Favourite George Harrison Songs

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Haristar, Sep 19, 2014.

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  1. lightbulb

    lightbulb Not the Brightest of the Bunch

    Location:
    Smogville CA USA
    Lately I've noticed that some of his songs have been "sneaking up on me", even after knowing them for years...
    But now, when hearing them at the right time and place, they really hit the right "chord"...in no particular order:

    Behind That Locked Door
    What Is Life
    Isn't It A Pity
    Don't Make Me Wait Too Long
    Awaiting on You All
    Crackerbox Palace
    Wah Wah
    Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)
    All Things Must Pass
    Ski-ing
    Cowboy Music

    Yes, heavy on ATMP...
     
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  2. Blue Cactus

    Blue Cactus Forum Resident

    Location:
    Illinois
    What Is Life
    Run Of The Mill
    Isn't It A Pity (version 1)
    Beware Of Darkness
    Bangladesh (live version)
    Deep Blue
    Far East Man
    Dark Horse
    This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)
    Learning How To Love You
    Pure Smokey
    Soft Hearted Hana
    Dark Sweet Lady
    Devil's Radio
     
  3. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    Sticking with songs from his solo career:

    1. What Is Life
    2. This Is Love
    3. Blow Away
    4. Faster
    5. Handle with Care
    6. Crackerbox Palace
    7. My Sweet Lord
    8. You
    9. Bangla-Desh (Live)
    10. When We Was Fab

    From the Beatle years:

    1. Here Comes the Sun
    2. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
    3. Something
    4. I Need You
    5. Long, Long, Long
    6. If I Needed Someone
    7. You Like Me Too Much
    8. Think for Yourself
    9. Taxman
    10. I Want to Tell You
     
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  4. She is anyway

    She is anyway Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Minnesota, USA
    Yes. I'll take...

    The record player's broken on the floor
    And Ben, he can't restore it
    Won't you call me, Miss O'Dell?


    …over…

    The thoughts in their heads manifest on their brow
    Like bad scars from ill feeling
    They themselves arouse

    …any day.

    Plus it's got such a catchy little tune, which I believe he wrote all by himself. :whistle:
     
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  5. badsneakers

    badsneakers Well-Known Member

    Location:
    United Kingdom
    Beatles - Savoy Truffle
    Solo - My Sweet Lord
     
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  6. BlueJay

    BlueJay Forum Resident

    I've often claimed that "Love Comes to Everyone" is my favorite Harrisong. I like Eric Clapton's cover of it too. Another favorite is "Mystical One".
     
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  7. brainwashed

    brainwashed Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Boston, MA
    I LOVE this list. P2 Vatican Blues is an OUTSTANDING track from Brainwashed... perhaps my favorite from the album. The only track i'd substitute would be Save The World (which I like a lot) with Run Of The Mill (one of my absolute favorite Beatles-related tunes). Ron
     
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  8. theMess

    theMess Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, UK
    I agree; P2 Vatican Blues is very strong (although I could say that about the Brainwashed album as a whole), and it is definitely one of George's strongest ever solo songs, despite the very strong competition.

    I also agree with regards to Run Of The Mill, which has really grown on me recently. I never used to rate it as highly as songs like My Sweet Lord, What Is Life, Art Of Dying, Isn't It A Pity, etc, until I heard the absolutely wonderful acoustic version on Early Takes. I noticed the lyrics for the first time, and it completely changed my views on the song. They show how much he really did care about his friendships with Paul and John, and how sad he was at the situation they were in during 1969/70. Now both the ATMP and Early Takes versions are absolute favourites of mine.
     
  9. brainwashed

    brainwashed Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Boston, MA
    George commented on Run Of The Mill in his I Me Mine book. Saying that it was the first song he wrote as a poem, then set it to music. The melody is just as lovely as the words. The outtakes on the various ATMP bootlegs are outstanding as well. Ron
     
  10. theMess

    theMess Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, UK
    Thanks, I did not know that. In a way, it makes the lyrics seem even sadder.
     
  11. bewareofchairs

    bewareofchairs Forum Resident

    To be honest, for almost every song on ATMP, I love them because of Beware of ABKCO and Early Takes. George's emotional vocals with those lyrics is magical.

    Peter Doggett wrote a great analysis of Run of the Mill:

    George Harrison: Living in the Material World is the title of Martin Scorsese’s epic documentary about the life, music and beliefs of the Beatle who was my original favourite of the group (at the age of six, for no rational reason I can recall). When I became seriously interested in pop, it was October 1970, and the British pop weeklies were full of chatter about George’s forthcoming album, All Things Must Pass.

