GEORGE HARRISON'S LAST
SONGS---TWO ALBUMS' WORTH---ARE MISSING
By Rip Rense
copyright 2020 The Rip Post, Rip Rense, all rights reserved.
Harrison and friends.
(photo: Rex Features) |
George Harrison’s last songs---two albums’
worth of new works with at least basic tracks and vocals complete---are
missing.
The songs, first reported
in 1999 by the late Billboard editor-in-chief Timothy White---and in 2001 by
Harrison---were intended to be finished by Harrison friend and sometime
producer Jeff Lynne.
They are part of a cache
of either 37 or 35 new, never-released Harrison songs, depending on which
interview you read. In a 1999 Billboard interview with White, Harrison
referred to “about 37” new songs, and in a 2001 on-line chat with fans,
Harrison said there were 35 new, unreleased works.
After Harrison’s
posthumous 2002 album, “Brainwashed,” on which twelve new songs were
released, that leaves either 25 or 23 whose fate remains unknown. They are
reportedly lost in the famously messy, jumbled Harrison archive.
One of the lost titles
is “Valentine,” a song described by White in the 1999 Billboard
article as a “potent power ballad that sounds like one of (Harrison’s)
cleverest, hit-destined excursions.” Harrison, in the same article, says
this: “In my music I just sing a rock and roll song about the power of love,
on ‘Valentine’. . .”
Originally marked
for the “Brainwashed” album, “Valentine” was omitted, reportedly because
Harrison's son, Dhani---who co-produced “Brainwashed” with Lynne---preferred other
songs, notably “Old Rocking Chair.” Harrison’s widow, Olivia, has variously
told interviewers that she was unfamiliar with “Valentine,” and that she had
searched for it, but was unable to find it.
Another song was
described in Billboard as a swipe at Harrison’s former
manager Denis O’ Brien, from whom Harrison won an $11 million judgement in
1998. Harrison told White it was "a blistering anthem about social delusions
in a world running down," with the lyrics alternating between scathing and
witty. Other reported titles: “Doing the Bonzo Dog,” written for a Bonzo Dog
Band reunion album that never happened; a Harrison version of “Love’s Got a
Hold on Me,” written by late Traffic co-founder Jim Capaldi (released with a
Capaldi lead vocal in 1997); “Shelter in Your Love,” a leftover track from
the ‘80’s.
In the 18 years since
“Brainwashed” was released, the Harrison Estate has issued: a remastered
Harrison catalogue; an album of demos, “Early Takes,” to coincide with the
Martin Scorsese documentary, Living in the Material World; a
remastered “Traveling Wilburys” (supergroup including Harrison, Bob Dylan,
Tom Petty) box, and most recently, the revival of the entire Dark Horse
catalogue of artists Harrison signed in the ‘70’s.
Yet there has been barely
a mention of Harrison’s own unreleased new songs. The most substantive
acknowledgement came from Olivia Harrison in 2012:
“There is some more
material,” she told the website, Spinner. “There may be a minute of
something he was writing and it will never be finished. I had an idea of
giving unfinished songs to different people – giving one to Paul, maybe, or
giving one to somebody else and saying: ‘Here are the bones of a song, would
you like to finish it?’ I think that would be a nice idea.”
The most recent
reference to the missing songs came in 2016, at the ten-year anniversary
of “The Beatles Love” in Las Vegas, when Olivia told Billboard,
“There are a lot of songs that are unfinished. I think there’s a project
there. I just need time to get to it.”
But time is running low.
Ms. Harrison is now 72. Various of Harrison’s friends who might be enlisted
to complete the songs are older. McCartney is 78 , Ringo Starr is 80,
Keltner is 77, Eric
Clapton is 75 (and has peripheral neuropathy which
inhibits his playing), Elton John and Ron Wood are 73, and many others have
died.
A
Rolling Stone interview with Dhani Harrison about the recently reissued
Dark Horse catalogue briefly raised hopes that the missing songs had been
found:
“We have people digging
through mountains of tapes,” he said, “and they keep coming, boxes and boxes
of them.”
