This Song's Just Six Words Long: 15 Albums By George Harrison (And One That's Not)

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I distinctly recall listening to Ravi Shankar being interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, and Terry Gross asks him, "So, was George Harrison ever actually any good at playing the sitar?"

And Ravi Shankar immediately responds: "No. He was terrible."

George used to be my favorite Beatle. Now it's Paul but he still has a place in my heart.

Wonderwall Music (1968)

7/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: swingin'

REVIEW: A groovy, fab, far-out album for the swingin' psychedelic sixties. Which means it's mostly George trying to play Indian classical music. You know, I always thought there was something fishy about the 60s British counterculture's fascination with India, from a postcolonial perspective. But for all that it's actually nice to listen to! Nice and chill. And the dips into rock music ("Dream Scene", "Party Seacombe", "On the Bed") are pretty good too. Oh, also, apparently this is the soundtrack to a movie where Jane Birkin gets naked a lot. Again, the sixties.

THE BEATLE CUT: (nb. george got ~2 songs on every beatle album so for his pop albums i'm going to indicate which tracks would make it onto a proper beatles album) N/A

RANKING: 8 of 15

Electronic Sound (1969)

1/10

💀⭐💀

OUTLOOK: stoned

REVIEW: Bleeeooooo... bweeeeeep... scrrt scrrt scrrt... neeaaaaooooowww...

There we go, that's this album, now you don't have to listen to it.

No, seriously, this is George randomly poking his Moog and it is awful. And I mean, there is no excuse whatsoever, good experimental electronic music existed at this point in time! And not just experimental music--Switched-On Bach had come out just a year before. Play this if you want to be Unhappy.

THE BEATLE CUT: N/A

RANKING: 15 of 15

All Things Must Pass (1970)

9/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: elegiac

REVIEW: George is my favorite Beatle, and as such is responsible for my favorite Beatles solo album. You can skip the jammy third LP, though, it's not too important.

EDIT: Okay, gotta revisit this one, both because it's from the era where I didn't put any actual effort into my reviews, and because this is definitely not the best solo Beatle LP (nor is George my favorite Beatle anymore). I mean, I haven't heard all of them, but Ram is definitely better than this.

Anyway, my main take now is: you expect me to listen to a whole bunch of praise and worship music and then appreciate a bunch of airy-yet-uplifting songs about how great it is to feel the holy spirit?

...no, but this is actually really good--I guess proof that this can be done right, by someone who actually has a soul and cares about making good art. My fav cuts are the moody space-jazz-rock "Let It Down" and the super-pretty "Run of the Mill". And heck, I can even kind of appreciate the jams on disc 3 now! Some of those are great, Chuck Berry-style rockers!

Honestly I have been on the fence about whether to give this a 4 or a 4.5 but then I remembered that this made Nina Simone's Emergency Ward! possible, and that's worth at least a point five.

THE BEATLE CUT: "What Is Life", "Isn't It a Pity", "Let It Down", "Run of the Mill"

RANKING: 1 of 15

Various Artists - The Concert for Bangla Desh (1971)

8/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: charitable

REVIEW: Man, the early 70s were great for these big overstuffed rock concert spectacles weren't they? And I ain't mad! I'm sure at the time--or even just a little bit after--this seemed like the worst kind of pandering, sanctimonious, money-grubbing excess (complete with a picture of a starving child on the cover!), and you can draw a direct line from this to "We Are The World", but the tunes are good and that's what counts. This is mostly George Harrison songs, mainly late-period Beatles songs and cuts from All Things Must Pass, and they're all really good, honestly hitting harder than their studio counterparts. Bob Dylan also gets a whole side to himself, and he's classic symbolism-on-stimulants form. But the not-entirely-unexpected MVP is Ravi Shankar, who shows up and plays a 16-minute-long raga at the beginning and blows them all out of the water. This is a fun and good album, is what I am saying.

THE BEATLE CUT: N/A

RANKING: 6 of 15

Living in the Material World (1973)

8/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: dark

REVIEW: This is another album of hymn-like floaty spirituals, but underproduced rather than overproduced, and so the outcome is... oddly kind of punk? These are a bunch of beautiful, deceptively-simple lyrical melodies about yearning for something better and not being sure it's out there. And they just hit you straight in the eyes sometimes! I'm thinking the peace-and-love-if-people-actually-took-it-seriously "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)", the power-poppy "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long", and "Be Here Now", which is one of those great solitary nocturnal George ballads.

