The Best of George Harrison - Background

Background

Ray Coleman of Melody Maker observed in December 1976 that it was "somehow ironic" that EMI, having made "millions of pounds" from the Beatles' recordings, should put out The Best of George Harrison within days of Harrison's debut release on Warner-distributed Dark Horse Records. The compilation was instigated by EMI's US counterpart, Capitol Records, a company with which Harrison had grown disaffected since August 1971, due to their "avaricious dithering" over the release of the Concert for Bangladesh album. In a final effort to force Capitol to distribute that live album at cost price, in order to generate much-needed funds for the refugees from East Pakistan, Harrison had gone public with the issue and embarrassed the label.

In January 1976, all the former Beatles' contracts with EMI/Capitol expired, and only Paul McCartney had chosen to re-sign with Capitol. The two record companies were now free to license releases featuring songs from the band's back catalogue and the individual members' solo work, without the need for artist's approval. Along with accompanying singles, the double album Rock 'n' Roll Music was Capitol's first venture under this new arrangement. Released in June 1976, Rock 'n' Roll Music contained 28 previously released tracks from throughout the Beatles' career. John Lennon and Ringo Starr both expressed dissatisfaction with the compilation's running order, the reversion to a pre-1967 royalty rate for the band, and what Starr termed Capitol's "craphouse" packaging. After the record company had promised "the largest selling campaign in the history of the music business", the album was a commercial success.

Late in 1975, EMI/Capitol had issued greatest-hits collections on the Apple Records imprint for Lennon and Starr − Shaved Fish and Blast from Your Past. Since Lennon and Starr were both nominally Apple artists, they each had input into the content and packaging of their solo compilation, and Lennon, in particular, was active in promoting his album. Shaved Fish and Blast from Your Past sold reasonably well, in America, but their sales failed to match record-company expectations. For George Harrison, there had been long delays between releases following the international success of his All Things Must Pass triple album in 1970–71, due first to his commitment to the Bangladesh charity project and later to his production work for Dark Horse Records acts Splinter and Ravi Shankar. As a result, Harrison had only completed his quota of Apple studio albums in the autumn of 1975, with the "contractual obligation" Extra Texture (Read All About It), meaning that a Harrison compilation would not be viable until the following year and that he had effectively surrendered all artistic control over such an album.

In the second half of 1976, thanks to the success of both Rock 'n' Roll Music and McCartney's world tour with his band Wings, the public's nostalgia for the Beatles was at a peak. Increasingly generous offers from rival promoters Bill Sargent and Sid Bernstein for a one-off Beatles reunion concert, 20th Century Fox's musical documentary All This and World War II (for which, as with the earlier stage play John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert, Harrison would refuse permission for any of his songs to appear) and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel hitting the UK top ten with their cover of "Here Comes the Sun" were all examples of this heightened interest. Capitol therefore chose to combine the idea of a Harrison greatest-hits compilation with an experiment whereby Beatles tracks were mixed with solo hits on the one album. Harrison immediately disavowed the venture, he being the least attached to the band's legacy of all the former Beatles.