Solo Beatles single by single thread

This Song was the best Harrison single since Give Me Love. Everything in between was blah IMO so it was great to have an upbeat boogie kind of tune to set your toes tapping. Clever lyrics, sly references to the court case and the boogie-woogie piano all made for the sunniest George record since ....well, Here Comes The Sun. I also thought This Song had a distinct McCartney flavor to it.

 

Jan 31: Gets a perm.

 

That's what threw me off big time the first time I stumbled on this clip. So he's grown a moustache and got the perm. He must have kept this look consistent then at least up until the photos for the George Harrison album. In the Blow Away clip he's back to 'normal hair' George (perhaps he didn't want to scare the duckies) And thanks Klatuufh another Beatle mystery solved for me!!!

 

Did they get the promo for This Song filmed and ready for airing on Saturday Night Live in one week? That's pretty good going. Especially for George

 

Fabulous detail! You wouldn't be Olivia Harrison would you?

 

I still have trouble with the volte-face in George's music between 'Extra Texture' and '33 & 1/3'. It's like after his Apple contract had run out and he started releasing records on his own label, the old George went with it, replaced by a permed-hair doppelganger with a synthesizer and a penchant for writing 'comedy' style songs

Am I just imagining it? Well, I just had a listen to 'Dear One'. While the drone of the verses is quite attractive, the chorus - with it's bobbing synth - is just crying out for some Monty Python lyrics. It just sounds like a comedy song at that point. It's nice that people see this music as being happy and positive (and you can't be serious all of the time, I know), but it just doesn't seem as 'real' to me. Give me 'Simply Shady' or 'World Of Stone' or 'I Don't Care Anymore' any day. Those songs have some gravitas.

And it all started out so promisingly. The material released by the newly ex-Beatles in 1970-1 (OK, maybe just the It Don't Come Easy/Early 1970 single for Ringo) was their most personal and sincere, and right up there with the best music they ever did IMO, with or without that band they used to be in. The solo Beatles peaked very early.

 

No but I wish I had her money I have met her actually. No just a dedicated fan with 40 years of gathering useless facts

 

Yeah, when people put together solo Beatles compilations or fake Beatles albums, they mainly include 1970-1973 songs, often with just a handful of post 1974 songs. I think that shows how people generally rate their solo careers.

But in some ways I prefer their later solo music to the early years. It's underrated, with a lot of hidden gems, and I generally find it more enjoyable than the 1970-1973 music which is just everywhere.

 

...Ouch! Not an entirely inaccurate assessment, though.

Indeed, that "gravitas" sorta went by the wayside in the Dark Horse Years. IMO Hari's songwriting was at it's best when he was being "deep", as it were.

I think part of the reason they peaked early in their solo careers was that they -George, John and Paul, at least- still had a backlog of Beatles-era material to use up. Bit of a higher standard in the songwriting, there, for lack of a better term...once that backlog dried up the quality control began to slip.

That's pretty accurate, at least in part for the reason I just stated, probably. We've all seen (and have no doubt made ourselves) "Beatles" albums from the 1970-73 solo era that put quite a few of the actual Beatles albums in the shade. But, again, a lot of that material used on those fan-made comps was composed pre-breakup, which, again explains the higher quality. I want to say that was one of the main criteria in the huge "Beatles 14th Album" discussion here- you could only use songs they wrote before the breakup.

I can only say that for myself when it comes to McCartney, where my favourite solo period of his is by far 1979 to 1982 (Back To The Egg to Tug Of War, in other words) and Harrison, '75/'76 (Extra Texture and 33 1/3)

 

And yet the most horrible comedy song (in my opinion) of George's was the last song on Extra Texture:

His Name Is Legs (Ladies and Gentlemen)":

 

That song is ruined by Legs' vocals imo.

 

For me, a lot of things ruin that song...

 

Yes, I had this in the back of my mind when I wrote my comments, thinking there might be some comeback with this song. But I still prefer it to 'This Song'.

 

No way is "His Name Is Legs" horrible, it just doesn't fit on the album at all, though I'm damned if I know where it would fit in on Dark Horse, for that matter. It's certainly no worse than "Bip Bop"

As do I.

 

McCartney was pretty consistent although he had his share of clunkers and if anything his later career marked a return to form. We will never know what John could have done, his output in the 70's was patchy like Macca's could be and Double Fantasy was another return to patchy.

As for George and Ringo it is probably co-incidental but the end of Apple seems to have thrown them off a cliff in 1974 and leaving EMI in 1975 just seemed to accelerate them to the bottom. Thankfully George did have a mini renaissance in the late 80's but it all proves one think, those four guys were far greater than the sum of their parts...

 

So you do like 33 1/3

 

Dear One is probably the most atypical song on the album. Not atypical in George's oeuvre, but rather the song that sounds most different amongst the other selections on that particular album. The verse harks back to the vibe of the Material World opuses, but as you identify, the chorus completely defies that with it's synthesiser bounce. From the first time I heard this as a kid, that chorus always sounded like a glitch in the overall consistency of the album. I don't think of this LP as marred by the synths like I do Somewhere or Troppo etc. I think its the electric keys and organ that dominate the sound which I kinda like and sounds consistent. George's guitar breaks are treated more like cream on top or blend in to the overall sound. I lose my George listening mojo a bit after 79. I think when he gets back to being a curmudgeon again on Somewhere, the bite and sense of personal introspective despair in the songs and instrumentation (that were there on the Apple stuff), doesn't jibe in that personal way it did on those albums. I hadn't really thought of it like that until reading your post. I really see what you are saying thinking about it.

 

I think what you are really saying is that instead of releasing This Guitar b/w Maya Love as his follow up to You, George should have released His Name Is Legs b/w Bye Bye Love. Is that what you are saying Arnold. The last Apple 45

 

And do you predict Trump or Clinton?

 

Arnold please don't divert our attention away from the important matters with this small talk.

 

I would agree with you on "We All Stand Together" as it actually is, IIRC, part of the soundtrack of a film for children.

In the case of "Mary..." ... it seemed to be addressed to the record buying public in general and not attached to any specific project (book, film, charity, whatever) and, thus, allowed critics not to necessarily judge it in McCartney's own terms.

 

I actually see it as being the old George coming back, to an extent, at the end of the '70s. In fact, the only GH albums I listen to with any regularity are ATMP, the self-titled one from '79, and Somewhere in England. Like you, though, I'm not a big fan of George's comedy songs. Although to be fair, comedy songs in general can be a bit of a tricky business.

 

One of George's better comedy songs, although the audio and visuals are off a bit in this clip:

 

Another clip with more of the skit before the song:

 

In the age of youtube it's easy to forget that as a UK Beatles fan growing up in the 70's, you pretty much got used to the idea that you never, ever saw one on the telly between the years of 1971-75. So it was with mortified disappointment and disbelief that I picked up a newspaper late one night in December, saw the tv schedules and realised I'd missed a programme "featuring special musical guest George Harrison". No-one I knew at school saw it, there was to be no repeat, video recorders had yet to surface and for years I could only imagine which song he'd performed. Maybe 'You'? Perhaps 'This Guitar"? It would be at least 15 years later when I finally saw the clip on vhs tape and all was revealed...