    For reasons that I’ve explained elsewhere on this blog, I had accidentally become infatuated (for life) with the Beatles a few weeks earlier. With the zeal of the fresh convert, I was eagerly awaiting new music from any (or preferably all) of the Fab Four. One afternoon, I came home from school to listen to Radio 1, the BBC’s three-year-old pop channel, and was granted a sneak preview of George’s work. As soon as his name was announced, I pushed the ‘record’ button on my father’s ancient reel-to-reel tape recorder, which was connected up to our equally ancient radiogram. So I had plenty of time over the next few months to replay and appreciate the magic of what I heard: ‘Run Of The Mill’.

    It was the guitars that pulled me in: that gorgeous, tumbling motif that bookended the song - which was, as I would soon discover when I tried to reproduce it myself, very deceptively simple. Then the voice: somewhere on the emotional spectrum between ‘beautifully pained’ and ‘poignantly sympathetic’, not the carefree joi de vivre that Paul McCartney would try to maintain, or the naked savagery of John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band roar. And the melody, with that subtle elegance and beauty that would become the hallmark of George’s best solo work.

    What didn’t really touch me for years, though, were the words. That was partly because it wasn’t that easy to make them out beneath George’s double-tracked Scouse slur, and partly because the tune was so pretty that I didn’t bother to listen. It must have been twenty years or so later that I heard the song one day and suddenly clicked: “He’s writing about the Beatles!”

    At which point the whole thing made sense. In ‘Run Of The Mill’, George wasn’t writing about the Beatles as an institution, but about his relationship with one particular Beatle (or maybe two of them, swapping the role of target in every other line). This wasn’t the open sadness of Ringo’s ‘Early 1970’, or the sly sniping of Paul’s ‘Too Many People’, or the outright viciousness of John’s ‘How Do You Sleep’. Nor was it the shocking dismissal of Lennon’s own verdict in late 1970: “I don’t believe in Beatles”. No, this was one human being very openly confronting the decline in his relationship with another human being who was still very dear to him, but who he feared was destined to slip out of his life altogether.

    The most poignant lines in the song are these: “As the days stand up on end, you’ve got me wondering how I lost your friendship, but I see it in your eyes”. What’s gone wrong between these two men? The clue is in the early part of the same verse, where George says that tomorrow will bring “another day for you to realise me” (in other words, to realise exactly who I am) “or send me down again” (by ignoring me). Which takes us back to January 1969, when George unveiled a series of new songs for John and Paul, and they did their best to ignore them.

    So which of these two old friends was the target of ‘Run Of The Mill’. Ultimately, as George sings, “it’s you who decides”: both Lennon and McCartney had undervalued and squashed Harrison as a creative force in the final years of the Beatles. But my guess is that it’s Paul who George had in mind - simply because George put so much faith in the reality of his relationship with John (as his comments in the Beatles’ Anthology book proved) that he couldn’t bear, at least in 1970, to consider for a second that he might have lost Lennon’s friendship. He found it easier, in emotional terms, to blame Paul - the boy who’d been a year older than him at school, who had suggested he should audition for the Beatles, and who had chosen to lecture him about his guitar-playing in front of a camera crew during those January 1969 sessions.

    And the title? It was only when I was writing You Never Give Me Your Money that it struck me where it had come from. There is nothing in the song about anything being “run of the mill”. But my guess is that one of the other Beatles, at some stage in the 60s, slagged off a new Harrison song by telling him that it wasn’t good enough to record, it was only run of the mill. It’s the kind of comment that trips out of people’s mouths in a second, and which they never consider the consequences of; and which the recipient remembers for the rest of their lives.
     
  12. andy749

    andy749 Senior Member

    Devils Radio
    Sue Me Sue You Blues
    What Is Life
    Here Comes the Moon
    I'd Have You Any Time
    Beware Of Darkness
    When We Was Fab
    Handle Me With Care
    Crackerbox Palace
    This Song
    Far East Man w/Ron Wood
    Don't Make Me Wait Too Long
     
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  13. theMess

    theMess Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, UK
    Thanks for posting. I fully agree with Dogett on this, he has described it very well. I also agree that the title probably came from something Paul or (most likely) John said to George when dismissing one of his songs during the Get Back sessions.
     
