Post by DayTripper on Sept 1, 2008 10:33:46 GMT 1
This a a little look at george's time with the beatles, its from azcentral.com
It was 50 years ago this very weekend Friday, Aug. 29, to be exact that a no-account skiffle group from Liverpool, the Quarry Men, took what, in retrospect, would be one giant step toward world domination with the acquisition of a baby-faced guitarist Paul McCartney had met on the bus home from Liverpool Institute.
As John Lennon would later recall his decision to welcome George Harrison into the fold, "We asked George to join because he knew more chords, a lot more than we knew. We got a lot from him."
To say the Beatles got a lot from George would be, if anything, an understatement. Often overshadowed by the untouchable songwriting prowess of Lennon-McCartney, George's contributions to the Beatles legacy were actually quite huge, from his guitar work to the original songs he was able to carve out a space for in the Beatles' catalog.
Here's a look at some of George's most enduring contributions to the Beatles' legend.
1962 - At the Beatles' audition for Parlophone Records, producer George Martin asks the band, "Is there anything that you're not happy about?" As George Harrison later recalls in The Beatles Anthology, "We shuffled about silently, then I said, 'Well . . . I don't like your tie!" The rest is only history because, as fate would have it, Martin shares the youngest Beatle's sense of humor.
1963 - Having taken ill in a hotel room, George makes the most of a bad situation, penning his first Beatles song, Don't Bother Me. Appearing on the Beatles second album, With the Beatles, it's much darker and surlier - some would say more Lennonesque - than anything Lennon-McCartney had written at that point. George's girl has left him and he's gone all emo (years ahead of schedule), warning visitors, "Don't come around, leave me alone, don't bother me." Years later, George himself dismisses his first effort as a "fairly crappy song," but what does he know? Don't Bother Me is also featured in the Beatles' film debut, A Hard Day's Night, in 1964.
1964 - George gets off the opening shot of the coming folk-rock revolution with that freaky 12-string Rickenbacker chord that ushers in A Hard Day's Night. Rolling Stone magazine later declares it "the most famous chord in all of rock and roll," while Guitarist Magazine chimes in with the following bit of rock-crit poesy: "A hijacked church bell announcing the party of the year." Even Joey Ramone recalls that first chord as a "wake-up call," which doesn't necessarily mean we have to credit George with having sown the seeds of punk that day, but someone somewhere more than likely has.
1965 - George adds a sitar to Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown), the first Western musician to play the traditional Indian instrument on a pop song. Although he'll later study sitar with the legendary Ravi Shankar, at this point, he's pretty much feeling his way around an instrument he'd picked up on the cheap after being intrigued by the sound it made while filming Help! As he'll later recall in The Beatles Anthology, "I hadn't really figured out what to do with it. But when we were working on Norweigan Wood, it just needed something. It was quite spontaneous. . . . I just picked it up and found the notes . . . and it just seemed to hit the spot." That same year, George contributes two amazing songs to Rubber Soul - the folk-rock classic If I Needed Someone and Think For Yourself, a tough-love self-help anthem fueled by fuzz-bass, psychedelic harmonies and self-righteous contempt for someone "telling all those lies about the good things that we can have if we close our eyes."
1966 - In a clear sign that George has come into his own as a writer, he opens Revolver with a jagged blast of stinging social commentary, Taxman. Bizarrely, the blistering backwards guitar lead turns out to be Paul. But the lyrics couldn't be more George: "Now my advice for those who die/Declare the pennies on your eyes," goes one memorable dig at The Man. Revolver also finds George coming into his own on the sitar with a song he's written on the instrument, the mesmerizing Love You To, while reinventing rubber soul with a distinctly Eastern feel on the surprisingly McCartneyesque I Want To Tell You.
1967 - After the strides he'd made at infiltrating his own band on the Revolver sessions, it has to be a bit disheartening for George to place only one song on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the year's most celebrated album. But at least he gets a long one - Within You Without You, which charts George's further foray into the world of Indian classic music, written on harmonium this time instead of sitar. He's the only Beatle featured on the track, joined by Indian session players. That same year brings George's Blue Jay Way, a spooky psychedelic classic written on a Hammond organ, to the Beatles' only underrated album, the soundtrack to Magical Mystery Tour. He sings about a fog upon LA and sounds as though he's lost in one. But that just makes it feel more psychedelic.
