Dark Horse (George Harrison Album) - Background

Background

Harrison's third studio album since the break-up of The Beatles came at the end of a busy and turbulent year or more for the guitarist. With his marriage to Pattie Boyd all but over, he immersed himself in his work, particularly on developing the acts he had signed to his still-nascent record label, Dark Horse Records − artists such as Ravi Shankar and an hitherto unknown group called Splinter. Harrison himself would remain an Apple Records artist until his EMI contract expired in January 1976, at which point he could switch to Dark Horse. As of early 1974, however, he still had no distributor lined up for either the Shankar Family & Friends album, most of which was recorded long before in Los Angeles, or for the more recent projects. In addition, the legal machinations following the break-up of The Beatles now saw Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr moving against Allen Klein, their erstwhile manager and ally against Paul McCartney (who had served the original lawsuit in December 1970 seeking to dissolve the band's partnership). Furthermore, Harrison was working to seal a distribution deal for the movie Little Malcolm, an Apple Films project for which he was executive producer.

Compounding the pressure further during what Harrison himself would refer to as "the naughty period, 1973–74", he was drinking heavily and had returned to his drug-taking ways of the '60s. Klaus Voormann has described this time as an obvious "step back" on Harrison's spiritual journey, while Boyd would later write: "That whole period was insane. Friar Park was a madhouse. Our lives were fuelled by alcohol and cocaine, and so it was with everyone who came into our sphere ... George used cocaine excessively and I think it changed him." This behaviour was addressed in a new Harrison song, "Simply Shady", just as his feelings on the couple's inevitable split were laid out in "So Sad".

In early July 1974, Boyd left him for his close friend Eric Clapton, having earlier had an affair with another of her husband's guitarist pals, Ron Wood of The Faces. Both of these dalliances would also receive attention on the Dark Horse album. A rewrite of The Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye, Love" declared: "There goes our lady, with a-you-know-who / I hope she's happy, old Clapper too"; while Harrison's handwritten liner notes cheekily listed one of the guest musicians on "Ding Dong, Ding Dong" as "Ron Would If You Let Him". For his part, Harrison had taken up with Starr's wife, Maureen Starkey, and the UK tabloids soon reported him as being involved romantically with Kathy Simmons (ex-girlfriend of Rod Stewart) as well as Krissy Wood (wife of the Faces guitar player).

Of more profound consequence perhaps, and the inspiration behind "It Is 'He' (Jai Sri Krishna)", was his trip to Benares in India, in January and February. It was then that Harrison hatched a plan with his longtime mentor Shankar to sponsor an Indian classical-music concert tour that would feature as many as eighteen musicians and an unprecedented (in the West) range of traditional Indian instruments; an album would be recorded just beforehand, at Harrison's home studio at Friar Park, in Oxfordshire. "Ravi Shankar's Music Festival from India" became a labour of love for the ex-Beatle, but, as with his dedication to Splinter's debut release, The Place I Love, the project would severely impact on the quality of his own album.

By May, Harrison had finally found a distributor in A&M Records and could therefore announce the formation of Dark Horse Records, as well as confirming that he would be touring North America, together with Ravi Shankar's ensemble, during November and December. He being the first of his former band-mates to undertake a tour of Beatle-hungry America, and a hands-on record company boss, the pressure on Harrison was immense. On 23 September, when he introduced Shankar on stage at London's Royal Albert Hall for the start of the Indian orchestra's tour of Europe, Harrison looked and sounded exhausted − yet he still had the bulk of his album to complete before heading to Los Angeles for tour rehearsals.