George Harrison was always a prolific songwriter. He could use rhythm and melody to tap into different areas of human emotion and present them in a sweet-sounding and beautiful way. He was quite often overlooked during his time in The Beatles, though, as his style usually didn’t suit the Paul McCartney and John Lennon brand that the band prided itself on.
There were many things that contributed to The Beatles’ eventual breakup; however, one of the biggest and overriding problems that the band had was creative differences. Harrison’s music never fit The Beatles’ brand, but in the later years of the band, the definition of that brand became less and less clear as Lennon and McCartney had very different ideas of what made a good song.
As the band found itself in creative limbo, much of Harrison’s music was rejected, making it increasingly difficult to see what the band wanted to make. This meant that Harrison was putting less effort into his work, which led to some of his most lacklustre tracks.
Consider ‘Only a Northern Song’, for instance, which was initially Harrison’s contribution towards Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He wanted to write a song that would make it onto the album but found writing for the band challenging during that period. As a result, the song he made was pretty poor, and even he wasn’t a big fan of it by the end of the recording process. Beatles producer George Martin said, “I’m disappointed that George didn’t bring something better,” when discussing the song, which was eventually shelved until Yellow Submarine.
It’s safe to say that Harrison didn’t enter his artistic creative peak until he began his solo career. When he started writing songs just for himself, he no longer had the issue that all of his songs were supposed to fit a certain mould, and as such, he was allowed to unleash all of his creative potential, which we hear on beautiful albums such as All Things Must Pass.
The freedom that Harrison felt is reflected in the fact that rather than writing songs for the sake of writing them as he did with ‘Only a Northern Song’, he was instead putting together loved hits within a matter of minutes. His song ‘Ding Dong, Ding Dong’ is the best example of this, as the classic track only took Harrison three minutes to put together after he passed a decoration that contained the words.
“’Ding Dong, Ding Dong’ was the quickest one I ever wrote. It took me three minutes, except it took me four years of looking at the thing, which was written on the wall at my home,” he said, “’Ring out the old, ring in the new, ring out the false, ring in the truth’, before I realised it was a hit song. It makes me laugh because it’s so simple. That song evaded me for four years.”