Being Brainwashed
with all things Beatle, I make it my business to own every solo and post Beatles recording by each of the four ex fabs. With regard to George's output... well, like each of the other three he had a chequered career and there are undoubtedly a few duff albums and a few gems.
Thirty Three & 1/3 is surely one of the most underrated solo efforts...
Crackerbox Palace,
This Song, and in particular the gorgeous
Beautiful Girl are outstanding tracks for me. Pleasingly, this 1976 album set in motion a run of refreshingly good releases from the Quiet One:
George Harrison,
Somewhere In England, the less impressive but quirky and somewhat underrated
Gone Troppo and especially the fabulous
Cloud Nine (probably my favourite Harrison album outside of the compilations)... these all easily outstrip the downright turgid and almost depressing early/mid 70's efforts
Living In the Material World and the truly awful
Dark Horse and
Extra Texture.
And now for the controversial bit (let me take a deep breath and put on my hard hat)...
All Things Must Pass is for me the most overblown, self indulgent and overrated solo Beatle album of them all. There just isn't enough quality material to fill a double, let alone triple album... indeed whittling it down to a single LP it would still be patchy and partly made up of filler to my mind. Why does everyone rave about it? Plagiarism lawsuits aside,
My Sweet Lord is terrific and
The Art Of Dying is sublime.
If Not For You is OK I suppose - but then any Dylan song sounds OK so long as someone else other than Dylan himself is singing it. Sorry, but beyond that I'm really struggling with ATMP.... how this myth developed about a surfeit of quality material being held back to finally appear as some avalanche of brilliance for his glorious debut - nope, never bought into that, sorry.
As for
Wonderwall Music - I don't believe George even plays on it does he? In which case it's no more of a solo album than
The Family Way - a Beatle penned soundtrack performed by others.