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  14. Haristar

    Haristar Apollo C. Vermouth Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    Although George seemed to be the one who was most fed up with the Beatles throughout the 70's and 80's, he by far has the most songs written about the Beatles, their legacy, or his fall-out with John and Paul... There's I Me Mine, Wah-Wah, Isn't it a Pity, Run of the Mill, Living in the Material World, and Not Guilty, just to name a few. While George was the Beatle who seemed most willing to leave and start his own solo career, he had a hard time just dealing with the Beatles legacy and its consequences in the first place.
     
  15. bewareofchairs

    bewareofchairs Forum Resident

    I feel like The Answer's At the End is a sort of sequel to Run of the Mill as well, since George often mentioned the "Scan not a friend" quote in reference to Paul and that was around the time they started to repair their relationship.

    Not to veer off-topic, but there was also an unfinished song George wrote sometime around 1966/1967 (edit: although Hunter Davies seems to think it could be earlier than that) which is believed to be about John:

    I’m happy to say that it’s only a
    dream -
    when I come across people like you.
    It’s only a dream and you make it
    obscene
    with the things that you think and
    you do.
    You’re so unaware of the pain that
    I bear
    and jealous for what you can’t do
    there’s times when I feel that you
    haven’t a hope
    but I also know that isn’t true -

    Hunter Davies wrote an article about it in the Guardian in 2009:

    Basically, regardless of what was said over the years, I get the impression that George cared deeply about his relationships with Paul and John, and that they meant a great deal to him (Ringo too of course). They always seemed to be in the back of his mind.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2014
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  16. theMess

    theMess Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, UK
    Yes, I am also sure that The Answer's At The End is the sequel to Run Of The Mill, because of the quote that you mention. I don't think that George always followed the advice to 'Scan not a friend', with regards to Paul, but at least he tried, and I am sure that he always loved Paul and John, even when they were arguing. If he didn't, he wouldn't spend so much time thinking about them and writing about his relationships with them.

    It is a shame that George never finished those lyrics, they could have made a great song.
     
  17. ralph7109

    ralph7109 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Franklin, TN
    Run of the Mill
    Beware of Darkness
    Let it Roll
    Isn't it a Pity?
    Give Me Love
    Dark Horse (clean vocals)
    Woman Don't You Cry for Me
    Love Comes to Everyone
    Blow Away
    If You Believe
    Flying Hour
    Wake Up My Love
    This is Love
    Cloud Nine
    Cheer Down
    Stuck Inside a Cloud
    Any Road

    Too Many?
    Not Enough
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2014
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  18. Haristar

    Haristar Apollo C. Vermouth Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    George was also contemplating leaving the Beatles as early as 1966, as shown in the original lyrics of Art of Dying originating from that time:

    There'll come a time when all of us must leave here
    Then nothing Mr. Epstein can do
    Will keep me here with you
     
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  19. Peter Pyle

    Peter Pyle Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ontario CAN
    Not Guilty
    All Those Years Ago
    All Things Must Pass
    My Sweet Lord
    Fish On The Sand
    Blow Away

    Man, tough to choose! There's quite a few more....
     
  20. Tord

    Tord Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kungsbacka, Sweden
    In no particular order:

    My Sweet Lord
    Isn't It A Pity
    Art of Dying
    I Dig Love
    When We Was Fab
    All Those Years Ago
    I Live For You
    Cheer Down
    Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)
    Rising Sun
     
  21. Haristar

    Haristar Apollo C. Vermouth Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    I don't think I've seen anyone mention Brainwashed yet. It's great little (or actually fairly long) song, in the same kind of dark style as Horse to the Water.
     
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  22. ralph7109

    ralph7109 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Franklin, TN
    I should have - love the Indian interlude in the middle.
     
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  23. JimC

    JimC Senior Member

    Location:
    Illinois
    Top 10:
    When We Was Fab
    Handle With Care
    Run of the Mill
    Stuck Inside a Cloud
    Be Here Now
    Your Love is Forever
    Pisces Fish
    Crackerbox Palace
    All Things Must Pass
    This Guitar

    On the Verge:
    Beautiful Girl
    Blow Away
    Rising Sun
    This Song
    Faster
    Miss O'Dell
    Mo
     
  24. Tord

    Tord Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kungsbacka, Sweden
    Beatles songs:

    1. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
    2. Taxman
    3. Think for Yourself
    4. I Me Mine
    5. Something
    6. Piggies
    7. Don't Bother Me
    8. Here Comes the Sun
    9. Old Brown Shoe
    10.If I Needed Someone
     
  25. mmars982

    mmars982 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pittsburgh, PA
    I had that on my list, but it got cut to bring it down to ten. Might've been #12 for me.

    Horse to Water is a great song too.
     
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