Album Review: George Harrison – All Things Must Pass

George Harrison – All Things Must Pass

August 24, 2021

ALBUM REVIEW

OVERALL (OUT OF 10):  9

Destroy any copies of All Things Must Pass you may have owned before the 50^th Anniversary edition remix came out.  I mean it.  Throw out any vinyl albums or CDs, or (heaven forbid) 8-tracks or cassette tapes, keep the artwork if you like, but throw the rest away post haste.  Delete any mp3s or FLAC files you might have on your audio player.  The original version of All Things Must Pass should not exist in any form anywhere, and to be honest I have a little trouble sleeping at night knowing there are copies of the original album out there some unsuspecting person may stumble upon and listen to.  The original mixes should not exist in a world where we now have something so much better.

Because with this remix of the album, there is absolutely no reason to ever listen to the original again.  Paul Hicks has at long last undone the great evil Phil Spector wrought upon this masterpiece of masterpieces.  In 1970 George Harrison set the bar for ex-Beatle album releases that would never be equaled in all the long decades since, but in producing the album Spector decided that ungodly amounts of reverb was just what the album needed, and for 50 years all we knew of the album was buried under a nearly impenetrable layer of sonic sludge.  Spector’s Wall of Sound© was designed to mash the sounds of all instruments into one indifferentiable sonic assault, with an emphasis on power at the expense of clarity. What any one instrument was doing wasn’t important to Spector, what was important was overwhelming impact, a sort of perversion of Gestalt principles where the whole is not only more than the sum of the parts, but where you can’t even tell what the hell the parts are.  Musicianship, nuance, and feeling were all sacrificed in the name of impact.  And so it was that an album that was recorded with a great deal of outstanding musicianship was Wall of Sounded into the seventh circle of audio hell.  Damn you Phil Spector – whatever the Devil is doing to you right now in Purgatory, you deserve it.

But this remix – until I heard it, I never realized what how meticulously crafted the arrangements for these songs were.   We finally have a chance to hear the extraordinary musicianship that went into it. Who knew that “Let It Down” had a bass part? Listen to the detail on the guitar on album opener “I’d Have You Any Time” – breathtaking.  “Let It Down” packs a power that had been buried under Wall of Sound muck.  The brightness and clarity of the guitar solo on “Beware of Darkness” gives me goose bumps.  Listen to the backup vocals on “Wah Wah” – those “Wah Wahs” sound like police sirens now.  The “Sir Frankie Crisp”s on “Let It Roll” are so much more – crisp.

And George’s vocals – I was shocked to hear how many notes he sang that were lost in all the excess reverb and echo of the original mix.  I had no idea there he sang all those notes at the end of the line “While weeping Atlas Cedars/They just want to grow” – the echo had completely obscured several notes on the vocal to where you couldn’t even hear them.  You notice right away on “I’d Have You Any Time” – there is an immediacy, an intimacy to George’s voice that was completed obscured in the original mix.  On all of these songs the vocals now stand out in a way they should have stood out all along. 

And this is a warmer, more personable album now.  The gobs of echo on the original mix produced a psychological distance between the listener and the music – with the remix, these songs are immediate, intimate, up close and personal.  George isn’t preaching to you from the summit of a sonic mountain anymore – he’s got his arm around you right there in in the room with you singing in your ear.  Yes, the original mix did give ATMP an otherworldly, dreamy feel, but at the expense of being able to hear the wonders of what was going on with the instruments in the songs, and by sacrificing some of the nuances of the vocal melodies.  So many exciting musical moments on ATMP had been buried in the mix all these years.  Hearing the new remix is to discover this marvelous album anew and to fall in love with it all over again.  I always love hearing remixes of albums from the 60s – there is so much amazing musicianship that got obscured by the primitive mixing practices of the time.  But there was no album I wanted a remix for as much as I did for All Things Must Pass.  Not even Revolver.  I can now die a happy man.

I could gush about the remixes all day, but I’ll give it a rest.  Just listen to them yourselves, they kick the album up to the next level, and it was already a top-level album to begin with. 

