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All things must pass
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The Beatles did not just produce music, they also created a sound. George Harrison — through his lush orchestrations and forays into Indian music — was very much a part of this. But the best body of his work came during the last few years of The Beatles. Like Harrison the composer, Harrison the musician flowered somewhat late in the life of the group, writes MUKUND PADMANABHAN.
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The end of an era ... George Harrison in 1963.
I WAS in a London pub when I overheard that John Lennon had died. A group of animated students were discussing his murder. Jolted and eager to know what happened, I turned to the nearest one and asked: "Who killed him?" I will never forget his face as it twisted with a mixture of grief and hate. "Some ass%#$e," he spat out. Our eyes met and there was a moment of perfect understanding, an instant of flawless empathy between two Beatle fans.
I spent the rest of the evening before television, watching his bloodied body, watching Yoko Ono grieve and fighting back tears as countless of grieving fans waved candles to the anthemic strains of "Imagine" and "Give Peace A Chance".
Lennon's death was a shock. But in a way, it was relatively easy to rationalise. Rock musicians, the very best ones at least, have had a way of dying prematurely. Jimi Hendrix departed from an overdose of drugs, Jim Morrison's life was cut short by sheer excess, Freddie Mercury succumbed to AIDS and, more recently, the hugely talented Kurt Cobain killed himself out of a mixture of boredom and despair. They died from very different causes, but there is a certain unity in the way they went. Tragic and horribly premature but also sudden and romantic. In a way, their deaths seemed to reflect their lives ... troubled, reckless, lived to the lees.
George Harrison's death engenders a totally different kind of emotion. Not shock but sadness. Struck down by cancer at 58, he did not die strictly of natural causes or of old age. But his death, unlike Lennon's, provokes not so much as injured rage but a quiet melancholy. You might want to, like Harrison's lead guitar, gently weep. But you also comfort yourself that at the end of the day, to cadge a line from one of his own songs, all things must pass.
Harrison's death reminds me of how the rock icons of my youth have aged. Not very long from now, Paul McCartney — now one of two surviving Beatles — will turn 60. Bob Dylan reached this milestone recently. It is difficult to come to terms with rock stars who grow old (somehow you just expect them to quietly fade away). Dylan has just cut what are possibly two of his best albums since his early glory years, but it is painful to watch his recent music videos on MTV or Channel V in which he appears ungainly, out of place and as wrinkled as a prune. Television is brutal and unkind to yesterday's rock stars. When Crosby Stills Nash and Young had their recent reunion, they looked like a bunch of sad ageing run-of-the-mill hippies and not the hip purveyors of music that blended vocals and acoustic guitars to create such clever and beautifully crafted harmonies.
Every report of Harrison's death took note of the fact that his career in The Beatles was overshadowed by two of his more talented fellow members. Yes, he was not quite Lennon or McCartney — of that there is no argument. Playing the CDs in my daughter's collection only seemed to strengthen the argument that, in terms of composition, his contribution to The Beatles was somewhat slender. Not non-existent, just a tad light when compared to the prodigious talent and output of Lennon-McCartney.
Searching for arguments to justify Harrison's musical genius — could it lie in his introspective self-indulgent "All Things Must Pass" triple album? his latter-day compositions for The Beatles? in those neat tidy guitar riffs? — it struck me that the answer was staring in my face all along. Simply put, he was a member of The Beatles.
Belonging to a great band does not automatically confer greatness. Belonging to The Beatles however does. Not merely because The Beatles were the most famous band in history. Principally because, The Beatles, unlike most other groups, were a striking illustration of the principle of holism.
Holism is the theory that certain wholes must be regarded as greater than the sum of their parts. The Beatles exemplify this. You can't examine or analyse this band in a reductionist way. It was bigger — much, much bigger — than John, Paul, George and Ringo. When the four came together, they created The Beatles not by mere accretion but by miraculous transformation. The process, quite clearly, was alchemical.
Most other groups are shaped and defined around one individual. Mick Jagger was the Rolling Stones, Freddie Mercury was (in more ways than one) Queen, Creedence Clearwater Revival without John Fogerty were a bit of a joke, Police began and ended with Sting and, by Garfunkel's own candid admission, S&G was 98 per cent Paul Simon and two per cent Art Garfunkel.
It was different with The Beatles. The band was simply much greater than the members. To create that special sound, the Fab Four needed each other more than they themselves possibly realised.
Without The Beatles, the odds are that Paul McCartney would have been just another good writer of cute, catchy and clever pop songs. Left to himself, it is difficult to say where John Lennon's wayward and eccentric genius would have taken him — perhaps, nowhere in particular? Extending this line of reasoning, the point is not to assess Harrison's contribution in an isolated reductionist manner but to see it as part of the process that made The Beatles what it was. In a reaction of alchemy, it isn't one or two metals that do the trick but all of them which produce the transformation.
The Beatles didn't merely produce music. They also created a sound and Harrison — through his lush orchestrations and his forays into Indian music — was very much a part of this. But what of his compositions? Clearly, the best body of his work came during the last few years of The Beatles. Frank Sinatra called "Something" the best love song ever written, but I have always preferred the other Harrison track on "Abbey Road" — the simple and ageless "Here Comes The Sun".
The quiet radiance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from "The White Album" is another favourite and, from his earlier days, the acerbic and witty "Taxman" probably didn't receive the credit it deserved. Post-Beatles, the body of his best work was contained in "All Things Must Pass". While his greatest hit, the sentimental "My Sweet Lord" was plagued by plaigarism allegations, some of the tracks — particularly "What Is Life" and "Apple Scruffs" — were truly memorable.
The early Beatles songs were characterised by a strong rhythm section and Harrison's lead guitar was often buried under Lennon's strident resonant instrument.
But as the years went by, the lyricism of his lead — most manifest in the refined slide guitar techniques in the later Beatles albums — broke through and assumed a character of its own. Like Harrison the composer, Harrison the musician flowered somewhat late in the life of The Beatles. Lennon was snatched away. Harrison went because he had to. In that sense, it is not Lennon's but Harrison's death which represents the passing of an era.
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