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GEORGE HARRISON
All Things Must Pass: 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe
A fitting update to George’s magnum opus.
By Tom Pinnock
George at Friar Park in 1970
BARRY FEINSTEIN
Edition CAPITOL/UME
10/10
FOR a while now, 51 years maybe, there’s been talk of de-Spectorising All Things Must Pass, of wiping away the reverb like grime from a golden murti. Phil didn’t make it easy, though: rather than adding effects during mixing, the layers of echo that cloud this motherlode of songs and jams are often baked onto the tapes themselves.
This 50th-anniversary edition, therefore, is not the clear and crisp version of All Things Must Pass that’s hovered in some people’s imaginations for decades like some audiophile Holy Grail, as sparse and dry as 1973’s Living In The Material World. On this new mix by Paul Hicks, the fog is very much there, but a little daylight (good at arriving at the right time, you may recall) has been let in. The breadth and ambition of All Things Must Pass remain astounding in better definition: for a sense of scale, George’s contributions to the ‘White Album’ total 13 minutes, while All Things Must Pass is itself 13 minutes longer than the entirety of The Beatles.
The most striking difference here is Harrison’s voice, set forward, intimate and relatively dry, so that quivers or inflections in his singing that might have been subsumed in the mush are unearthed. Instrumental parts are also clearer: the acoustic guitar picking, timpani rolls and low, buzzing synth on “Isn’t It A Pity”, the subtleties in the drums on “I’d Have You Anytime”, every curlicue of Pete Drake’s pedal steel, even the maelstrom of free-jazz horns and guitars at the end of the immense “Let It Down”. Harrison’s masterful slide guitar parts (he had only taken up the technique the year before) are even more striking in this new setting.
If we don’t get an entirely new All Things Must Pass though, what we do get are a number of hypothetical alternative versions. For an ATMP where Harrison’s passion for The Band and John Wesley Harding-era Dylan takes precedence, check out day one’s acoustic guitar, drums and bass demos of “Behind That Locked Door”, “Dehra Dun”, “I Live For You”, a slower, funkier “My Sweet Lord” or the Bob co-write “Nowhere To Go”, or day two’s plaintive “Run Of The Mill” or a dirgier “Art Of Dying”. As an album, it would have been no starker than Plastic Ono Band, released two weeks later.
However, if Harrison had only had ears for the soulful gospel and R&B he loved around that time, then electric band demos of “What Is Life”, “Awaiting On You All” and “Going Down To Golders Green” give a good idea of what might have arisen. For some other avenues ripe for exploration, see the Fabs-y garage of the “I Dig Love” demo, a solo “Hear Me Lord” that’s today reminiscent of something baked and slow from Neil Young’s Zuma, or the three-minute demo of “Isn’t It A Pity”, which shines a light on how the song could have sounded if The Beatles hadn’t rejected it for Revolver.
The two discs of proper early takes demonstrate how the final recordings came together through live performances, with Harrison refusing to dictate what the musicians played after suffering such treatment at the hands of top songwriting duo Lennon-McCartney.
SLEEVE NOTES
5CD+BLU-RAY SUPER DELUXE
CD 1 – Main Album CD
2 – Main Album CD
3 – Day 1 Demos 26th May 1970
1 All Things Must Pass (Take 1) †
2 Behind That Locked Door (Take 2)
3 I Live For You (Take 1)
4 Apple Scruffs (Take 1)
5 What Is Life (Take 3)
6 Awaiting On You All (Take 1) †
7 Isn’t ItA Pity (Take 2)
8 I’d Have You Anytime (Take 1)
9 I Dig Love (Take 1)
10 Going Down To Golders Green (Take 1)
11 Dehra Dun (Take 2)
12 Om Hare Om (Gopala Krishna) (Take 1)
13 Ballad Of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll) (Take 2)
14 My Sweet Lord (Take 1) †
15 Sour Milk Sea (Take 1) † Previously Released
CD 4 – Day 2 Demos 27th May 1970
1 Run Of The Mill (Take 1) †
2 Art Of Dying (Take 1)
3 Everybody/Nobody (Take 1)
4 Wah-Wah (Take 1)
5 Window Window (Take 1)
6 Beautiful Girl (Take 1)
7 Beware Of Darkness (Take 1)
8 Let It Down (Take 1)
9 Tell Me What Has Happened To You (Take 1)
10 Hear Me Lord (Take 1)
11 Nowhere To Go (Take 1)
12 Cosmic Empire (Take 1)
13 Mother Divine (Take 1)
14 I Don’t Want To Do It (Take 1)
15 If Not For You (Take 1) † Previously Released
CD 5 – Session Outtakes & Jams
1 Isn’t ItA Pity (Take 14)
2 Wah-Wah (Take 1)
3 I’d Have You Anytime (Take 5)
4 Art Of Dying (Take 1)
5 Isn’t ItA Pity (Take 27)
6 If Not For You (Take 2)
7 Wedding Bells (Are
Breaking Up That Old Gang Of Mine) (Take 1)
8 What Is Life (Take 1)
9 Beware Of Darkness (Take 8)
10 Hear Me Lord (Take 5)
11 Let It Down (Take 1)
12 Run Of The Mill (Take 36)
13 Down To the River (Rocking ChairJam) (Take 1)
14 Get Back (Take 1)
15 Almost 12 Bar Honky Tonk (Take 1)
16 It’s Johnny’s Birthday (Take 1)
17 Woman Don’t You Cry For Me (Take 5)
Blu-ray – Main Album in surround, Atmos, hi-res stereo