In 1973 George Harrison was to everyone the Beatle who was coming off the best from the end of the band. He had also become a superstar as a soloist thanks to the triple All Things Must Pass and the Concert for Bangladesh which he promoted. Freed from the Fab Four, had he gotten everything he always wanted? Not exactly. And in fact he changed everything with the forgotten masterpiece Living in the Material Worldpublished 50 years ago, at the end of May 1973, choosing a more minimal approach and signing the most deeply strange work of his career.
Living in the Material World is considered an ugly mess full of sermons. A bit like Ram by Paul McCartney, despised by all for decades, was sidelined until indie hipsters rediscovered it and realized that there was genius in it. The time was evidently ripe.
It’s not one of those records that cheer you up like All Things and that’s exactly the point. All Things is the great spiritual declaration of a former Beatle, Material World it is the work of a confused and embittered man despite his young age. He’s about to turn 30 and, having tasted success, wonders why his life isn’t more fun. All around him he sees betrayals and paranoia. No wonder he rings current in 2023.
Harrison transforms his spiritual crisis into candid, confrontational, contradictory songs. He lines up bad moments on the record, but also wonderful ones. He had never been so shameless: he gets naked like never before, nor since. He may have suffered a severe blow, but let’s look on the bright side: at least he has his wife Pattie Boyd and his best friend Eric Clapton close by. What could possibly go wrong?
George takes a step back from the epic dimension of All Things Must Pass and pulls out a band album, recorded with the second best band I’ve ever had, a handful of trusted mates: Klaus Voorman on bass, Jim Keltner on drums, Nicky Hopkins on piano, Gary Wright on organ. The sound is intimate, on a human scale, with the wonderful simplicity of Be Here Now, Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long and the hit Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth).
For the first time, George also takes on the role of producer, plays the slide and even gets his hands on the sitar again, the instrument that had led him to begin his spiritual journey, but which he hadn’t touched for years. It’s his proto-indie songwriting album. Not surprisingly, the best known cover was done by Elliott Smith with Give Me Love, capturing its melancholy spirit. AND The day the world gets round it has an atmosphere that refers to future Pavement by Wowee Zowee or Brighten the Corners.
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth) is the centerpiece of the disc, one of the most beautiful songs ever written by the four Beatles, before and after the breakup. They are a few very brilliant minutes of genius, there is all of Harrison’s torment, all of his yearning, his disenchantment, his hope. And he expresses them ending up elevating the musicians who accompany him. Has Klaus Voorman ever played bass with this transposition? Has Nicky Hopkins ever played so ecstatically? Has a guitar ever seemed so happy to be in someone’s hands? Harrison had a special bond with Give Me Love. He writes in his autobiography I Me Mine: «It is a prayer and an intimate confession that I share with the Lord and with anyone who wants to hear it».
It’s easy to see why Material World has a bad name: George just can’t put his cosmic bullshit aside. The record is full of pompous preacher shit and cocaine-induced moments of self-righteousness paired with moments of genuine human warmth. Harrison urges fans to be more respectful of the Lord’s feelings, but portrays his own version of God that is very poor, worthy of a housewife of Real Housewives out of pills (“The Lord loves those who love the Lord”: my God, what are you, a 12-year-old?).
Harrison wasn’t doing too well. Moralistic-religious sermons aside, his life was a mess of sex and drugs. He felt betrayed after the work done for Bangladesh. The funds had been embezzled by advisers he trusted who had left him with £1million in taxes to pay. And there was also the endless legal troubles of the Beatles, which inspired Sue Me, Sue You Blues.
And then there was private life. Beloved mum Louise fell ill with cancer around the time the Beatles were crumbling and died in July 1970. She never mentions her name on the record, but the pain of her loss comes through the music, especially in Be Here Now, the piece of a son who, devastated by pain, cries intoning the mantra “it’s not like before”. Just like John in Julia or Paul in Let It Behe too has drawn inspiration for some of his most emotional songs from the despondency of the loss of his mother.
Note: In 1970, the year Harrison’s mother died, they came out Let It Be by the Beatles, the song Mother by Lennon and Sentimental Journey by Ringo Starr, an album of old songs that Elsie Starkey, still alive and in excellent health, liked so much. “I did it for my mom,” the drummer said. Even when they were separating, the four remained brothers in some ways.
Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long it is a gem. Even though George was done with Phil Spector, it’s the most Spectorian thing he’s ever done, a 60s girl-group pop worthy of the Crystals or the Ronettes. Every detail is lovingly cared for: the powerful drums in the refrain, the harpsichord, the castanets alla Be My Baby. George has always been a devoted fan of girl groups. What everyone missed, by the way My Sweet Lordis that the litigation for similarity with He’s So Fine by the Chiffons is not due to chance: Harrison’s faith in the Chiffons was no less strong than his other spiritual convictions, and in fact that is the most sincere love song on the album.
The spirit of Ronnie Spector is also present in Try Some Buy Somea wonderfully bizarre waltz that George had written for Ronnie’s comeback single in 1971. As the singer recounted in her autobiography Be My Baby, said to him: «I don’t understand a word». And he: «It doesn’t matter, neither do I». David Bowie was a big fan of the piece, which he sang in Realityinterpreting it as an allegory of addiction and detoxification.
Reading the title Be Here Now one expects the worst, but the piece, an elegy for Louise Harrison, goes straight to the heart with a text reduced to a minimum. George’s sitar adds an eerie drone effect, but it’s also a song in the typical Southern California style, with that folk-rock vibe a la Blue Jay Way or Long, long, long. She wrote it in the Hollywood Hills and there’s a Neil Young feel to the guitar work.
It makes you smile that Be Here Now became the title of one of the dopeiest rock records ever released, Oasis’ 1997 album that’s to cocaine what Harrison’s is to Krishna. Even more amusing is the fact that Noel Gallagher had the gall to attribute the inspiration for the title to Lennon (George had taken it from Baba Ram Dass’ book), a claim that prompted George to steer clear of any when Paul had his picture taken with Noel. In any case, Noel also titled a big Oasis hit after George’s 1968 soundtrack Wonderwall Music.
Another pop anecdote: George must have liked that the title track Living in the Material World it inspired one of Madonna’s most seminal hits of the 80s, just before he produced his film Shanghai Surprise from 1985. After all, Material Girl she had a very Beatles-esque soul and cheeky wit and the protagonist could very well have been the girlfriend of Drive My Car. Madonna then embarked on a spiritual journey similar to George’s, passing by Material Girl to Ray of Light over 13 years, the same amount of time that George spent between Hamburg and Material World. All things must pass, indeed.
In Material World Harrison confesses that he feels like a prisoner of his own life. “I don’t know what I’m doing here / But I hope to see much clearer.” There’s not a glimmer of hope in his voice, he doesn’t even try to pretend. He swears he’s “trying to get a message across,” even though his only message is that he’s desperately looking for one. And his only human connection is – surprise! – from his old Beatles friends. “Met them all here in the material world / John and Paul here in the material world / Even though we started poor / We took Richie on tour.” There’s something endearing about the way he talks about Ringo using his childhood name Richie, not least because he’s on drums.
The delicious B-side Miss O’Dell it should have been on the album. George gossips about his old friend and Apple employee Chris O’Dell, but then he laughs too much to sing the second verse. In one take, he says ‘Garston 6922’, which was Paul’s old phone number in Liverpool: it was reminiscent of the pure rock’n’roll fun of Apple scruffs or wah waybut it was too light a song for Harrison’s mission.
A year later, Dark Horse marks the end of George’s mystique. We could consider it the worst solo album by a Beatle up to that point: at least the Wedding Albums by John & Yoko can play in the background while washing dishes, while Dark Horse it’s just an alcoholic sarabande of self-pity, moreover recorded when he had bad laryngitis. Since Pattie had left him for Clapton she had also contracted Layla-ite. In public, George has behaved civilly, declaring that “I’d rather you be with him than with an idiot.” Too bad he wasn’t able to create music at the time, as he sadly demonstrated in the highly anticipated 1974 solo tour, which blew away all previously won esteem. Result: Material World has become marginal.
It has been overshadowed by All Things and even hardcore Beatles fans distanced themselves from the record. Robert Christgau summed up the criticisms with his typical wit: “Harrison sings as if he were doing a sitar imitation and four different people, including a little man in my head who I had never noticed before, thanked me when I turned off that damn thing up Be Here Now».
Light and life returned to George’s music after meeting his wife Olivia Arias. In the 70s he wrote some of his best songs: Oooh Baby (You Know That I Love You) on Extra textures, Blow Away And Here Comes the Moon on George Harrison and especially Pure Smokey on Thirty Three & 1/3. When his career took off again in the late ’80s, people were so happy to have found him again that they forgave him and forgot most of the output of the ’70s since All Things Must Pass, unfortunately including a lot of great music. As Living in the Material World, which is full of great moments. It’s worth rediscovering.
From Rolling Stone US.
