

Originally only a minute-and-a-half long, the finished song was doubled in post-production under the direction of Phil Spector. And the song that most directly addressed the growing friction within the band. The last song recorded by the Beatles before their 1970 breakup. Released as the lead single from Abbey Road in 1969, the song earned praise from bandmate John Lennon (he called it “the best track on the album”) and Frank Sinatra who deemed it “the greatest love song of the past 50 years.” “Something” was one of Harrison’s best moments as a songwriter in The Beatles, but he was so iffy on the song he gave it to Joe Cocker to record first. This and “Something,” both from Abbey Road, led Ringo Starr to note of his bandmate’s songwriting talent, “It’s interesting that George was coming to the fore and we were just breaking up.” Harrison knocked out one of his most indelible songs in one burst of creativity while walking through his friend Eric Clapton’s garden. He’s joined by members of London’s Asian Music Circle on percussion. And he used that instrument to psychedelic effect on this classic from Sgt.
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That said, he always thought “Learning How to Love You” was just as good as “Something.Harrison supposedly spent eight hours a day studying the sitar during a 1966 visit to India. Harrison acknowledged that most music fans would generally prefer “Something” to anything he recorded as a solo artist-simply because “Something” was a Beatles song. Notice how he accentuates certain notes with Pat Metheny–like finger slides, which offer an acoustic guitarist an alternative way to swoop into notes from below without attempting to bend the instrument’s thick, tight strings the way one would on an electric guitar. The former Beatle shows that he knows how to solo over a fairly complex chord progression as he targets the moving chord tones from change to change and outlines the underlying harmonic movement with lyrical melodic lines. His beautiful and imaginative steel-string solo, which starts at 2:24, dances over the embers of this smoky, jazzy, late-night love song, which Harrison originally wrote for jazz legend Herb Alpert, who requested a song but never actually recorded it. Here’s one from Harrison’s Dark Horse Records debut, Thirty Three & 1/3. Harrison makes good use of an open tuning for his slide melodies-and the stacked major triads that it affords at any given fret-as he plays a lyrical melody that outlines the chord tones, swooping into them from below and letting notes at the same fret ring together on adjacent strings. In this angry-sounding solo, which starts at :49, he uses his slide to achieve a piercing, sustained, “singing” tone with plenty of bite.

Harrison wasn’t a shredder by any means the magic resides in his note choices, structure, phrasing and emotional delivery-a trait he shared with David Gilmour and, to a lesser extent, B.B. Harrison’s playing can be heard on several Imagine tracks, including “Oh My Love,” “I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier” and “How Do You Sleep?” He even plays a mean resonator on “Crippled Inside.” But there’s just something downright chilling about his slide work on “Gimme Some Truth,” a song the Beatles toyed with briefly during the Let It Be sessions. Lennon’s successful Imagine album marks one of the only times he recorded with Harrison after the breakup of the Fab Four (the pair also backed Ringo Starr on “I’m the Greatest” in 1973). Reprising his intro lick a whole step higher, now in F# and with a brighter, bridge-pickup tone, Harrison outlines his chord progression with a bold, slippery melody based on major, minor and diminished-seven arpeggios, the latter harmonized in thirds below the melody via an overdubbed second lead guitar. And while its gorgeous twin-slide motif and majestic, gripping solo might not be the most technically challenging things Harrison ever recorded, they boldly announced the arrival of “George Harrison: slide guitarist.” They also helped draw a set of blueprints that’s been used by other artists, including America ( “Sister Golden Hair”), Todd Rundgren ( “I Saw the Light”), Eric Carmen ( “All by Myself”) and Teenage Fanclub ( “The Cabbage”).ĭuring the solo (at 2:47), Harrison’s intonation and muting tidiness (very important when playing slide in standard tuning) are impeccable. Treasures abound at every turn, including “My Sweet Lord,” the album’s lead-off single. The album, considered one of the greatest releases in “solo Beatles” history, is packed with songs the guitarist had been stashing away since 1966, including a few that didn’t make it onto Beatles albums. Harrison, a junior songwriting partner to John Lennon and Paul McCartney for way too long, emerged from his bandmates’ colossal shadows with a masterpiece. All Things Must Pass caused a sonic boom when it was released in late 1970.
