Letting George Do It

By W.B.

As nearly as a Beatle could, George Harrison led the life of an invisible man. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were hailed as genius pop composers. Ringo Starr, the catalyst who served as a human buffer between conflicting egos, was constantly stirring affectionate chuckles. George was the quiet, apparently dependent one.

Such attention as he got came in oddball ways. In 1965 he created a vogue for raga-rock, by introducing the sitar in Norwegian Wood. It was he who interested the rest of the Beatles in transcendental meditation. For years George lived in a ranch house painted in psychedelic colors. He finally surrendered it, but only for a 30-room Gothic mansion complete with secret doors and sculptured gnomes. No superstar, but no ordinary man either was George Harrison.

Exactly how unordinary is made astonishingly clear by the release this week of George's first solo album, All Things Must Pass (Apple). Consisting of 15 Harrison originals, one Bob Dylan original, and one joint effort, All Things Must Pass is an expressive, classily executed personal statement that should surprise many, confound a few and please millions. It is not just that George has surpassed all the individual disks issued to date by Paul, John and Ringo. Both musically and philosophically, he has produced one of the outstanding rock albums in years.

By rock's swiftly broadening standards, Harrison's musical spectrum is almost Wagnerian in its width and style. The poetic spectrum of his lyrics--mainly about fear of loneliness or love of God, of his wife, of love itself--is narrow, but still capable of bite.

Perhaps the single most important thing about All Things Must Pass is that Harrison is as deeply into affirmation as the Dylan of old was into protest. Harrison clearly agrees with the old Indian belief that music has the power to change human destiny. In Art of Dying, George is talking mainly about Hinduism, yet his lyrics have universal appeal:

There'll come a time when all your

hopes are fading When things that seemed so very

plain

Become an awful pain Searching for the truth among the

lying And answered when you've learned

the Art of Dying.

Hear Me Lord, the concluding song, is an old-fashioned religious confessional. Harrison belts it out with affirmative rock fervor, and punctuates it with quick but brilliant changes of pace--Harrison's trademark as a composer--which sound like someone briefly opening a door into a gospel-shouting session.

Though out on his own, George has some illustrious company. His co-producer is Phil Spector, the Hector Berlioz of rock, with a genius for the complicated aural mix and a weakness for the overblown style--a weakness this time kept under control. Ringo plays on the album, and so do Nashville's Pete Drake and England's Eric Clapton. Identified in the credits as the George O'Hara-Smith Singers is a choir of Beat-le-sounding experts. That is Harrison's little joke. All the voices are George's, carefully overdubbed one at a time. Bob Dylan's influence can be felt everywhere. Their joint effort, I'd Have You Anytime (music by Harrison, words by Dylan) is as tender a love song as rock has any right to expect.

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