Relive The Angry Songs George Harrison Made

Whether you don’t want to admit it, we know that all of us have our own favorite Beatle, and if George Harrison is yours, then you probably know his struggles making a name for himself away from the band’s name.

Harrison has written songs from the early days of the Beatles in 1963. He contributed a lot to the Fab Four’s classic hits, from the “Taxman” to 1969’s Abbey Road “Here Comes The Sun” and “Something.” He was also the one to introduce the eastern beliefs and values by putting Indian influences into their music.

When the Beatles broke up in 1970, many fans got devastated and thought that music has died. But on that same year, each member had released their own solo albums. For Harrison, it was the All Things Must Pass, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.

All those years, Harrison might have been hiding in the shadows of Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and just quietly waiting to get out of the cocoon, and when he finally got to spread his wings and be free from the band, he released some songs he wrote for the Beatles.

‘I, Me, Mine’

Although, this was a Beatle song from Let It Be, the last album they released in 1970, Harrison wrote this song and sang lead. He said in his 1980 autobiography of the same name that it was about the ego that went with them while there was a growing tension between the group:

“Suddenly I looked around and everything I could see was relative to my ego.

“Like ‘that’s my piece of paper’ and ‘that’s my flannel’ or ‘give it to me’ or ‘I am’. It drove me crackers, I hated everything about my ego, it was a flash of everything false and impermanent, which I disliked.

“But later, I learned from it, to realise that there is somebody else in here apart from old blabbermouth. Who am ‘I’ became the order of the day. Anyway, that’s what came out of it, ‘I, Me, Mine’.”

‘Isn’t It A Pity’

It has been said that the song dates back to 1966 and was first presented to the group during the making of Revolver. Harrison also attempted to introduce it to the group on 25 and 26 January 1969, towards the end of the Let It Be, but the other Beatles didn’t approve. Harrison confirmed in his autobiography, I Me Mine:

“‘Isn’t It A Pity’ is about whenever a relationship hits a down point. Instead of whatever other people do (like breaking each other’s jaws) I wrote a song. It was a chance to realise that if I felt somebody had let me down, then there’s a good chance I was letting someone else down. We all tend to break each other’s hearts, and not giving back – isn’t it a pity.”

‘Run of The Mill’

“Run of the mill” is an expression describing a thing or a person that is very ordinary, with no special or interesting features, and just average. The title doesn’t appear in the lyrics, but it is undoubtedly the song in which Harrison goes into more depth about his troubles with the other Beatles following the group’s breakup.

Harrison told Derek Taylor in 1979 of the song’s composition:

“It was when Apple was getting crazy… Paul was falling out with us all and going around Apple offices saying ‘You’re no good’ – everyone was just incompetent (the Spanish Inquisition sketch). It was that period – the problem of partnerships.”

‘Wah Wah’

A wah-wah pedal is a device used to create various effects on electric guitar, but on this song, it has a different meaning. In an interview with Crawdaddy magazine, Harrison explained:

“That was the song, when I left from the Let It Be movie, there’s a scene where Paul and I are having an argument, and we’re trying to cover it up. Then the next scene I’m not there and Yoko’s just screaming, doing her screeching number. Well, that’s where I’d left, and I went home to write ‘Wah-Wah.’ It had given me a wah-wah, like I had such a headache with that whole argument. It was such a headache.”

Harrison told Guitar World in 2001:

“At that point in time, Paul couldn’t see beyond himself. He was on a roll, but… in his mind, everything that was going on around him was just there to accompany him. He wasn’t sensitive to stepping on other people’s egos or feelings.”

‘Sue Me, Sue You Blues’

“Bring your lawyer / And I’ll bring mine / Get together, and we could have / A bad time”

The song was released in 1973 on the album Living in the Material World. It was Harrison’s personal take on McCartney when he infamously sued the other Beatles to stop the band’s manager, Allen Klein, from controlling the group’s financial affairs. The Beatles was involved in courtroom conferences for the first months of the band’s split. Harrison was clear with what he meant when he wrote the lyrics:

“Now all that’s left is to find yourself a new band.”

‘All Those Years Ago’

George said that he originally had written most of the lyrics for Ringo, but with Lennon’s assassination, he rewrote the lyrics and told of how he looked up to John. Six months after Lennon’s tragic murder, Harrison released it as a single in 1981 from his album Somewhere in England, expressing his sadness at losing not only a mentor and a bandmate but one of his best friends.

Harrison remained friends with Lennon after The Beatles broke up. Even with all the angry songs he made for the band, Harrison welcomed Starr and McCartney’s talents as they all paid tribute to their fallen friend. Starr is featured on drums, and McCartney (along with his Wings bandmates Linda McCartney and Denny Laine) overdubbed backing vocals onto the track.