that captures the manic theatre that the Beatles had reserved for their Christmas records. It's beautifully ridiculous and reminds me of the Small Faces' Ogdens Nut Gone Flake released four months before this session.

Harrison's little introductory figure is rewritten to modulate into the bridge and rewritten again to form the coda. He repeats this trick on Something.

There are at least two musical jokes. The first is the distinctive "eat their bacon" harmony: it sounds baroque but in fact is pure Music Hall. The second is the final flourish after "one more time". It is very much Handel, but it's also a typical rock ending.

Long Long Long
If it was Beatle-John who discovered the Preacher in the Pop-Meister then it was Beatle-George who realized the sacred in the secular: I want you, I need you, I love you: Harrison sings his quiet love song for his Lord.

As with the verse of A Day In The Life, the trick here is simply to expand George's rhythm guitar part. Groups of short notes and long notes alternate in a tune which is sung very softly. The fragility is accentuated by a vocal attack that sometimes misses the start of a word. He's in awe.

Playing thirds mostly, Paul's organ part follows Harrison's vocal as a quiet witness of the proceedings. The organ setting and part show great taste and restraint. Lennon does not play.

Most bands would arrange a song like this for soft percussion. Starr's non-intuitive aggressive drum punctuation for Long Long Long shows their deep understanding of music as a craft. If you listen carefully you'll note that his tumbling interpolations are based on the syncopations in Harrison's immaculate rhythm guitar part.

It's the drums that take us into another classic Harrison bridge that grows organically out of the material and finishes with his passionate choral "oh oh". Was all the harmony on this track was sung by George?

Added harmony at the start of the last verse has Harrison in Heaven. He develops the last verse by repeating the last clause. It's finely managed work. As soon as the drums finish McCartney begins to double the organ run on bass. The final repetition stops on the dominant and the famous Spin Of The Karmic Wheel takes us to the infamous coda.

I've gone into the details of the arrangement of this song because I find it one of the Beatles most delicate flowers (even if I'm not quite a fan of the close). It's a track where Harrison reduces his language to bare essentials. The result is rarest of fine china and porcelain.

Harrison wrote a number of songs that were similar in mood to this song in his solo career. None of them received a backing as good as this. The Threetles were already a killer band in 1968 and 1969.

The chord sequence is similar to Oh My Love and Yesterday all at the same time. He says it was based on Dylan's Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands (which The Beatles As Musicians treats in detail). I also hear the chords that powered Don't Bother Me and so many other Harrison songs.

Savoy Truffle
An song that concerns the dental implications of Eric Clapton's excessive sweet tooth. "You know that what you eat, you are", should be taken physically rather than metaphysically in this utterly secular song.

Here's an interesting question: what kind of song is Savoy Truffle? A bit like Cream material? A bit of Glenn Miller? Mostly Harrison I think. And a happy song to boot.

The opening "Cream tangerine" is very theatrical (and also a 6/8 bar insert) and sung in unison with his guitar (and greasepaint). The best saxes on a Beatles record? Chris Thomas was doing great arrangements for Harrison. Listen to the last verse closely and you'll hear the guitar playing something similar to the saxes suggesting Harrison had strong input on the charts.

Immaculate arrangement -- Harrison had come a long way since his first attempt to run an orchestral session on "Too Much..." The plodding hand claps and less than inspired brass parts are gone.

"Savoy Truffle" is the first in a new series of Harrisongs powered by killer chord sets. In this case E E, F# A, G B, e e+ e6 e+, C G. The power of the set may be more easily seen by adding a hypothetical G# chord:

In other words, the bottom sequence is E, F#, G. The top sequence is (G#) A B... C.

Look at another example of George managing to finish on a repeated G chord. (Don't Bother Me and Think For Yourself) Lennon does it on Glass Onion and on Cry Baby Cry, the following track that shares much in common with Savoy Truffle.

The bridge, e A, A4 A, G B (repeated) simply rearranges the chords heard in the verse, but in doing so makes his favorite e-A sequence prominent. His rhythm guitar is particularly aggressive here, updating the resolving suspended fourths of I Need You all those years before.

Once again Harrison uses the bridge to kick off the solo. This time we have something special. Have you worked out what the solo is on about? He's using that stinging guitar solo to represent the dental surgeon's high pitched drill. And the pain.

Not Guilty
One hundred takes of Not Guilty" and it was still not released. As Lennon pointed out, the song is quite complex. The song was released on Anthology 3 but it's clearly not a finished song. The lead vocal needs more attention and harmony has not been added.

Lennon plays a respectable harpsichord while Harrison pieces the fabric with high guitar stabs, both parts reminding me of Donovan's Sunshine Superman.

As on Long Long Long and earlier Harrison tracks, we hear a quite extended development of the material toward the end of the piece. This is a tendency which would grow in the solo years (not to mention Here Comes The Sun).

Summary
Harrison came back with a bang. The songs came easily. His brothers John and Paul slowly found themselves locked up in the machinations of their private and public lives while George began to flower

The songs he produced for the White Album are more professional than his preceding material. That's not necessarily a good thing (I am a big fan of the idiosyncrasies of Blue Jay Way and Taxman) but it meant that Harrison begin to think of himself as a professional songwriter.

Harrison can no longer be painted a loser in the group. His songs spout confidence and celebrate the joy he finds in writing and performing. He doesn't put up with second rate performances. He gets quality arrangements from Chris Thomas. He chooses styles where he shines in a comparisons with Lennon and McCartney who could not have produced a While My Guitar Gently Weeps or a Savoy Truffle. Everything about George spells winner.

And the Laconica Morosia? Yes, it's still there, but its been marshaled into a corral and house-trained. Harrison now uses it as a tool. Previously it was in control of Harrison.

The guitar playing has picked up. The solo in Savoy Truffle is a minor masterpiece. In 1969 things got even better in both the guitar and songwriting department. He started writing Something during the White Album sessions.