Really, the fact that the atrocious over-application of reverb didn’t sink the album into oblivion is a tribute to the peerless quality of the songs and performances, which for all these years have managed to transcend their shoddy sonic trappings and move millions of listeners (as well as moving millions of units to boot).  For anyone who wasn’t there at the time, it is hard to believe, but out of the starting gate at the end of The Beatles it was George who blew his former bandmates away when they each began releasing solo albums.  While he was the most musically and melodically talented of The Beatles, Paul almost immediately demonstrated the poor judgment that would dog him all his solo career with the underdeveloped, tossed-off McCartney.  Critical overpraise in the years since has obscured the fact that a lot of Beatles fans absolutely hated John’s Plastic Ono Band – and I happen to agree with them for the most part.  It is an album that has benefited from the collective beatification and canonization of St. John the Divine far more than the actual music on the album would merit.  As an album it is far too insular, self-absorbed, and Lennon-centric, and lacks much insight into anything Lennon was experiencing – it merely expresses his pain without ever analyzing it much.  It is lyrically concrete and unimaginative.  With its utter abandonment of any musical ambition in the arrangements it is the polar opposite of ATMP – in terms of musicianship it is remarkably dull and unexciting.  And as for Ringo…well, you know, Ringo.  Neither Sentimental Journey or Beaucoup of Blues posed much of a threat to his former bandmates.  1973’s marvelous Ringo was more than any of us had any right to hope for from the guy, and he never even came close to it ever again after.

All Things Must Pass set the standard.  And nothing that followed even came close, not from George, not from any of them.  Band on the Run, Imagine, and Cloud Nine all had their strengths, but lacked the expansive musical vision, spiritual mysticism, and frankly, consistency in songwriting of ATMP.  It was a torrential release of pent-up musical genius from an exceptional songwriter who had the misfortune of being in a band with a couple of egotistical even more exceptional songwriters, and years of too many great songs to fit on the allotted two songs per album gave Harrison a vast backlog of fantastic compositions to draw from.  And with a tremendous drive to prove himself, Harrison would never be so passionate or committed to a project again (follow-up Living in the Material World was a great, if lesser, album, but by the mid-70s he’d be phoning it in with dreck like Extra Texture).  It was the right album at the right time to be the masterpiece it became – really, when you think about it, George Harrison couldn’t have made another album like it at any other time in his life.

And what an album it is.  “Beware of Darkness” moves me like few songs I know.  And such words to live by.  “Watch out now/Take care/Beware of greedy leaders/They take you where you should not go” (prophetic that – I swear George had seen America in 2016 in some kind of cosmic vision when he wrote that. But then when has it not been true?).  Most attempts at spirituality in pop music are cheap, shoddy, maudlin, cardboard knock-offs of true spirituality (as, honestly, are most attempts at spirituality in organized religion.  It’s not like your average church service is a whole lot deeper philosophically than “Dust in the Wind”).  But this is the rare song that shoots for spirituality and hits a bullseye – because there is plenty of darkness in this world of us, which is full of falling swingers and soft shoe shufflers and greedy leaders, all of which bear some bewaring of.  There is indeed darkness in the world we live in, and before we even realize it we can find ourselves to be unconscious sufferers wandering aimlessly.  I can’t even begin to do the song justice in describing it, just listen to it.  It is moving in a way few songs I know are.

“All Things Must Pass” moves me just as much, and works better on a philosophical level that about any song I know:  “It’s not always gonna be this gray…All things must pass, all things must pass away…Daylight is good at arriving at the right time”.  I don’t know many pop songs that can be so inspiring without being cheesy, but this song pulls off that rare feat.  And you know, there is something to be said for remembering that whatever you are going through isn’t going to last forever, because “all things must pass”.  It is a gorgeous, stately, majestic song that in my estimation could stand with some of the Beatles’ best, something I would hardly say of any song any of them recorded after the group broke up.

“Isn’t It a Pity” is a brooding, somber musical marvel with the most hypnotic coda this side of “Hey Jude”.  I personally prefer Version 1 for its musical power, but wouldn’t have wanted the album to miss the more loose, personal vibe of Version 2.  “How we take each other’s love/Without thinking anymore/Forgetting to give back/Isn’t it a pity”.  Such an insightful sentiment.

The sheer musical ambition and expansive vision of the album is breathtaking.  This in spite of the fact that so much of it is mellow – after all, it opens with “I’d Have You Anytime”, a collaboration with Bob Dylan that sets a gentle mood, and that leads into the shimmering “My Sweet Lord”.  I don’t care what your religious predilections or lack thereof are, this is a catchy, enthralling song that manages to be devout and poppy all at the same time.  Both of these songs boast tasty slide guitar work from George that adorns the entire album – this was surely his finest moment as a guitarist.  The melody and guitar in “My Sweet Lord” hook you immediately, the pleading and vulnerable tone in his voice as George sings is pitch perfect, the song is simply wonderful. 

Furthering the mellow atmosphere of the album, George joins a long tradition of artists who improve upon Bob Dylan songs with his cover of “If Not For You”, which is about a thousand times better than the original on New Morning.  It has a better arrangement, a stronger groove, more thoughtful musicianship, and it goes without saying a much improved vocal.  It’s the definitive version of this song, and I see no reason to ever bother with Dylan’s version.  “Behind That Locked Door” is another mellow song, with some absolutely lovely steel guitar courtesy of Pete Drake, and apparently an uncredited not-yet-come-alive Peter Frampton on acoustic guitar.  “Run of the Mill” has much the same gentle, understated vibe.  “I Dig Love” has a pleasant, shuffly groove.  “Let It Roll” is similarly pleasant, enough so that I’ll overlook the fact the lyrics are a weird recitation of things found on George’s estate that once belonged to Sir Frankie Crisp, a kind of audio tour of the grounds that does nothing for me lyrically but is so enjoyable musically.  The remixes on all of these songs bring out detail and nuances unnoticeable in the previous versions. 

