Thematically, the album’s lyrics reflect both Harrison’s notorious dark side as well as the spirituality he’d found in his embrace of Hinduism. George Harrison All Things Must Pass Courtesy UMe Needless to say, this gorgeous cacophony sounds more amazing than ever in this revamped sonic edition. But like Simon & Garfunkel’s contemporaneous “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” many of these songs were painstakingly constructed to sound big and detailed on both tinny AM radios and whatever passed for a state of the art, hi-fi stereo system in 1970.
Yet it’s actually the ultimate evolution of the Wall of Sound: The dozen-plus musicians were often playing live, and the blaring din on songs like “Awaiting on You All” shows that the distance from a Spector classic like “Da Doo Ron-Ron” isn’t that far. The massed legions of guitars, keyboards, voices, horns, tambourines, bells, shakers - all drenched with echo and capped by Harrison’s alternately stinging and soaring slide guitar - summon visions of a giant sleigh-bell-bedecked caravan of traveling musicians thundering down a country road. The result is a glorious, celestial roar, spanning rock (“Wah Wah,” “Art of Dying”), pop (“What Is Life”), country (“Behind That Locked Door,” “Let It Roll”), neo-gospel (the global smash “My Sweet Lord”), towering epics (“Hear Me Lord,” “Let It Down”), Band-influenced Americana (a cover of Dylan’s “If Not for You”), and even a paean to the Beatle fans who’d wait outside Abbey Road (“Apple Scruffs”). The whole shebang was produced by Harrison with “Wall of Sound” maestro Phil Spector (eerily, that murderers’ row included two future convicted murderers: Spector and drummer Jim Gordon). (He’d continue that streak after this album’s release, writing and producing the great singles “It Don’t Come Easy” for Ringo Starr and “Try Some, Buy Some” for Ronnie Spector.) He was invited to Woodstock to visit the Band in 1968 and ended up hanging out with Bob Dylan, with whom he co-wrote “I’d Have You Anytime,” the opening track here.Īll that preparation and pent-up inspiration came to fruition on this remarkable album, which was originally released as two vinyl LPs, along with a bonus disc of blazing instrumental jams by the murderers’ row of musicians Harrison assembled: In addition to Clapton, Starr and Preston were guitarists Dave Mason and Peter Frampton, bassist Klaus Voorman, keyboardists Gary Wright and Gary Brooker, drummer Alan White, all of Badfinger, and the three musicians who would join Clapton in Derek and the Dominos and would record their own masterpiece, “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs,” a few weeks after working on this album. He wrote, co-wrote, produced and/or played on songs or albums by Cream, Billy Preston, singers Doris Troy and Jackie Lomax and others dabbled in Indian and electronic music and even joined his best friend Eric Clapton for a brief barnstorming tour with American combo Delaney & Bonnie. The eternally underrated Harrison was by far the most extracurricularly prolific Beatle.
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