1968 - After being held in check on Paul McCartney's special project, Sgt. Pepper, George is free to flex his writing muscles on the band's self-titled double album, which everyone soon takes to calling The White Album. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is the one people gravitate to, even more so today. But George gets four songs, one per album side, and clearly makes the most of it, abandoning the Eastern flavor of his recent output in the process. Piggies is a darkly comic slice of social commentary from the Taxman school, a baroque-flavored gem that spoofs the upper crust in lines like, "In their sties with all their backing, they don't care what goes on around. In their eyes, there's something lacking. What they need's a damn good whacking." That last line was written by his mum, but still, it's funny. So is Savoy Truffle, his tribute to sweets and the damage they do to your teeth ("You'll have them all pulled out after the Savory truffle"). Long Long Long isn't nearly as funny, a haunting meditation on his reconnection with a great lost love, which may or may not be the sweet lord he would sing about on My Sweet Lord.
1969 - George contributes two songs to the soundtrack for the animated feature Yellow Submarine. On It's Only a Northern Song, he paints a bitter psychedelic portrait of the way his songs are treated in the Beatles universe ("It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is"). The punch line is the seemingly disoriented orchestration. But It's All Too Much is the revelation. Recorded before Sgt. Pepper and held back from Magical Mystery Tour, its utter brilliance only underscores the exact point It's Only a Northern Song was striving to address. Who lets a song like that sit on a shelf for two turbulent years until the psychedelic majesty, ushered in on a wave of Hendrixian feedback, that would have seemed so cutting edge in 1967 feels like what it is - an outtake? Fortunately, George's contributions to the Beatles' other, more important 1969 release, Abbey Road, are shown the respect they deserve. The heartfelt ballad Something marks the first time any George song had been chosen as an A-side for a Beatles single (even if it is a "double A-side," backed with Come Together). Either way, it soars to No. 3 here in the States and tops the U.K. charts while Lennon hails it as his favorite song on Abbey Road. And while it isn't chosen as a single, the gorgeous, acoustic guitar-driven Here Comes the Sun would emerge as a radio staple.
1970 - There's one classic moment in the documentary Let It Be where George responds to Paul's "suggestions" about how to play his guitar with a withering, "I'll play whatever you want me to play, or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play. Whatever it is that'll please you, I'll do it." George contributes two song to the soundtrack - I Me Mine, an impassioned attack on the ego that would have been easy to read as a swipe at McCartney, and the lighter-hearted For You Blue, a playful blues romp best remembered for him egging Lennon on during a lap steel guitar solo with "Elmore James got nothing on this baby."
It was 50 years ago this very weekend Friday, Aug. 29, to be exact that a no-account skiffle group from Liverpool, the Quarry Men, took what, in retrospect, would be one giant step toward world domination with the acquisition of a baby-faced guitarist Paul McCartney had met on the bus home from Liverpool Institute.
As John Lennon would later recall his decision to welcome George Harrison into the fold, "We asked George to join because he knew more chords, a lot more than we knew. We got a lot from him."
To say the Beatles got a lot from George would be, if anything, an understatement. Often overshadowed by the untouchable songwriting prowess of Lennon-McCartney, George's contributions to the Beatles legacy were actually quite huge, from his guitar work to the original songs he was able to carve out a space for in the Beatles' catalog.
Here's a look at some of George's most enduring contributions to the Beatles' legend.
1962 - At the Beatles' audition for Parlophone Records, producer George Martin asks the band, "Is there anything that you're not happy about?" As George Harrison later recalls in The Beatles Anthology, "We shuffled about silently, then I said, 'Well . . . I don't like your tie!" The rest is only history because, as fate would have it, Martin shares the youngest Beatle's sense of humor.
1963 - Having taken ill in a hotel room, George makes the most of a bad situation, penning his first Beatles song, Don't Bother Me. Appearing on the Beatles second album, With the Beatles, it's much darker and surlier - some would say more Lennonesque - than anything Lennon-McCartney had written at that point. George's girl has left him and he's gone all emo (years ahead of schedule), warning visitors, "Don't come around, leave me alone, don't bother me." Years later, George himself dismisses his first effort as a "fairly crappy song," but what does he know? Don't Bother Me is also featured in the Beatles' film debut, A Hard Day's Night, in 1964.
1964 - George gets off the opening shot of the coming folk-rock revolution with that freaky 12-string Rickenbacker chord that ushers in A Hard Day's Night. Rolling Stone magazine later declares it "the most famous chord in all of rock and roll," while Guitarist Magazine chimes in with the following bit of rock-crit poesy: "A hijacked church bell announcing the party of the year." Even Joey Ramone recalls that first chord as a "wake-up call," which doesn't necessarily mean we have to credit George with having sown the seeds of punk that day, but someone somewhere more than likely has.
