In her office at the Friar Park estate, where she and George Harrison lived, Olivia Harrison picks up a piece of correspondence she has just seen: a handwritten letter from her late husband to her mother when The Beatles were with the Maharishi in India in 1968. “I became famous and gained all this material wealth,” the letter says in part. “That was just to allow me to see that there was more to life… Now I know that I am going to reach the true peak, which is the full self-realization and achievement that man can achieve.”
For Harrison, who is overseeing her late husband’s estate with her son Dhani, the timing, and use of the word “material,” couldn’t have been more eerily perfect. After the deluxe edition of All Things Must Pass 2021, the Harrisons are preparing a similar treatment for their sequel, Living in the Material World. Coming on November 15, the 50th anniversary edition of the album (available in multiple formats) will include a remixed version of the original LP and 12 outtakes and alternate takes, plus extras like a recording notes booklet detailing each day of the album. album recording. It explains that Phil Spector participated in the first sessions, but “personal problems and fatigue”, as well as setbacks with the British immigration office, led him to abandon the project.
Along with acoustic demos of two of their best songs, ‘Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)’ and ‘Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long’, one of the rarities is the unreleased demo of ‘Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)’. The song ended up being part of the album Ringo by Ringo Starr, with the band backing Harrison’s former bandmate. But now we can hear Harrison and the band working on the song on their own, in what amounts to a peculiar Harrison “hoedown.” “They were making it for Ringo,” says Olivia Harrison. “But George acted as a vocal guide, trying to teach them how to play it and what the song was about. He loved playing with the band. It seemed to him that they were so free and loose.”
Published in 1973 (Harrison admits they missed the 50th anniversary but, he says, “what’s the rush?”) Living in the Material World had the burden of following All Things Must Passthe triple LP that showed in a big way that he had a lot to offer on his own after the Beatles. The album continued that trend. Did ‘Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)’ unseat Paul McCartney’s ‘My Love’ from number one on the charts, and did the album itself unseat Red Rose Speedway McCartney from the top spot, where he remained for five weeks.
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Olivia Harrison, who didn’t meet her future husband until the following year, while working at A&M Records in Los Angeles, remembers hearing ‘Give Me Love’ on the radio. “Every day I drove from Hermosa Beach to La Brea to go to work, and the radio was playing constantly,” he says from his home. “It was a buzz in the mornings, a very positive song. I felt very in tune with George and his music at that time. I felt the same way in my life and started meditating and going to conferences. It was the soundtrack of the experience I was living. It was perfect for me.”
When the album came up in conversations with George, who died of cancer in 2001, Harrison says he spoke fondly of it and his days in the studio, where he recruited friends such as bassist Klaus Voormann, drummer Jim Keltner, keyboardist Gary Wright and members of Badfinger. “I was very fond of him,” he says. “He had all his close friends working with him on it. “He was more confident and had more fun with them.” The album also came before a troubled era in his career, beginning with his massive tour and a plagiarism lawsuit over ‘My Sweet Lord.’
Despite its commercial success, Living in the Material World He also had to face very “material” criticism. Harrison had begun to express his Krishna beliefs on songs like ‘My Sweet Lord’ and ‘Awaiting on You All’. But critics and some lifelong Beatles fans were dismayed by the Beatles’ more blatantly devotional songs. Living in the Material Worldwhere ‘Give Me Love’ was alongside ‘The Light That Has Lighted the World’ and ‘The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)’, as well as ‘Sue Me, Sue You Blues’, her scathing song about legal breakup of the Beatles.
“All Things Must Pass flows into Material Worldwhich really solidifies where I was coming from and what I was feeling,” Harris acknowledges. “I know someone wrote a long time ago, ‘Oh, it’s so sacred I could scream.’ George didn’t care. When he made ‘My Sweet Lord,’ he did say, ‘You’re putting your neck on the line because people don’t want to hear it.’ But he kept doing it. He said: ‘That’s what life is about. You have to change.’”
However, were you ever worried about disappointing fans who longed for a more carefree George Beatle? “I think he was aware of it, but he didn’t care because he knew there was something in it, whether you liked it or not, and that’s it,” he says. “Maybe there were certain things you didn’t want to hear, but that didn’t affect him. It said, ‘How do you balance such an incredibly material life with something resembling an inner life that cultivates wisdom?’”
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Harrison believes that George’s confidence in making the record was reinforced by the Concert for Bangladesh, the all-star benefit show he organized the previous year, just as the recording sessions began. Living in the Material World. “I don’t think he felt intimidated (by the continuation of All Things Must Pass) because of that concert,” he says. “He never imagined he could pull off something like this. He had never been a leader. He didn’t realize the influence he had on his friends. He couldn’t imagine being able to do something like this and have people he respected by his side, supporting him. It must have been and was an incredible confirmation and encouragement for himself, and I think that must have driven him. “I don’t think he had any doubts about what he was doing at the time.”
If Harrison needed any reminder of her late husband’s beliefs, she found another, aside from the letter to her mother, when she came across a bottle in her home and found inside a piece of paper, in her own handwriting, with the phrase “be here now”, another of the song titles on the album. “You can say what you want about this or that, but he was sincere and he had conviction, and that’s what makes (the album) so good,” he says. “Nowadays, people are open, and the world has changed the way they view meditation or all this self-help. Nobody says they can scream anymore. Dhani always tells me, ‘Don’t sanctify it!’ But George was wise and honest.”
