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All Things Must Pass From Wikipedia.
All Things Must Pass Studio album by George
Harrison
Released 27 November 1970, 22 January 2001
(remaster)
Recorded 26 May 1970 – September 1970
George Harrison and Phil Spector
All Things Must Pass is a triple album
by George Harrison recorded and released after the break-up of
The Beatles. The first triple album by a solo artist, the original
vinyl release featured two records of rock songs, while the third,
entitled "Apple Jam" was composed of informal jams led by Harrison
with musician friends and other famous musicians.
The outpouring of the wealth of material
on All Things Must Pass took many critics by surprise, with Harrison
having long been overshadowed by the talents of John Lennon and
Paul McCartney, despite the fact that some of his later period
Beatles inclusions ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Something,"
and "Here Comes the Sun") were hailed as highlights of their respective
albums. Consequently, as Harrison had only placed just a few songs
on any given Beatles album, he had amassed many compositions by
their break-up, enabling him to offload many of them in one go
on All Things Must Pass.
Harrison had been accumulating the songs
he recorded for the album as far back as 1966; both "The Art of
Dying"[2] and "Isn't It a Pity"[3] date from that year. In bootlegged
conversation from the Get Back sessions, Harrison revealed that
John had rejected "Isn't It a Pity" three years before, and that
he (Harrison) had considered offering the song to Frank Sinatra.
Harrison picked up several more songs in late 1968 while visiting
Bob Dylan and The Band in Woodstock, New York. He and Dylan co-wrote
"I'd Have You Anytime" and "Nowhere to Go" (also known as "When
Everybody Comes to Town") at this time, and Dylan showed him "I
Don't Want to Do It." All three songs
were attempted at some point in the sessions for All Things Must
Pass, but only "I'd Have You Anytime" made the album.
The January 1969 "Get Back" sessions saw
early appearances of several other songs that would be considered
for All Things Must Pass, including the title track, "Hear Me
Lord", "Isn't It a Pity", "Let It Down", and "Window, Window",
but nothing came of them at the time. The tense atmosphere fueled
another song, "Wah-Wah", which Harrison wrote in the wake of his
temporary departure from the band.
He began writing "My Sweet Lord" while
touring with Delaney & Bonnie in late 1969, and would later utilize
their backing group "Friends" as an important part of the All
Things Must Pass sound. He made one last detour before beginning
work on All Things Must Pass, visiting Dylan while the latter
was starting sessions for New Morning in May 1970, learning "If
Not For You" and participating in a now-bootlegged session.
Recording sessions Recorded from May to
August 1970 at Abbey Road Studios, and then further recording
and mixing at Trident Studios from August to September 1970, Harrison
enlisted the aid of Phil Spector to co-produce the album, giving
All Things Must Pass a heavy and reverb-oriented sound, typical
for a 1960s/1970s Spector production — but a sound Harrison would
subsequently regret with the passage of time. In the EPK that
accompanies the 30th Anniversary reissue George is asked what
he thinks of the album now thirty years later and he says, "...too
much echo."
In late May 1970, before recording the
album, Harrison sat in a studio with Spector and ran through fifteen
songs on guitar, with occasional support from an unknown bass
player. These demos (eventually bootlegged as Beware of ABKCO!
due to an altered line in his performance of "Beware of Darkness")
showed him in the process of weighing his material, as eight of
the songs would be either substantially reworked or not appear
on the finished album.
Among these early outtakes, three have
been officially released in one form or another: "Everybody, Nobody"
was an early version of "The Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp", "Beautiful
Girl" would be finished for Thirty Three & 1/3, and "I Don't Want
to Do It" would wait fifteen years until being revisited for the
soundtrack of Porky's Revenge. Five other songs, "Cosmic Empire",
"Mother Divine", "Nowhere to Go," "Tell Me What Has Happened With
You," and "Window, Window", have not seen official release.
Two demos of songs that did make the album,
"Beware of Darkness" and "Let It Down" (with overdubs from 2000),
would eventually be released on the remastered All Things Must
Pass. Full discs of electric outtakes from the recording sessions
would also leak on bootlegs in later years, and some of those
tracks were also included in the remaster. Multiple takes of songs
from the album appear on a bootleg three-disc box set The Making
of All Things Must Pass along with other releases.
The album features the talents of Ringo
Starr, members of Badfinger, Eric Clapton and the other members
of Derek and the Dominoes, future Yes drummer Alan White, Billy
Preston and a young, pre-Genesis Phil Collins.
Bob Dylan, a close friend of Harrison's,
co-wrote "I'd Have You Anytime" with him, while Harrison covered
Dylan's "If Not For You", which had been recently released on
Dylan's New Morning album.
Alan White stated that John Lennon played
on "If Not For You."
Reaction and aftermath All Things Must
Pass' lead single was "My Sweet Lord", which proved an enormously
popular recording, reaching #1 worldwide, and earned Harrison
a copyright infringement suit from the publishers of The Chiffons's
1963 hit "He's So Fine" — a grievance that would not be settled
for years.
A judge later found that Harrison had unintentionally
copied the earlier song; this prompted Harrison to later write
"This Song". He also bought the publishing rights to "He's So
Fine" to prevent future suits. The album itself reached #1 in
the UK for eight weeks, and spent seven weeks at the top in the
U.S., where it was certified six times platinum, making All Things
Must Pass Harrison's most commercially successful and generally
best-loved album. Anglo-Australian pop singer Olivia Newton-John's
cover of Harrison's "What Is Life" reached the UK top twenty in
1972. (The year before, she reached the top ten with a cover of
Dylan's "If Not For You", arranged similarly to Harrison's version;
in the US, her version became her first successful pop single,reaching
#25. She would cover another song from All Things Must Pass, "Behind
That Locked Door").
A remastered edition of All Things Must
Pass, supervised by Harrison, was released in 2001, just months
before his death; it contained bonus tracks, including a partially
re-recorded additional version of "My Sweet Lord". It also included
a newly colourised version of the originally monochrome cover.
With the original version of the album being concurrently deleted,
the remastered edition of All Things Must Pass is the only commercially
available version of the release. On July 29, 2006, The Official
UK Charts company changed their records because there was a postal
strike when the album had originally been on the charts. At the
time, record retailers would send in documents saying how many
records had been sold, but because of the strike they could not
during an eight-week period in 1971.
All Things Must Pass, which had originally
peaked at number 4 (with Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled
Water at number one), now has been given the number one spot for
all eight weeks. In 2003, the album was ranked number 437 on Rolling
Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
[edit] 2001 re-release In 2000, George Harrison personally oversaw
the remastering of All Things Must Pass - the beginning of a re-issue
project that was to see all his albums refurbished. Harrison lived
long enough only to witness All Things Must Pass' re-release in
January 2001 on his own GN Records imprint, distributed by EMI.
Besides the colourfully re-imagined cover art, the two studio
albums have been split across the two CDs, with bonus material
appearing at the end of the first disc, and the "Apple Jam" -
with an adjusted sequence - concluding the second disc.
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