And I really at this point appreciate that George was grappling seriously with the contradiction inherent in trying to express spiritualism via rock 'n' roll, a musical genre that's 100% about the pleasures of the flesh (ie. fucking).

THE BEATLE CUT: "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)", "Be Here Now"

RANKING: 5 of 15

Dark Horse (1974)

5/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: tired

REVIEW: Ah, yes, that rock 'n' roll classic: the album no one gave a fuck about. Seriously: no one was trying here, least of all George. I mean "Ding Dong, Ding Dong"? That's barely a song!

Which means it's honestly astounding that some of this stuff is so good. I am speaking specifically of "Far East Man", a gorgeously smooth Steely Dan-style jazz-rocker that might be one of the best solo George songs I've heard. "So Sad" also has a great big pop hook that I love, and heaven help me but I quite enjoy the goofy bouncy instrumental "Hari's on Tour". Still, overall this is just an incredibly mediocre album.

I like the cover though!

THE BEATLE CUT: "Far East Man"

RANKING: 12 of 15

Extra Texture (Read All About It) (1975)

8/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: spectral

REVIEW: All four Beatles really loved Phil Spector--their concept back in the beginning was basically "what if a girl group, but boys"--but George maybe loved him the best. See, that Wall of Sound really is the spiritual experience in pop music when you do it right, and that's what Mr. Harrison was always looking for. But there was a problem--see, Phil Spector was a petty, violent psychopath, which is just about the opposite of the peaceful, transcendent spirituality George was looking for.

And so they only solution was to out-Spector Spector. Hence, this album, which is a bunch of big swoony pop songs--as another Spector devotee would say, teenage symphonies to god. And I feel like it helped George work through some stuff! It certainly helped me--I was having a rough day, but "You" really helped me through it. So thank you George, thank you Phil, thank you... pop music in general!

THE BEATLE CUT: "You", "This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)"

RANKING: 7 of 15

Thirty Three & 1/ॐ (1976)

8/10

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OUTLOOK: cosmopolitan

REVIEW: Another George Harrison album, another 8. This guy pretty consistently has been putting out albums which have maybe one amazing track and a bunch of acceptable filler, and for that I salute him, albeit in a bit of a bored, desultory manner.

But interesting that is not what is happening here! This is actually kind of a strange little record! See, you start with this odd mixture of western slide-guitar blues and dance funk that made me slightly terrified that George was trying disco, followed by a standard acoustic guitar lament augmented by some utterly corny-sounding synths, followed by a song which sounds like it could have been on Revolver, followed by a fun upbeat boogie song which nonetheless leaves a sour taste in my mouth because it's about the whole "My Sweet Lord" plagiarism thing and I'm sorry, to the degree that any rock song can be considered a ripoff that was a fucking ripoff, followed by...

Okay, well I'm not actually going to go track-by-track, but you get what I'm trying to say right? There's some variety on this thing! (interestingly, this might be the most Beatlesy of George's solo albums) And it's for the most part good too--I'm especially fond of the last three tracks, which hit this great smooth-soul groove. Maybe because David Foster is on this thing. You know, David Foster. The guy from Airplay that wasn't Jay Graydon.

It occurs to me that maybe there are other people out there who do not consider Airplay to be quite as pivotal a group in pop music history as I do.

THE BEATLE CUT: "Pure Smokey", "Crackerbox Palace", "Learning How to Love You"

RANKING: 4 of 15

George Harrison (1979)

8/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: sleepy

REVIEW: Look at that "yacht rock" secondary genre on the rym page. Look at it. Appreciate it. Love it. Caress it with your eyes.

Now, I'm not sure it really applies--David Foster isn't on this one!--but this is definitely a soft, smooth record. And it's good! Like, this thing is so pretty! The representative track might be "Your Love is Forever", which kind of sounds like the sort of stuff Talk Talk would be doing a few year later. There are also some moments on this album that kind of vibe like a western Haruomi Hosono, which is very cool. And there's a sequel song to "Here Comes the Sun" called "Here Comes the Moon", which is just hilarious. And that song is good too!

