Here Comes Something

Although fans regard George Harrison's White Album songs as his best work in the Beatles, his Abbey Road songs are undoubtedly his most popular work with the group.

The first of these songs, "Something," was actually written during the White Album sessions.  George did a run-through of "Something" while the studio was being set up to record his song "Piggies," and co-producer Chris Thomas liked "Something" so much that he suggested to George that the Beatles record that instead, ensuring him that it was worthy of release.  A nonchalant George said that maybe he'd give it to Jackie Lomax, the singer he'd discovered for Apple, for a single. 

Apple had even made a bigger discovery in the form of American singer-songwriter James Taylor, who was signed by Apple A&R man Peter Asher (brother of Jane, partner of Gordon), and George had a good reason not to want to give "Something" to him.  Because one of James Taylor's songs inspired it!

Taylor recorded a song for his Apple album called "Something In the Way She Moves," and George was moved to write a similar song.  Both songs start with the same lyric - the title of the Taylor song - but apart from the sentiment of having a woman by one's side, the resemblance between the two songs ends there.  "Something In the Way She Moves" has an entirely different set of verses and a different chorus, and as recorded in 1968, it's a brittle, sparse song that opens with a harpsichord.  (Most listeners are more familiar with the more relaxed, re-recorded version that appeared on Taylor's 1976 greatest-hits compilation, his first album having been out of print throughout the seventies for legal reasons.)  "Something," the George Harrison song, was recorded by the Beatles as a lush power ballad, anchored by Paul McCartney's bass and Ringo Starr's tumbling drums, with an understated guitar solo and a similar low-keyed piano line from John Lennon backed by a string arrangement from George Martin.  Despite taking a line from James Taylor - who left Apple with Peter Asher, his manager and producer, after Asher was fired by Allen Klein from the label - George said he was trying to write a soulful ballad in the style of Ray Charles, and the feel is indeed far more soulful than the more folkish leanings of Taylor's song.

Little did George know that the song would define his time with the Beatles forever.  The group hadn't planned a single to accompany Abbey Road, and so when Allen Klein decided that a corresponding single was needed, he instigated the release of "Something" as a 45.  It was released as a single in the United States on October 6, 1969, five days after the American release of Abbey Road, and it was released as a single in Great Britain on October 31 of that year - more than a month after Abbey Road's September 26 British release.  Thus, "Something" is the only Beatles single in either country issued from an already issued album.  But it was also the first and only Beatles single written by George, which was long overdue.  George was surprisingly as nonchalant about such a milestone as he'd been about the song itself.  "They blessed me with a couple of B-sides," he said at the time, "but this is the first time I've had an A-side.  Big deal!"

It was indeed.  It was a big hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and while it only made number four in Britain - understandable, since record buyers in Britain usually bought singles and albums, while Americans tended to buy either singles or albums - it hit number one in the U.S., meaning that even casual record buyers who didn't invest much in LPs wanted this song in their collections.  In fact, "Something" became the Beatles' third bestselling single in America, after "Hey Jude" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand." Frank Sinatra (below, in 1969) called "Something" "the greatest love song in fifty years, and he recorded it and performed it in concert.  He once told his audience that the song was indicative of Lennon and McCartney's songwriting genius . . . inadvertently yet perfectly summing up George's role in the Beatles. :-D

The crediting error notwithstanding, one must wonder what song from 1919 that Sinatra - who released an album of Rod McKuen songs in 1969 - must have been thinking of, and why Lennon and McCartney couldn't match it.  As for George's attitude toward John and Paul for being dismissive of his work, he told them, "Maybe now I just don't care whether you like 'em or not, I just do 'em."

And what he did was not just admired by Sinatra but by Joe Cocker, who was the first artiste to record "Something" - before the Beatles! - for his second album, though it came out after Abbey Road.  George in fact played guitar on Cocker's recording.  (For the record, Jackie Lomax never recorded "Something," as George once envisioned.)  Other cover versions came from James Brown, Shirley Bassey, and, I kid you not, Ray Stevens.

But that wasn't all.

"Here Comes the Sun" was George's other contribution to Abbey Road, written in the spring of 1969 when he chose to spend the day in Eric Clapton's garden rather than go to a business meeting at Apple.  It was the first really warm day since the end of winter, and George found bright optimism in the change of seasons.  Clapton's garden inspired a song that felt as warm and inviting as the sun itself, with a light folk melody anchored by time signatures inspired by Indian music.  The Beatles' recording - for which John was absent - centered around George's inviting acoustic guitar line, augmented by the enveloping comfort of the sound his Moog synthesizer.  It's the sound of renewal, the sonic equivalent of a bright ray of light piercing the fading winter clouds.  The Moog, together with George Martin's score, is a potent symbol of spring having spring again.

Not too many songs encapsulate the mere pleasure of sitting in a garden, though Stephen Stills' Manassas song "Johnny's Garden" (inspired by a garden on an English estate he'd bought, Johnny being the gardener) is right up there with "Here Comes the Sun."  The Beatles' original recording of this song could have easily been released as a single in Britain and America as a follow-up to "Something."  It never was (though it appeared as the B-side to "Oh! Darling," another Abbey Road track, in Japan), but the song would find success on singles charts in the form of covers.  Steve Harley and his group Cockney Rebel released their version of "Here Comes the Sun" as a single in 1976, and that record went to number ten in Britain.  In America, though, Richie Havens' 1971 version of "Here Comes the Sun," which made it up to number sixteen on the Billboard singles chart, is the definitive cover.  Here is a clip of Havens performing the song on the German pop show "Beat-Club" in 1971.

As Beatles author Chris Ingham noted, George's song struck a chord with many black American performers who, having come out of the civil rights struggle, expected better times to come, which is why Nina Simone covered "Here Comes the Sun" a year after Havens did; they saw the song as a metaphor for their optimism.  As for this version, Ingham wrote, "This elated, upbeat campfire arrangement for acoustic guitar, pedal steel and bongos captures the Woodstock vibe Havens was famous for."

Maybe if John Lennon and Paul McCartney had taken George as seriously as Frank Sinatra, Joe Cocker, Nina Simone, and Richie Havens all did, the Beatles might have stayed together into the 1970s and made some fine records matching if not exceeding Abbey Road.  But in the fall of 1969, it was already too late for that.