George Harrison Said the ‘Mass’ of the Music Being Made in the 1980s All Sounded the Same
George Harrison said the bulk of the music in the 1980s all sounded the same. The former Beatle had some strong opinions about popular music.
George Harrison said popular music made him feel ‘uptight’
The former Beatle initially fell in love with rock ‘n’ roll when he was a teenager. He loved Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and many other pioneers. They were the essence of the genre, not the artists who came much later.
In 1975, George told David Herman of WNEW-FM (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters) that very few people impressed him musically. The only person who wowed him was the sitar legend Ravi Shankar, his musical and spiritual guru.
“In music, well, it breaks down into … I mean there’s people who have a sort of a more worldly consciousness, and that’s why I’ve always been with Ravi Shankar because he’s bringing, particularly in the west, something obscure and creating an audience,” George said.
Pop music, on the other hand, made George feel “uptight.”
“It’s a whole other train of thought that comes from the music,” George continued. “In simpler terms, there’s people, I like people who just convey in their music some sort of sincerity. I’m a big fan of Smokey Robinson just because musically he is so sweet, he makes you feel nice, he makes me feel good, whereas a lot of music I listen to, which is popular music, just makes me uptight.
“Even if I’m not really listening too close to it, it’s just the sound of it and the whole thing, and the repetition, the boring sort of repetition of how it’s played…”
George said all the music in the 1980s sounded the same
During an interview with Guitar Player, George said the music coming out of the 1980s all sounded the same. That was one of the reasons why George didn’t make an album between 1982’s Gone Troppo and 1987’s Cloud Nine. He felt the record companies wanted the same music, and he didn’t like it.
“I was fed up with the record business, which was partially, I suppose, my own fault because I just got tired of having all of the responsibility and not having somebody else to bounce off of-but also partially because of the way it was going,” George said.
“Personally, I still prefer the old music-late ’50s and early ’60s, and a lot of stuff from the late ’60s and early ’70s. Of course, there’s stuff now that I do like; I mean, there’s always been some good stuff that I enjoyed. But the mass of stuff, it all just sounds the same to me. And the way the record business was; it went through a down period-not just the record business, but everything, when the oil crisis hit and everyone was getting fired from labels and the radio stations were playing all the same stuff.
“I just got so sick of it. I wrote a song on an album a few years back called ‘Blood From A Clone’ which is sort of me trying to express that: ‘They say they like it but you’re now in the market. It may not go well because it’s too laid-back.’
“Just all this marketing thing-how everything has to be a certain way, otherwise you don’t have a chance of getting it on the radio. I got tired of writing songs and making records and then finding out that nobody ever got to hear it-unless I wanted to go and do me video and all that. At that point I just got tired of it-after 20-odd years of doing it.”
When George recorded Cloud Nine, his dislike of that system had cooled. However, he wasn’t going to make the album the record companies wanted. George made Cloud Nine authentic, using actual instruments, unlike all the other music coming out.
The guitarist said popular music didn’t give him a buzz
For George, popular music didn’t give him a buzz.
In 1992, Guitar World asked George if any contemporary bands struck him “as having a bit of the same spark” as his early heroes. George said no.
“I can’t say I’ve really heard anything that gives me a buzz like some of that stuff we did in the Fifties and Sixties,” George said. “The last band I really enjoyed was Dire Straits on the Brothers in Arms album. To me, that was good music played well, without any of the bulls***.”
Tom Petty also recalled George didn’t have much interest in rock music past 1957.
“The thing he was proudest of was the Beatles,” Petty said. “He said the Beatles put out such a positive message. He was appalled at the things being said in pop music. Once he got into his Indian music, that rock & roll music to him was in the past. I don’t think he had much interest in rock music past about ’57.”
Ultimately, George liked Indian music the best of any other genre, including rock. However, he always made music sound unlike anything else.
