Release
Rather than introducing Harrison’s audience to his new, funk-inspired sound, Dark Horse was released midway through a tour that had already alienated many of rock music’s most influential critics (but certainly not the majority of reviewers). With no time to let his throat heal, Harrison was forced to perform the entire 40-date tour with a voice "reduced to a raspy croak". The negative press he received also stemmed from his decision to feature Indian music so heavily in the concert program, but most crucially, from his refusal to pander to the Beatles legacy. The ’60s classics "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Something" and "In My Life" were all performed throughout the tour, but with lyrics altered to fit Harrison’s personal spiritual transformation − or his failed marriage in the case of the guitarist’s most famous Beatles-era tune, "Something".
The album was released on 9 December in America, as Apple SMAS 3418, and on 20 December in Britain, as Apple PAS 10008. It reached number 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart during a relatively brief stay, earning a gold disc for advance orders. In Canada, however, where the Harrison−Shankar tour had kicked off on 2 November, Dark Horse limped to an unimpressive number 42 by the start of February 1975 before quickly tumbling out of the RPM Top 100.
In the UK, after some particularly savage reviews, Dark Horse failed to make the Top 50 Albums Chart at all. (The official British albums chart would only be expanded to cover the top 60 positions in June 1975, becoming the Top 75 in November ’78.) This was an especially poor result for Harrison, as an ex-Beatle, although Ringo Starr's Beaucoups of Blues had met a similar fate four years before.
Dark Horse was released on CD in 1992, but it is one of the few Apple albums not to have been remastered and reissued since then.
Read more about this topic: Dark Horse (George Harrison album)
Famous quotes containing the word release:
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of morality ... only by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)