1965 - George adds a sitar to Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown), the first Western musician to play the traditional Indian instrument on a pop song. Although he'll later study sitar with the legendary Ravi Shankar, at this point, he's pretty much feeling his way around an instrument he'd picked up on the cheap after being intrigued by the sound it made while filming Help! As he'll later recall in The Beatles Anthology, "I hadn't really figured out what to do with it. But when we were working on Norweigan Wood, it just needed something. It was quite spontaneous. . . . I just picked it up and found the notes . . . and it just seemed to hit the spot." That same year, George contributes two amazing songs to Rubber Soul - the folk-rock classic If I Needed Someone and Think For Yourself, a tough-love self-help anthem fueled by fuzz-bass, psychedelic harmonies and self-righteous contempt for someone "telling all those lies about the good things that we can have if we close our eyes."
1966 - In a clear sign that George has come into his own as a writer, he opens Revolver with a jagged blast of stinging social commentary, Taxman. Bizarrely, the blistering backwards guitar lead turns out to be Paul. But the lyrics couldn't be more George: "Now my advice for those who die/Declare the pennies on your eyes," goes one memorable dig at The Man. Revolver also finds George coming into his own on the sitar with a song he's written on the instrument, the mesmerizing Love You To, while reinventing rubber soul with a distinctly Eastern feel on the surprisingly McCartneyesque I Want To Tell You.
1967 - After the strides he'd made at infiltrating his own band on the Revolver sessions, it has to be a bit disheartening for George to place only one song on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the year's most celebrated album. But at least he gets a long one - Within You Without You, which charts George's further foray into the world of Indian classic music, written on harmonium this time instead of sitar. He's the only Beatle featured on the track, joined by Indian session players. That same year brings George's Blue Jay Way, a spooky psychedelic classic written on a Hammond organ, to the Beatles' only underrated album, the soundtrack to Magical Mystery Tour. He sings about a fog upon LA and sounds as though he's lost in one. But that just makes it feel more psychedelic.
1968 - After being held in check on Paul McCartney's special project, Sgt. Pepper, George is free to flex his writing muscles on the band's self-titled double album, which everyone soon takes to calling The White Album. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is the one people gravitate to, even more so today. But George gets four songs, one per album side, and clearly makes the most of it, abandoning the Eastern flavor of his recent output in the process. Piggies is a darkly comic slice of social commentary from the Taxman school, a baroque-flavored gem that spoofs the upper crust in lines like, "In their sties with all their backing, they don't care what goes on around. In their eyes, there's something lacking. What they need's a damn good whacking." That last line was written by his mum, but still, it's funny. So is Savoy Truffle, his tribute to sweets and the damage they do to your teeth ("You'll have them all pulled out after the Savory truffle"). Long Long Long isn't nearly as funny, a haunting meditation on his reconnection with a great lost love, which may or may not be the sweet lord he would sing about on My Sweet Lord.
1969 - George contributes two songs to the soundtrack for the animated feature Yellow Submarine. On It's Only a Northern Song, he paints a bitter psychedelic portrait of the way his songs are treated in the Beatles universe ("It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is"). The punch line is the seemingly disoriented orchestration. But It's All Too Much is the revelation. Recorded before Sgt. Pepper and held back from Magical Mystery Tour, its utter brilliance only underscores the exact point It's Only a Northern Song was striving to address. Who lets a song like that sit on a shelf for two turbulent years until the psychedelic majesty, ushered in on a wave of Hendrixian feedback, that would have seemed so cutting edge in 1967 feels like what it is - an outtake? Fortunately, George's contributions to the Beatles' other, more important 1969 release, Abbey Road, are shown the respect they deserve. The heartfelt ballad Something marks the first time any George song had been chosen as an A-side for a Beatles single (even if it is a "double A-side," backed with Come Together). Either way, it soars to No. 3 here in the States and tops the U.K. charts while Lennon hails it as his favorite song on Abbey Road. And while it isn't chosen as a single, the gorgeous, acoustic guitar-driven Here Comes the Sun would emerge as a radio staple.
1970 - There's one classic moment in the documentary Let It Be where George responds to Paul's "suggestions" about how to play his guitar with a withering, "I'll play whatever you want me to play, or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play. Whatever it is that'll please you, I'll do it." George contributes two song to the soundtrack - I Me Mine, an impassioned attack on the ego that would have been easy to read as a swipe at McCartney, and the lighter-hearted For You Blue, a playful blues romp best remembered for him egging Lennon on during a lap steel guitar solo with "Elmore James got nothing on this baby."
