GEORGE HARRISON – Songwriting
“My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean” is a traditional Scottish folk song that remains popular to this day. Several other songs by the Beatles were recorded at that time; Anthology 1 includes “My Bonnie” (but not “The Saints”) plus “Ain’t She Sweet” and “Cry for a Shadow” that were made at the same recording session but without Tony Sheridan. On “Ain’t She Sweet", John Lennon sings lead; this song was a staple in their shows back in 1961. “Cry for a Shadow” is a rare instrumental by the Beatles and the only recording ever credited to George Harrison and John Lennon as songwriters.
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Lennon/McCartney appears by most of the Beatles’ songs, but starting at least with Revolver, I began to notice that George Harrison was writing many of my favorite Beatles songs. His contribution to Sgt. Pepper was “Within You Without You”; that song and “A Day in the Life” quickly became my favorite songs on that mammoth album.
On Revolver, which I bought after Sgt. Pepper actually, George Harrison wrote the lead-off song, “Taxman” plus “Love You To” and “I Want to Tell You”. George wrote the first song on Side 2 of Abbey Road, “Here Comes the Sun” – whose title is reflected in a later song on the album, “Sun King” in the lyric, “Here comes the sun king” – as well as “Something”, perhaps George Harrison’s finest composition for the Beatles. As a double-A–sided single with “Come Together”, “Something” is the only song Harrison wrote that the Beatles took to the top of the charts. Also, “Something” has been recorded by about 150 other artists, making it the second most covered Beatles song (after “Yesterday”).
For Yellow Submarine, just four new songs were included on that album, and IMHO, George Harrison wrote the two best by far: “Only a Northern Song” and “It’s All Too Much”. The two Lennon/McCartney songs are “Hey Bulldog” and “All Together Now”; “Yellow Submarine” and “All You Need is Love” had been released previously.
But it was on The Beatles (“the White Album”) where George Harrison really shone both as a performer and as a songwriter. By contrast, much of the Lennon/McCartney material were story songs about animals – Harrison also wrote one of these, “Piggies” – and throwaways like “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road”. One of Harrison’s songs got included on each of the four sides of the double LP; and his Side 1 contribution in particular, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is a real tour de force. Eric Clapton plays lead guitar on the song (uncredited). The middle verse goes:
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No one alerted you.
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Wikipedia lists some of the accolades that have come to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”: “‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ is ranked at number 136 on Rolling Stone’s ‘The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time’, number 7 on the magazine’s list of ‘The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time’, and number 10 on its list of ‘The Beatles’ 100 Greatest Songs’. In an online poll held by Guitar World magazine in February 2012, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ was voted the best of Harrison’s Beatle-era songs. In October 2008, Guitar World ranked [Eric Clapton]’s playing at number 42 in its list of the ‘100 Greatest Guitar Solos’.”
The other George Harrison songs on The Beatles are all standout cuts on the album and illustrate the variety that George has brought in his songwriting all along: “Piggies”, “Long, Long, Long”, and “Savoy Truffle”.
Many rock critics have noted that the sheer length of All Things Must Pass – the triple LP (including the bonus disk Apple Jam) that George Harrison released after the Beatles broke up – showed the volume of excellent Harrison compositions that never made it onto any Beatles albums. Eric Clapton was one of the key musicians in those recording sessions; the two also co-wrote one of my favorite songs by Cream, “Badge”.
(June 2015)
