#368 George Harrison, 'All Things Must Pass' (1970)
Previously #433
Following the breakup of The Beatles, each member raced to release an album of their own. ‘All Things Must Pass’ was the third album to be released following Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and preceding John Lennon by a month. Lennon & McCartney, arguably the greatest songwriting duo of all time, dominated The Beatles’ albums. Usually they’d give George Harrison one, maybe two songs per album, but for the most part, Harrison’s compositions were rejected, especially in the second half of the band’s career. Harrison had displayed his songwriting prowess with songs like ‘Something’ (Frank Sinatra famously erroneously said that this was his favourite Lennon/McCartney song), ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun.’ He had stockpiled enough music for at least three albums by the time the band broke up but instead released a triple album, the second ever triple album following the ‘Woodstock’ Soundtrack.
The result is astounding still to this day. I can listen to this album over and over and over and never get sick of it. Produced by lunatic producer, Phil Spector, the album features the likes of Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Ginger Baker and Klaus Voormann, a character from the band’s early days in Hamburg, on bass, plus so many more. The title track (the lyrics!), ‘Isn’t It A Pity,’ (the production!) ‘Let It Down’ and ‘Hear Me Lord’ were all songs rejected by Lennon/McCartney. Can you imagine those as songs by The Beatles? They would have been incredible, but to be honest, they were probably even more special as solo songs. Harrison co-wrote ‘I’d Have You Anytime’ with Bob Dylan; one of the only co-writes in the latter’s career. He also recorded the Dylan track, ‘If Not For You,’ just a month after Dylan released it. To be honest, without knowing who wrote it, I immediately thought that it sounded like a Bob Dylan song. With 28 songs and clocking in at over 2 hours, usually I might say that it’s unnecessarily long, but to be honest, for me the album only starts to lose steam on disc 3 – the live jam sessions. And even then, I get lost in those jams, I love them. This is a true 5 star album for me and would place in my personal top albums of all time. This is definitely worth 2 hours of your life, especially if you liked Harrison’s compositions with The Beatles. Man, what a record!
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