Living in The Material World - Content

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The songs he had assembled by this point reflected both his spiritual devotion − in "The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)", "Living in the Material World", "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)" and "Try Some, Buy Some" − as well as his feelings before and after the Bangladesh benefit concerts, in "Miss O'Dell" and "The Day the World Gets 'Round". But whereas many of his Krishna devotionals on All Things Must Pass had been filled with "the sweet satisfactions of faith", Harrison’s latest offerings betrayed a stern, "austere" quality, perhaps as a result of the Bangladesh experience. His musical arranger, John Barham, would later suggest that a spiritual "crisis" might have been the cause; other observers have pointed to his failing marriage to Boyd. (Harrison himself gave 1972 as the year he started writing "So Sad", a track dealing with the end of their relationship, later released on his Dark Horse album.) Musical biographer Simon Leng has written of Harrison's frame of mind at this time: "Living in the Material World found him in roughly the same place that John Lennon was when he wrote 'Help!' − shocked by the rush of overwhelming success and desperately wondering where it left him."

Nor was his adherence to his spiritual goals necessarily consistent − Boyd and Chris O'Dell, a good friend of the couple, would joke that it was hard to tell whether he was dipping into his ever-present prayer bag or "the coke bag". The same duality has been noted by Harrison's biographers: on one hand, he earned himself the affectionate nickname "His Lectureship" during his prolonged periods of fervid devotion; on the other, he'd participate in bawdy London sessions for the likes of Bobby Keys' eponymous solo album and Harry Nilsson's "thoroughly nasty" "You're Breakin' My Heart", both recorded in the first half of '72. Similarly, Harrison's passion for high-performance cars saw him lose his driver's licence for the second time in a year after crashing his Mercedes into a roundabout at 90 miles an hour, on 28 February, with Boyd in the passenger seat. Of the two of them, his wife suffered the most serious injuries, her recovery from which, author Alan Clayson has noted, Harrison saw fit to assist by "pounding on a drum-kit that he'd set up in the next room" at Friar Park.

Other song themes addressed The Beatles' legacy, either in direct references to the band's history − in the case of "Living in the Material World" and "Sue Me, Sue You Blues" − or in Harrison’s stated desire to live in the present, free of his former identity ("The Light That Has Lighted the World", "Who Can See It" and "Be Here Now"). The lyrics to "Who Can See It", especially, appear to reflect his disenchantment with his previous, junior status to former bandmates Lennon and McCartney: "I’ve been held up, I’ve been run down / I can see quite clearly now through those past years / When I played towing the line." True to Swami Prabhupada's teachings, all such pursuits of fame, wealth or position meant nothing in Harrison's 1972 world-view; "The Lord doesn't manifest through ego", as he put it in his 1980 autobiography, I Me Mine. Even in a song as apparently entrenched in pop convention as "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long", love was delivered "like it came from above".