Nowadays, no one can deny that George Harrison is one of the best songwriters of his generation. But it wasn’t always like that. While Harrison was always a talented musician, it took him a while to get comfortable enough in his writing abilities to actually bring his songs to The Beatles. He was the youngest in the band, not by much, but the Fab Four had met when they were teenagers, and two years could be a big difference at those ages.
In The Beatles: Get Back, they can be seen joking about Harrison being “the baby” of the band, and this put him at a disadvantage when it came to getting his songs included in Beatles albums. His first solo album is the clearest example of that. A lot of the songs included, many of which turned out to be huge hits, were songs that the band had previously rejected. Here’s how George Harrison became one of the greatest songwriters in history.
George Harrison Wasn’t Initially a Songwriter
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When The Beatles started, George Harrison, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney were only teenagers. Lennon was 17, McCartney was 15, and Harrison was 14. From the start, the dynamic was set in stone: Lennon was the oldest and the leader. McCartney, who co-wrote all the songs with Lennon, was his second in command, and Harrison was relegated to playing guitar and adhering to the decisions of the other two. When The Beatles rose to fame in the early ’60s, all of their original songs were credited to Lennon and McCartney. It wasn’t until their second album, With The Beatles, that a song written by him was included. The song was “Don’t Bother Me,” and for the next few albums, he only sang songs written by either his bandmates or other artists. Then, for their fifth album, Help!, he wrote two songs, “I Need You” and “You Like Me Too Much.” He was slowly starting to grow as a songwriter, but compared to Lennon and McCartney, he still had a lot to learn.
In The Beatles Anthologyhe opened up about how difficult it was for him to assert himself as a songwriter, and that Paul McCartney and John Lennon had written all of their “bad songs” long before the band had a record contract, so they were already experts by the time they had to record. Moreover, they had each other. Lennon-McCartney wasn’t just a songwriting duo, it was a legal partnership they had set up when they were very young. In the Anthology, McCartney admitted that a conversation between him and Lennon took place when they discussed setting up the partnership, and briefly discussed making it Lennon-McCartney-Harrison, but ultimately made the choice to keep it just the two of them.
It wasn’t easy, but Harrison was talented, he just needed to get his “bad songs” out of the way. He was making great progress by the time The Beatles recorded Rubber Soul in 1965, and when they recorded Revolver the following year, he wrote three songs for it, including “Taxman,” the opening track. These songs were one of the reasons McCartney considered Revolver the best Beatles album.
George Harrison Was the First Beatle to Have a No. 1 Solo Album
All Things Must Pass was George Harrison’s first solo album after the breakup of The Beatles. It was released in 1971, and it was a triple album. The reason it was so long was that he finally got to release all the songs he’d been writing for all the years he’d been in The Beatles. In Get Back, there’s a conversation between him and Lennon, where Harrison tells him he’s already written enough songs for his quota for the next several Beatles albums, and asks for Lennon’s advice on whether he should use them for a solo album. Lennon seemed to think it was a good idea. Of course, he didn’t need to start any side projects, as the band broke up soon after that conversation took place, but he clearly had enough material saved. The title track, “All Things Must Pass”, was a huge hit, and he had actually brought it to the band during the Let It Be recording sessions, but The Beatles had passed on it.
When the record came out in late 1970, it left the world in shock. It proved beyond any doubt that Harrison’s talent extended beyond The Beatles. It got to No. 1 in the United States and the United Kingdom, making him the first ex-Beatle to get a No. 1. “My Sweet Lord” was also the first single by an ex-Beatle to top the charts. The album, by Harrison’s own admission, was a daunting endeavor. The opening track, “I’d Have You Anytime,” is a moving love song to his best friend, Bob Dylan, and he enlisted his help, as well as his close friend Eric Clapton’s, to record it, which he said made the prospect of releasing a solo album less intimidating.
He had no reason to worry, however. The album was a huge success, and consolidated him as a solo artist and songwriter. He went on to have an incredibly successful solo career, right until his passing in 2001, and even his last, posthumous album, Brainwashed, was a huge success.