But perhaps the songs that benefit most from the remix are the bombastic ones – “Wah Wah” and “Awating on You All” and “Let It Down” and “The Art of Dying” and “What is Life”.  The original mixes of these songs were cacophonous messes – the monstrously huge arrangements got hopelessly bogged down with all the echo in the original versions.  While they still have an appropriately huge sound, the new mixes accommodate all of the instruments without turning the songs into unintelligible noise like the original mixes did.  The phenomenal arrangements on these songs finally shine through like they always should have.  And I have to say, to the extent that Phil Spector was involved in the creation of the gigantic arrangements on these songs, he deserves a lot of credit (to go along with the blame he rightly gets for over-echoing the hell out of everything in the original mixes).

There’s really only one song on the album I don’t much care for, one where I reach for the fast forward button almost every time – few people know or care what the “Apple Scruffs” were, I sure don’t.  I might have been able to overlook that because I kind of like the melody, if not for that annoying harmonica part.  Sorry, the harmonica is a deal breaker on this one. 

Other than that, All Things Must Pass is a tour-de-force, a dazzling collection of quiet, reflective moments juxtaposed against massive, gargantuan rockers, an album that is one moment contemplative and the next raging.  It reflects and it roars, by turns it introspects then invigorates. It is an album that sweeps you up in a hurricane gale of massive sound then drops you gently in a quiet forest field where the only sound is the wind in the trees and the burbling brook.  I love this album in a way I have never loved another album.  It has some of the few pop songs I could ever describe as “spiritual” without so much as a trace of a sneer.  It is one of those albums I absolutely cannot live without.  As much as I love Paul McCartney, and however much I am in awe of his sheer musical ability and melodic creativity, with all his talent he never managed to produce an album on the level of All Things Must Pass.  It is simply amazing.

HOWEVER – at this point you may have noticed I have neglected to mention something important about the album, and it kind of pains me to have to talk about it.  In fact, I have to admit that to some extent my love of the album is based on a bit of flimsy self-deception, in that ever since I first heard it I have managed to convince myself it was only a double album, one that ended with the appropriately devout and benedictory “Hear Me Lord”. 

But I can’t just gloss over it, there’s no hiding the elephant in the room, and never has brutal honesty been quite so painful for me.  I am going to have to tear down a carefully built and meticulously guarded psychological wall I have built to protect myself from the awful truth and admit…and this isn’t easy…that this is in fact a triple album.  And unfortunately that admission somewhat cheapens my grandiose conception of what ATMP means to me, because that third album was nothing but a complete and utter waste of good vinyl.  The third lp was called Apple Jam, because it mostly consisted of recordings of jams that broke out during the recording of the album.  Given the brilliance of the performers involved – George and Ringo and Eric Clapton and the whole Badfinger band and Peter Frampton and Bobby Whitlock and Jim Gordon and Dave Mason and Alan White and Ginger Baker and, hell, who didn’t play on ATMP? – how could such brilliant musicians produce music that is so damned dull and uninteresting?  George tried to cheat a bit and pretend these were kind of bonus tracks, hence the Apple Jam moniker intended to distance the third lp a bit from the rest of the album.  But as much as I like to pretend it doesn’t exist, the brutally honest fact of the matter is that it does, and this third lp needs to be taken into consideration in reviewing the album.

And I hate it.  Hate it hate it hate it hate it.  I’ve only been able to bring myself to listen to it a couple of times, and I bet that’s more than 90% of the people who ever bought the album ever listened to it.  “Out of the Blue” doesn’t even have a chord change for Pete’s sake, it is just boring jamming over the same chord for eleven minutes.  “Plug Me In”, “I Remember Jeep”, and “Thanks for the Pepperoni” are just as boring, even if they have marginally more chord changes.  “It’s Johnny’s Birthday” is kind of amusing once, and as a 30^th birthday tribute to John Lennon it is kind of cute, but once is all you really need to hear it to get everything you are going to get out of it.

