Love Supreme

All Things Must Pass by George Harrison is an album whose greatness catches you off guard. It accomplishes much by having a bit of a homespun low key feel to it. That is about as low key as you can get by a former Beatle recording with Phil Spector and an allstar cast.

Even though it is now my favorite Beatles solo record, I didn't really have high expecations for the record when I bought it. At the record store I was pretty much swayed by the fact that it cost only four dollars, had My Sweet Lord on it, and came in a box set. On an interesting side note, when I was a kid my father would once in a great while take his guitar out of hiding and play. He had learned to play by ear and he no longer played as much as he would've liked. There were a couple of songs that he would always bust out and play and one of them was My Sweet Lord.


As the third primary songwriter in the Beatles, George Harrison's songs were often left of albums in favor of John Lennon or Paul McCartney's contributions. Despite the fact that All Things Must Pass is a 3 record set made up stockpiled songs, it stil has a quite cohesive feel to it. Much of the album can be taken as George Harrison's mediatiation on spirituality, love, and kindness. Some of those songs on the album echo the same type of sentiments that are found in a work like John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Harrison's repeating of the title lyrics to I Dig Love parallel Coltrane's monastic recital of the words A Love Supreme. My Sweet Lord is another song that is almost hymn-like in quality. Others like Apple Scruffs and Wah-Wah are upbeat and provide a levity that keeps the album moving. Now the only part of the album that I don't find compelling is the third lp Apple Jam. The main reason this stuff is interesting is because he had famous friends like Clapton and Ginger Baker playig with him.


Make it a point to check out All Things Must Pass. It truly is worth listening to. Now I'd love to leave you with an mp3 of My Sweet Lord but instead I'll leave you with Built To Spill covering What Is Life.

Built To Spill - What Is Life