THE BEATLE CUT: "Here Comes the Moon", "Faster"

RANKING: 3 of 15

Somewhere in England (1981)

5/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: sleepy

REVIEW: So fair warning: this album starts and ends with two of the worst songs Mr. Harrison has done in his entire career: "Blood From a Clone" is a pissy little whine about the music industry that sounds like the hold music that plays when you call a cruise line, and "Save the World" is an incredibly misguided boomer political diatribe (dig when he talks about how terrible nuclear power is) over dopey music hall bounce. How do you go from "Faster" to this in two years?

Well, you get drained and exhuasted by the burden of simultaneously upholding the legacy of the world's most important rock band while also having to undergo the regular indignities of a working musician, that's how. And maybe that's why I've always liked George--he always seemed like the most human of the Beatles, unlike punchline Ringo, studio demigod Paul, or seething mass of rage John.

And speaking of John, there are good songs on this album too, and one of them is "All Those Years Ago", an honestly quite touching tribute to George's recently-passed bandmate. I also really like "Life Itself", the best hymn that George has written since Living in the Material World. Other than those and the two aforementioned terrible songs, this album is basically mediocre. Like, "two Hoagy Carmicheal covers" mediocre. You stopped having to do stuff like that back in 1964, George!

THE BEATLE CUT: "Life Itself", "All Those Years Ago"

RANKING: 13 of 15

Gone Troppo (1982)

4/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: chill

REVIEW: Like going to Universal Studios Florida, riding all the rides, and then going to have dinner at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville at Universal CityWalk and then throwing up into the artificial river behind it.

No, I knew that George Harrison made a corny beach album with a bunch of terrible synthesizers on it, but I was honestly excited for it! I love corny beach albums and terrible synthesizers! Like, I previously compared Hari here to another Harry, that being Hosono, and I had expectations that this might be a Paraiso, but this just suffers from a chronic lack of tunes. No amount of laid-back atmospherics can cover up a lack of melodic imagination, and there just isn't a song on here that's at all memorable--closest thing might be the title track, but then that one's kinda racist, so. Oh, and there's also "Dream Away", but it's really Syreeta's backing vocals that carry that one.

Syreeta! She's great! Why won't someone pay me to review all of her albums?

THE BEATLE CUT: I think that if George had played John or Paul any of these songs back in the day they would have smiled weakly and then asked if Ringo had come up with anything.

RANKING: 14 of 15

Cloud Nine (1987)

7/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: chipper

REVIEW: 80s corporate blues. This is very slick and shiny-sounding, and also very straightforwardly rockin', for good and for ill. By which I mean: if you enjoy songs like the title track or "Devil's Radio", I don't trust you.

What's really interesting here is that George is trying, I think, to make a Guitar Boy album, full of quote-unquote "epic" blues soloing. George always was a Guitar Boy but he lived in the shadow of the Grand High Guitar Boy Eric Clapton, and as such his worst Guitar Boy tendencies were held in check--but here, he's branching out, again for good and for ill.

I don't mean to say that I don't like this album, because most of it's fine. I also really like "When We Was Fab", a play for the Beatle legacy that ends up somewhere around The Dukes of Stratosphear. Other than that, the synth-chinoisserie "Breath Away From Heaven" is at least interesting (although if you want to hear that done right check out the b-side "Shanghai Surprise", the themesong to a terrible Madonna movie). And heaven help me, but I actually really like "Got My Mind Set on You". It was always one of my favorite tracks in the Jack FM rotation and I don't know why people hate it.

Also I just realized, it's been like five albums since he sang about Krishna! What the hell!

THE BEATLE CUT: "When We Was Fab"

RANKING: 9 of 15

Live in Japan (w/ Eric Clapton) (1992)

7/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: lively

REVIEW: Okay, absolute best thing about live albums recorded in Japan is hearing the strange ways anglophone rock stars pronounce "arigato". George is no Laura Nyro but his is pretty classic!

Anyway this is a good but inessential double-live cash-in. These are straightforward renditions of both Beatles songs and George solo songs--the only real deviation from the studio versions of these tracks is the inexplicable decision to add "shoobee-doo-bop-bop" backing vocals to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". But, like, it's good songs! Like: "What Is Life"? "If I Needed Someone"? "Here Comes the Sun"? "Isn't It a Pity"? I will never not want to here these! Especially "Isn't It a Pity"--I was listening to that while I went to the corner bodega to get fizzy water and a baguette and it just destroyed me, George managed to outdo both "Hey Jude" and "Imagine" in one song.