Yet Rolling Stone
reported that “unreleased material and unheard songs” in question were
only from the 1970 “All Things Must Pass” sessions (due for yet
another re-release, the fifth including an on-line version, for the 50th
anniversary this year.) Dhani’s further comments about having “better
versions” of long bootlegged ATMP material only make the absence of
the missing new Harrison songs more conspicuous.
"There's a
tremendous amount of stuff he hadn't finished,” longtime Harrison friend and
drummer Jim Keltner told Launch.com in 2000, “and I put drums on a
tremendous amount of that stuff. Some of the songs I played on were
absolutely wonderful, brilliant. I can't wait to see what he does with them.
I don't know whether he'll have somebody help him produce or what, but I'm
sure he'll come out with something cool."
Harrison, mid-90's. |
Two more albums of new music after his last album, Brainwashed,
lost. |
Longtime
Harrison engineer Ken Scott, author of the memoir, “Abbey Road to Ziggy
Stardust,” described the chaos of the Harrison archive in a 2012 interview
with Record Collector. During the remastering for the 30th
anniversary of ATMP, George charged him with finding all the album's
session tapes:
“I also started to deal
with his tape library and it was a real mess,” Scott said. “It was really
hard to find anything. . .The initial idea was, I was going to be spending a
lot of time helping put together what became the Brainwashed album
and sorting out all his other material. We only got so far with it
and then he got sick and had to leave. And that was it, working with him. I
got to continue finish working on the library and finish up some stuff with
Olivia.”
Later, Beatles
producer Giles Martin, son of original Beatles producer George Martin,
dived into the mess of reels, masters, cassettes, when he was hired to work
on the Scorsese Harrison documentary and accompanying album, yet there were
no reports of discovering Harrison’s final recordings.
Further complicating
matters is the transporting of the existing archive to new buildings on the
Harrison Henley-on-Thames estate, begun by Olivia Harrison in 2017.
It should be surmised
that the missing songs are substantial efforts, given the superior, inspired
quality of the songs on Brainwashed. In fact,
the 25 or 23 remaining songs in question seem to have marked a revival in
Harrison’s creativity toward the end of his life, as Olivia told veteran
Chicago Tribune music writer Greg Kot in 2012:
“He
loved to record, he was always doing more and more demos at night. But
he'd always say, 'I'll never finish them. I'll have to give them to
(producer) Jeff Lynne (to finish).' He knew he was going to be in his garden
in the daytime, so they wouldn't get done. But he was discovering the
singer-songwriter thing again and really doing a lot of recording. He was
just getting to the point of getting some sessions together. Sadly, time ran
out."
Dhani Harrison has not
commented on the missing songs. The 42-year-old Harrison scion, who has had
to shoehorn his own career into the huge task of curating his father’s
legacy---told the San Diego Union Tribune in 2017, on the release of
his first solo album, “In Parallel” that he “worked tirelessly” on his
father’s catalogue, adding, “It took a really long time and it was a labor
of love that I had to do.”
Harrison further remarked
to Rolling Stone that tending his father’s body of work is “a
thankless job---if you get it right, people go, ‘Wow, that’s great,’ and if
you don’t get it beyond what people expect, they go, ‘You’ve buggered up
George Harrison.’”
If Dhani
Harrison is overwhelmed with work, and his own career, couldn’t he
delegate the task to Lynne and others? After all, there is no question that
Harrison regarded the new songs---the last of his life---seriously, was
pleased with them, and wanted them released. As he said to White in 1999:
"I need to get that last
song out of my system. . .Sometimes songwriting is the only way I can
respond to the outside world, to exorcise its demons."
All which calls into
question the priorities of the Harrison Estate, which has done an exemplary
job of maintaining Harrison’s recorded legacy---no doubt an emotionally
wrenching task. Yet it seems fair to ask, shouldn’t top priority have been
given to new songs that Harrison absolutely intended for release?
It seems germane to
remember his macabre quip made during the release of the Beatles reunion
songs, “Free As a Bird,” and “Real Love” in 1995:
"I hope someone does this
to all my crap demos when I'm dead, making them into hit songs.”
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