Bye Bye Love (The Everly Brothers Song) - George Harrison's Version

George Harrison's Version

In 1974, George Harrison recorded "Bye Bye, Love" for his album Dark Horse. As well as inserting a comma in the song title, Harrison came up with additional lyrics and a radically different melody line. The new words were in reference to his wife Pattie Boyd having left him for their mutual friend Eric Clapton:

There goes our lady, with a-you-know-who
I hope she's happy, old Clapper too
We had good rhythm (and a little slide) till she stepped in
Did me a favour, I ... threw them both out.

In a later verse, Harrison states that he's "got tired of ladies that plot and shove me" before apparently dismissing his wife's affair as "our lady ... out on a spree".

Rumours circulated that Clapton himself guested on guitar and Boyd on backing vocals, but they were incorrect, although the new couple were credited on the inner sleeve notes. Harrison had scribbled their names along with other cryptic messages among the album's musician credits, whereupon an assistant then sought permission from Clapton's record company and added the standard acknowledgment: "Eric Clapton appears through the courtesy of RSO Records."

"Rhythm Ace" was another confusing credit, as Tom Scott explained soon after the album's release: "Rhythm Ace is an electronic machine that plays any rhythm − a boogaloo, a cha-cha or a rhumba. I suppose a lot of people will think it's a person." In fact, Harrison played all the instruments on the recording, using the multitrack facilities available to him at his state-of-the-art home studio: two 12-string acoustic guitars, drums, Moog bass as well as bass guitar, three electric guitar parts, electric piano, bongos, together with his lead vocal and backing vocals.

While he would soon dismiss the exercise as "just a little joke", his reading of "Bye Bye Love" drew harsh reactions from critics when Dark Horse appeared late in 1974. Decades later, it still finds little favour with reviewers; Richard S. Ginell of Allmusic calls it a "slipshod rewrite", Alan Clayson has written of the ex-Beatle's "blatant ... liberty-taking", while Harrison's musical biographer Simon Leng views it as "one track on Dark Horse that seriously fails the quality-control test ... a desperately bad offering". Leng does see Harrison's wry cover in the context in which it was made, though: "In its own way, 'Bye Bye, Love' is a classic 1970s period piece, from the era when rock stars used music to settle their own personal scores. Thankfully, George Harrison only made that mistake once."