Also Clapton is here. I actually don't mind him! Maybe because he does not say any anything.

THE BEATLE CUT: N/A

RANKING: 10 of 15

Brainwashed (2002)

9/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: mortal

REVIEW: So let's get it straight: George's real follow-up to Cloud Nine was The Traveling Wilburys. And yes, if you want me to review them, that'll be another five bucks.

But it really feels like that most super of all supergroups was actually a major boost to George's creativity, because this thing is the best album he's made in ages. (although, being a posthumous release, at least some of the credit goes to his son Dhani and fellow Wilbury Jeff Lynne.) And I think that the specific aspect of the Travelling Wilburys Experience that contributed to this album being so good was "hanging out with Bob Dylan", because this thing's folky! It's got this kind of rough, scrappy quality that is a huge and welcome change from the 80s overproduction of the last few. And also: this is the first George Harrison album where the lyrics are the best thing about it. Which is weird, because Mr. Harrison is kind of infamous for not actually even writing lyrics--Weird Al wrote "The Song's Just Six Words Long" for a reason. But this album is a very sweet and very wise meditation of the wisdom that comes from a long life. Not long enough, unfortunately :(

THE BEATLE CUT: "Pisces Fish", "Stuck Inside a Cloud", "Brainwashed"

RANKING: 2 of 15

George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011; recorded 1970-76)

7/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: demonstrative

REVIEW: It's demos. So in other words: only worth getting if you're a major fan, a chronic completionist, or someone is paying you to review the entire George Harrison solo discography (thanks!). But it's good! Again: good songs! The main conclusion to be drawn here is that Phil Spector kind of ruined All Things Must Pass--the cuts from that album sound way better as stripped-down little folk-rock numbers, especially "Awaiting on You All" and "My Sweet Lord" (which gets a nice little blues plod). I do miss the horn part on "Run of the Mill", though. Oh, and the Bob Dylan cover is really good.

THE BEATLE CUT: N/A

RANKING: 11 of 15

Various Artists - Concert for George (2003)

7/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

OUTLOOK: elegiac (again)

REVIEW: A wake for a friend. The mourners:

• Ravi and Anoushka Shankar. You didn't think you were going to a George Harrison show without an hour of Indian classical music first, right? And, I cannot stress this enough, this fucks, once again the Shankars absolutely steal the show from the British rockers they're sharing a bill with. I know literally nothing about Indian classical music but I really want to learn about it because this is so good (~slioganach, any pointers?)
• Monty Python. Yeah, they're on this, doing "Sit On My Face (And Tell Me That You Love Me)" and "The Lumberjack Song". They didn't make it to the CD version though and you aren't missing much--if you want a comparable experience, ask a fourteen-year-old boy with bad skin to tell you about his favorite comedy routines.
• The Travelling Wilburys. Jeff Lynne does fairly soulful run-throughs of some of George's more hymnlike songs, while Tom Petty gets confused on how much of a fake British accent to do on "Taxman". Also, the big noticeable absence here is Bob Dylan--wonder why he didn't show up?
• Eric Clapton. He organized this thing and honestly I mind his presence on stage way less than I thought I would! His run-through of "Wah-Wah" is kinda great!
• Billy Preston. He really puts some gospel on his songs--that was kind of his thing--and it's great. I mean, if you're gonna do hymns do hymns, you know?
• Gary Brooker (from Procol Harum) and Jools Holland (from Squeeze). No idea what these guys are doing here but they're competent.
• Joe Brown. I don't even know who this guy is but apparently he was a big deal in early 60s British rock 'n' roll, enough so that he gets to both do "Here Comes the Sun" and close the show? He's actually pretty good too!
• Oh, and I feel like George Harrison was in some other band, what was that again... oh, right. Well Ringo is here, doing his own songs for some reason (although I actually really like "Photograph"), and Paul takes the real show-stopping role at the end of the concert--his take on "All Things Must Pass" is really sweet.

Overall Ranking & Final Thoughts

1. Electronic Sound
2. Gone Troppo
3. Somewhere in England
4. Dark Horse
5. the demo collection with the confusing name
6. Live in Japan
7. Cloud Nine
8. Wonderwall Music
9. Extra Texture (Read All About It)
10. The Concert for Bangla Desh
11. Living in the Material World
12. Thirty-Three and One Om
13. George Harrison
14. Brainwashed
15. All Things Must Pass