I wish Apple Jam didn’t exist.  These songs should have been bonus tracks on a future retrospective box set release, not part of the otherwise-greatest-album-any-ex-Beatle-would-ever-make.  They are so interminably boring.  Musicians of that caliber should have been able to come up with something more interesting to play, but apparently they saved all of that for the proper songs on the album.  Why George thought anyone wanted to listen to a bunch of musicians screwing around in the studio is beyond me, I guess he thought putting in another lp gave people a little more for their money, but it really drags the album down.  As a result, however much it kills me to do so, I am going to have to dock a point off the rubric score for filler, and what should have been an easy 10/10 gets a 9/10 for no good reason really.  Which means that even though All Things Must Pass is by far the better album, if I ever get around to reviewing Ram it will have the higher score.  Which makes no sense whatsoever, but then what does in this morally upside-down world we inhabit?

Unfortunately, fresh from the disintegration of The Beatles and the release of All Things Must Pass George set a high standard that no former Beatle would ever come close to reaching – including himself.  His next studio release would come a couple of years later, Living in the Material World, which was a great album, but not near the masterpiece ATMP was.  Without the backlog of material to draw from that was available to him when The Beatles broke up, he would struggle in the years ahead to come up with enough decent songs to fill an album.  George subsequently stumbled with Dark Horse then fell flat on his face with Extra Texture, and never really put out a consistently great album again, until he surprised us all late in his career with Cloud Nine.  Which was fantastic – but while a great album, it was not the monolithic, overpowering, Colossus-of-Rhodes juggernaut that All Things Must Pass was. 

In fact, I would argue that excepting Cloud Nine, after the demise of The Beatles it was George who fell farther than anyone.  Ten years after the breakup of The Beatles Paul released the synthesizer trifle McCartney II to complement the guitars/drums/bass trifle that was McCartney.  John’s Double Fantasy was every bit as self-absorbed in its way as Plastic Ono Band, if somewhat more commercial.  A decade on, neither of them were much better or worse than they had been with their initial artistic output as solo artists after the Beatles ended – neither of them had really progressed any, but they hadn’t gotten much worse either.  And Ringo’s career was never much more than a continuum of mediocrity, 1973’s Ringo being the sole, although glorious, exception.  But George – George had truly fallen on hard times a decade on, sitting 1980 out and the next year releasing the initially-rejected-by-his-label Somewhere in England, so titled because the album was so awful he didn’t want any disappointed, upset fans knowing where he was.  The decline from All Things Must Pass to Somewhere in England is a much, much more precipitous decline than the one from McCartney Farts Around in the Studio to McCartney Farts Around in the Studio II, or from John Lennon Fixates on His Inner World to John Lennon and Yoko Ono Fixate on Their Inner World Together, or from Ringo Does Whatever Ringo Always Does to the same.  It was George who burned brightest in the beginning, and George who flamed out the hardest.  He fortunately recovered with Cloud Nine as a last hurrah, before he came too interested in gardening to bother much with music for the last decade of his life.  But I think of all the ex-Beatles, it is indisputable that it is George who varied the most widely in all of his releases, if only because he started out on such a high note.

But with All Things Must Pass George threw down the gauntlet, and I will never for the life of me figure out why his former bandmates never picked it up.  How is it that John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the two greatest songwriters of their time, didn’t listen to the album and think “Wow, now here is an album with expansive vision, with incisive songwriting, with outstanding musicianship and incredible arrangements – this album is a monster.  I bet I can top it!”?  How did they not see it as a challenge to do something bigger and better?  Because they never even really tried – hell, the next year Paul McCartney went as far in the other direction as he possibly could with Wild Life, as unambitious, uninspired and thoughtless a half-effort at music-making as any ex-Beatle who wasn’t Ringo ever got involved with.   And John, John was too damn lazy to ever attempt anything half so daunting as ATMP.  This is an album that should have inspired John and Paul to far greater efforts than either of them made in the years to come.  I honestly can’t figure it out – why were they content to never attempt an album so monumental as the one their “little brother” made?  It’s almost as though when The Beatles first broke up George alone didn’t get the memo that they didn’t need to try so hard to sell records, and once he saw no one else was, he gave it up himself.  Perhaps being ex-Beatles made life too easy for them, and they learned they could sell plenty of vinyl without putting themselves out there the way George did on ATMP.  I don’t know what it was – all I know is that the world of rock music would have been a lot better off if they had all attempted a few more All Things Must Passes instead of all of the Mind Games and London Towns and Extra Textures and Ringo the IVs they ended up giving us.

More than once on this site I have said you must hear this album or that album before you die.  And every time I said it, I really meant it.  But this, this is something altogether different.  All Things Must Pass is an album no person with a true appreciation of The Beatles, or for popular music in general for that matter, should ever exit this mortal existence without experiencing.  I have listened to all of the songs on the album five or six times since the remixes were released a couple of weeks ago (except the Apple Jam songs, blech), and I’m not even close to being tired of them. 

I expect I will have All Things Must Pass on heavy rotation for the rest of my life, until I one day pass, as all things must.