Dark Horse (song) - Background and Composition

Background and Composition

George Harrison's 1973 album, Living in the Material World, had divided music critics, with Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone lauding it as "a pop religious ceremony for all seasons" and "an article of faith, miraculous in its radiance", while the NME's reviewer derided the pious nature of the songs and concluded: "So damn holy I could scream." Although the album was another "massive" commercial success for Harrison, and the general perception remained that he was still the most capable of the four ex-Beatles, Harrison was reportedly stung by this criticism of the overt Vaishnava Hindu spirituality in his music. His purchase of Bhaktivedanta Manor early that year as a UK headquarters for ISKCON – or, colloquially, "the Hare Krishna movement" – led to ridicule in the British press. Author Joshua Greene, a former ISKCON devotee, describes a visit Harrison made to the house in August 1973 when the singer shared his concerns with Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the movement's international leader: "I'm provoking a bad reaction," Harrison confided. "The stronger the commitment on my part, the stronger the animosity becomes."

At the same time, Harrison's marriage to Pattie Boyd was coming to an end, and in July 1974 she left him for his friend Eric Clapton. Harrison would later describe his own behaviour during their final years together as "the naughty period, 1973−74". Biographer Ian Inglis has written of Harrison being "deflated and bewildered" by the more negative reviews for Material World and adds: "It coincided with a period of intense disarray and frequent infidelities in his personal life, and the combination of these two sources of disappointment produced a mood of gloom and cynicism that would invariably work its way into his next musical projects."

Harrison wrote "Dark Horse" in 1973, apparently as a rebuttal to critics of Living in the Material World, or as a message of defiance to Boyd, or both. His comments on the composition in his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, are as "obscure" as the song's lyrics, writes theologian Dale Allison. While the term "dark horse" usually refers to an unlikely or surprise winner, Harrison states in the book that he was unaware of that meaning at the time; his lyrics instead referred to someone who carried out clandestine sexual relationships − a dark horse in Liverpudlian terms. Harrison's musical biographer, Simon Leng, views "Dark Horse" as its composer addressing his critics by creating a "new persona". "This 'George' is a man one step ahead of his detractors," Leng writes, "triumphing with quicker feet and better gags. Commentators try to pin his character down at peril, for he is likely to change and take the least expected course." In the song's choruses, Harrison declares himself "a dark horse / Running on a dark race course", "a blue moon" and a "cool jerk" who is "Looking for the source" – a self-depiction that Leng paraphrases as meaning "a loner", "an elusive, cheeky maverick".

While describing the lyrics as "smarmy, if not somewhat defensive", Allmusic's Lindsay Planer identifies the song's opening verse as "seem to address the situation" between Harrison and Boyd:

You thought that you knew where I was and when
Baby, looks like you've been fooling you again
You thought that you had got me all staked out
Baby, looks like I've been breaking out.

The "searing" verse-two lines "You thought you had got me in your grip / Baby, looks like you was not so smart" are a further example of this interpretation, Planer suggests. Like Planer, Inglis recognises a third possible target of Harrison's scorn – former bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Inglis observes that in the song's final verse, Harrison is making it clear to those who have underestimated him in the past that his abilities are not "recent acquisitions":

I thought that you knew it all along
Until you started getting me not right
Seems as if you heard a little late
I warned you when we both was at the starting gate.

Leng notes that this Harrison "character" would return in his 1976 composition "This Song", written as a light-hearted reflection on his "travails in court" during the "My Sweet Lord" plagiarism case.