Trivia / George Harrison

• All-Star Cast: The 2021 Surreal Music Video for the reissue of "My Sweet Lord" stars Fred Armisen and Vanessa Bayer, with appearances by, among many others, Mark Hamill, Patton Oswalt, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Darren Criss, Rosanna Arquette, Ringo Starr, Joe Walsh, Jon Hamm, Taika Waititi, the cast of Three Busy Debras, Tim & Eric, Garfunkel and Oates, plus Harrison's widow Olivia, son Dhani, and footage of George himself.
• Artist Disillusionment: Of all the Beatles, he was the one hit the hardest with this when the group's fame became overbearing. Allegedly he said "That's it! I'm not a Beatle anymore!" after they played their final concert in San Francisco in 1966. It hit him again after the failure of Gone Troppo, which Harrison described as "halfhearted" and a key factor in his decision to step away from music for five years.
• Breakthrough Hit: "My Sweet Lord". Reaching No. 1 the day after Christmas 1970, he was the first Beatle to have a solo No. 1 hit. (Incidentally, 17 years later, he also had the last, with "Got My Mind Set on You".) As a Beatle, the first song that really got him noticed was "Something", the flip side of "Come Together".
• Creator Breakdown: The record Dark Horse, recorded not long after his wife Patti Boyd left him for his best friend Eric Clapton. He sank into alcoholism, blew out his voice during rehearsals, and generally just seemed uninspired. The followup Extra Texture (Read All About It) was viewed in a similar light. However...
• Creator Recovery: Thirty Three & 1/ॐ . In the wake of Dark Horse, he plunged into putting together his own record label (also called Dark Horse) to be distributed by A&M Records, which recharged him a bit. In doing so, he started working closely with A&M assistant Olivia Arias, then based on their shared musical and spiritual interests, they fell in love, and he was motivated to start detoxing from alcohol and drugs. This all led to a noticeably more upbeat and exuberant album that was well-received, with "Crackerbox Palace" becoming a bit of a comeback hit. George and Olivia ended up marrying in 1978.
• Cut Song:
  • There are a lot of unreleased songs from the All Things Must Pass era; it's rumoured that there are almost as many as went on the album itself.
  • Not all music from the film Wonderwall can be heard on its Cult Soundtrack Wonderwall Music.
  • The originally intended version of Somewhere In England, which featured many unreleased (or very rare) tracks like "Sat Singing" and "Lay His Head".
• Died During Production: Brainwashed was mostly finished at the time of his death, but he shared all the ideas he had for it (from the sound of the finished songs to the album's artwork) with his son Dhani and close friend and collaborator Jeff Lynne — information that ultimately proved very valuable enough to complete the album after his death.
• Executive Meddling:
  • George was pressured by EMI to rush to finish Dark Horse in time for its scheduled release date and accompanying tour^note which was disastrous enough to dissuade him from ever touring again, except on one tour with Eric Clapton and his band that ended up being recorded and released on Live in Japan, George's sole solo live album, despite being stricken with laryngitis at the time (as well as throughout the tour), leading to its extremely scratchy, gritty vocals.
  • His album Somewhere In England was delayed because the higher ups wanted another cover and some songs removed, so Harrison had to write new songs to fill the void. However, he made both a Lampshade Hanging and a Take That! against them in the song "Blood from a Clone".
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: Brainwashed started production in 1988 and wasn't finished and released until 2002, one year after Harrison's death and roughly 14 years after he began working on it.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • In his diaries, Michael Palin explicitly refers to Harrison (at the time of the making of Monty Python's Life of Brian) as "the Seventh Python". Palin notes this is a view shared by John Cleese.
  • Electric Light Orchestra frontman Jeff Lynne was a huge fan of The Beatles, whose influence can be seen all over ELO's material. The year after ELO dissolved, Lynne got to co-produce Harrison's comeback album Cloud Nine, and the year after that, he joined him as a member of The Traveling Wilburys.
• Reclusive Artist: George was never one for touring or performing concerts. There were two notable concerts, however, that he was involved in. One was The Concert for Bangladesh, a charity concert for the benefit of Bangladesh that he organised, and the other was a tour with Eric Clapton and his band in 1992, out of which came the live album Live in Japan which ended up being George's last new album released during his life, with Brainwashed being posthumously released.
• Referenced by...: "Weird Al" Yankovic's "(This Song's Just) Six Words Long" parodies Harrison's rendition of "Got My Mind Set On You" by James Ray, riffing on the song's repetitive lyrics.
• Sequel Gap: Cloud Nine ended a 5-year gap since the release of Gone Troppo, owed to Harrison's Artist Disillusionment motivating him to step away from the music industry for a while. In turn, Brainwashed released a whopping 15 years after Cloud Nine, by which point he was already dead.
• Troubled Production: In 1974, while promoting Dark Horse, he embarked on what would be his first and only solo tour (save for a brief Japanese tour in 1992 to raise funds for a campaigning political party that endorsed Transcendental Meditation). Unfortunately, the tour had been booked in advance, and Harrison, fresh from his recent divorce from Patti Boyd and fighting laryngitis, a condition which had plagued the recording of the Dark Horse album^note Disparaging critics dubbed the album "Dark Hoarse", due to Harrison's congested vocal quality, and the album was critically and commercially unsuccessful. The very religious Harrison booked Ravi Shankar and a selection of gurus as opening acts, which alienated his audience, and Harrison's singing and decision to change some Beatles lyrics to suit his Krishna faith led to much criticism; the shows suffered from poor attendance as a result. Harrison once claimed that after one show, he had decided to stay onstage instead of returning to his hotel room. After observing the sea of stray heroin needles, beer cans and garbage left over on the seats waiting to be disposed of, George felt repulsed and swore off of touring as a result.
• Uncredited Role:
  • He made an uncredited guest appearance on Cream's song "Badge".
  • Besides producing it, Ringo Starr has acknowledged that George helped write "It Don't Come Easy" as well, but didn't seek a writing credit. One little giveaway is that "Hare Krishna" is dropped into the backing vocals during the guitar solo at one point.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" came out of his desire to test the I Ching's contention that there are no coincidences and everything in the world is connected, by writing a song about a randomly selected phrase from a random book.

---