The Beatles changed the face of pop music almost instantly with the release of early singles like ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please Please Me‘. It was after laying the ground before their 1963 debut album named after the latter.
With the smell of international success in their nostrils, the Fab Four wasted no time in launching their second album. The album was With the Beatles, which was released at the end of 1963. The album featured George Harrison’s first solo songwriting submission, ‘Don’t Bother Me‘. It prepared the band well for their first visit to the United States in February 1964.
The Beatles’ early work was undeniably revolutionary in terms of mass appeal and global dominance. But the artistic renaissance came a few years later. Between 1965 and 1966, Rubber Soul and Revolver experienced a transformation as a result of the burgeoning hippie movement. The work of Bob Dylan and Beat Generation writers influenced the replacement of simple love songs with yellow submarines and a strange woman who keeps her face in a jar by the door.
With the release of Revolver, the Beatles truly ushered in the psychedelic era. Moreover, they embrace avant-garde recording techniques in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and invite Eastern cultural influences in ‘Love You To‘.
“Where to next?” One might have heard the foursome exclaim as they entered the studio to record a worthy follow-up. As we all know, the band decided to rebrand themselves as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, complete with colorful costumes. People regard The Beatles’ psychedelic masterpiece as the accompanying album from 1967. And some consider it to be the greatest album of all time.
Unfortunately, the album had some notable detractors. Take George Harrison as an example. “I felt we were just in the studio to make the next record. Paul was going on about this idea of some fictitious band,” Harrison said in The Beatles: Anthology. That aspect didn’t particularly interest me. ” It was becoming difficult for me because I was not really into it. Previously, we recorded as a band, learning the songs and performing them. Sgt. Pepper did things slightly differently than in any other album.
George Harrison continued, “A lot of the time, it ended up with just Paul playing the piano, and Ringo keeping the tempo. They didn’t allow the band to play together very much.” The process of assembling small parts and overdubbing became tedious and monotonous for me. I had just returned from India, and my heart was still there…Traveling to India has greatly expanded my perspective… I found it difficult to rejoin the sessions after the group removed me. It was a job that I didn’t want to do, and I was losing interest in being ‘fab‘ at the time.”
In Peter Jackson’s popular 2021 fly-on-the-wall documentary “ The Beatles: Get Back,” it became clear that by 1969, Harrison was dissatisfied with Paul McCartney’s growing control over the band’s direction. However, it appears that someone sowed the seeds of dissatisfaction many years ago.
George Harrison ultimately contributed only one track to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the sitar-laden ‘Within You Without You’. “There’s about half the tracks I like. And the other half I can’t stand,” Harrison told Entertainment Weekly in 1987. “I like the majority of side one, especially ‘A Day in the Life’. And I even like the little Indian one I made, which is strange and unique. But there’s a lot of them on there — ‘Fixing a Hole’ and ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ — which to me are just average.”
Harrison’s heart was set on creating inspired music influenced by the band’s time in India. It’s no surprise that he loved ‘Within You Without You‘ and the wonderfully original ‘A Day in the Life‘. It’s worth noting, though, that the two songs he didn’t like were both McCartney compositions. Harrison was opposed to his bandmate’s trite pop sensibilities.
