George Harrison Once Said He’d Have to Make ‘A Hundred Beatles Albums’ to Release Songs He Wrote in 1 Year
George Harrison achieved international notoriety with The Beatles. The so-called quiet Beatle was instrumental to the band’s success, but he considered quitting while recording Let it Be. George once said he’d have to make a hundred Beatles albums just to get through the songs he wrote during one very prolific year.
George Harrison wrote several of The Beatles’ best songs
It took him nearly a decade to admit it, but John Lennon was a big fan of George’s “Within You Without You” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. John said it showcased George’s innate songwriting talent.
It wasn’t popular in the United Kingdom, but George finally earned a No. 1 single with The Beatles in 1969. The Abbey Road double A-side of “Come Together” and George’s “Something” spent 16 weeks on the Billboard singles chart and peaked at No. 1 in late November 1969.
Finding chart success for his songs was a bonus for George, but it was too little too late. He realized his Beatles problems years before the band broke up.
George said he would have needed ‘a hundred Beatle’ albums to release the songs he wrote in 1965
Geoge technically completed his first solo record before The Beatles broke up. That was about the only way music fans could hear his tunes in the 1960s. John and Paul McCartney wrote songs together at a prolific pace and stuffed Beatles albums full of their tunes.
When George started writing more, he realized The Beatles’ entrenched dynamic would be a problem in getting his songs on the albums. He once told Dick Cavett (via YouTube) he’d have to spend decades with the band just to release songs he wrote in one year:
“Over the years, I had such a lot of songs mounting up that I really wanted to do, but I only got my quota of one or two tunes per album. That way, I would have had to record a hundred Beatle albums just to get out the tunes I had in 1965 … It was just the way things happened. [When we] started off, I didn’t write, and they wrote. Then I started to write, and it was sort of trying to push in [with John and Paul] a bit.”
George Harrison describes his prolific songwriting in 1965 and the struggle to get songs on Beatles albums
Paul and John dominated the early days of The Beatles and wrote the first hits. When the band took off, they let George place only a handful of songs on the albums. He often wrote his songs alone, whereas John and Paul frequently worked together. That changed when George went solo upon The Beatles’ split and upstaged his bandmates.
The quiet Beatle made a lot of noise during his solo career
Once The Beatles broke up in 1970, John, Paul, and George rushed to release solo albums. Even though Paul released his solo debut first, George won the race against his former bandmates.
All Things Must Pass from 1970 procured a single, “My Sweet Lord,” that stayed at No. 1 for four weeks and spent 14 weeks on the chart. The album went platinum six times over, far better than Paul’s McCartney record or John’s Plastic Ono Band. All Things Must Pass was the biggest solo debut for any of The Beatles. George scored two other No. 1 songs (“Give Me Love” and “Got My Mind Set on You”) on his own.
George struggled to get his songs on Beatles albums, but being frozen out by John and Paul might have been a good thing. He once said he was glad to have only a couple songs on the albums because it meant his work wasn’t controlled by someone else.
Struggling to put songs onto Beatles albums might have been a problem, but the prolific George Harrison made up for it with his successful solo career.
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