“Cosmic Empire”Īnother acoustic demo that would made a top-tier song on the album. Not far at all from what bands like the Velvet Underground or Fairport Convention were trying at the time. Harrison writes his own Indian hymn, chanting the names of the Lord, but his acoustic guitar has a deeply Celtic drone.
This guitar meditation not only should have made the original album-it would have been one of the highlights. You can hear his seething anger as he rails against the strictures of celebrity life, with echoes of his 1969 drug bust when he sings, “I get tired of policemen on the prowl / Picking in my bowel / Every time somebody’s getting high.” “Om Hare Om (Kopala Krishna)” “Nowhere To Go”Ī songwriting collaboration with Bob Dylan, dating back to 1968. This version is the closest we’ve got to a definitive Harrison version, just him and his acoustic guitar, with a bluesy edge. “Sour Milk Sea”Ī great spiritual rocker that he demoed for the White Album-it really should have made the cut instead of “Piggies.” Harrison never released the song himself, choosing to donate it to his old pal Jackie Lomax, who turned it into a U.K. This outtake is more tranquil and serene than the more grand versions on the album. This stately hymn was written back in 1966, but it became the centerpiece of All Things Must Pass, and arguably his greatest solo moment ever. He digs into country blues with “Woman Don’t You Cry For Me.” The original album has never sounded better, with classics like “My Sweet Lord,” “Wah-Wah,” and his benevolently affectionate love song to the Beatles’ girl fans, “Apple Scruffs.” Here’s an exclusive tour of the 10 most revelatory moments on All Things Must Pass: 50th Anniversary Edition. The demos include stripped down versions of “What Is Life (even better than the final album version) and “All Things Must Pass,” with just George and his acoustic guitar. There’s a wonderfully snide outtake of “Isn’t It A Pity” where he sings, “Isn’t it so shitty / Isn’t it a pain / How we do so many takes / And now we’re doing it again.” There’s also an early take on “Beware of Darkness” where he sings “Beware of ABKCO,” a dig at the Beatles’ new management, perhaps already showing a degree of disenchantment with Allen Klein.īut the overall vibe of the music is sheer excitement. “I get tired of being Beatle Ted / Talking to the dead / Every time some bobby’s getting blown.” “I get tired of being Beatle Jeff / Talking to the deaf,” he complains, in his poetic sneer. “Nowhere to Go,” cowritten with his friend Bob Dylan in 1968, lays out his disenchantment with the rock-star hustle.
The demos are full of major songs, many of which would have fit perfectly on the album. They banged out 30 songs that day the next day he did 15 more solo acoustic demos for producer Phil Spector. The first day of demos was George at Abbey Road, backed by two trusted old friends - Ringo on drums and Klaus Voorman on bass. The world was still in shock from Abbey Road, the Beatles’s biggest album yet, where he stole the show with “Something” and “Here Comes The Sun.” As John admitted in NME, “George has got songs he’s been trying to get on our records since 1920.
“I think there may be what you’d term a little bitchiness,” George said diplomatically in an April 1970 radio interview.
In May 1970, when he first cut demos for the album, it was still an open question whether the Beatles were over, and George was the one taking the high road. Even in the tossed-off jams or folkie dirges, you can hear his fierce determination not to get trapped in the past. But this is where he found his voice and took it to an epic scale. It wasn’t his first solo album - he’d already released the synth experiment Electronic Sound and the Wonderwall soundtrack.