(Personal reflections inspired by Beatles songs)
Song: “Give Me Love
(Give Me Peace on Earth)”
Album: Living in the Material World
Release Date: May 1973
Here’s the perfect formula for forming a band:
The founder should have a chip on his shoulder. It would also help
if he/she was a bit older than everyone else, in order to assert a certain type of leadership
that guides the conscience and attitude of the band itself. Next on board
should be a maestro; a natural-born musician who oozes melody and solidifies
the reputation of the band as to its sound and style. This new bandmate should,
soon after, introduce a friend to the founder who is a driven perfectionist and
who at the same time brings spiritual depth and a moral compass to the group. Also,
it would be all the better if this 3rd individual be a bit younger
than the rest too, in order to give the band a stronger connection with
youthful innocence. Bringing up the rear should be a mate who everyone likes; turning
the band into a family. Therein you have your formula for success.
Incredibly, this formula describes how both the Beatles and the
Who came to be. Strangely enough there is also an in-order commonality in terms
of the musical instrument each new member eventually brought to the table.
Another commonality is the general length of time it took between each step in
the band-formulating process. John Lennon and Roger Daltrey started these two
incredible bands. After a series of short-term mishaps with footnote bandmates,
they finally brought on board musical connoisseurs in Paul McCartney (Beatles) and
John Entwistle (Who), each of whom would eventually drop his original
instrument-of-choice for the bass. McCartney and Entwistle would in turn
convince the band leader (Lennon and Daltrey) to include a young buck in the
fold - George Harrison and Pete Townshend respectively - each of whom would
turn out to be the lead guitarist. Give it a few years and the membership of
each band would solidify with a beloved drummer: Ringo Starr for the Beatles and
Keith Moon for the Who.
The rest is history. A budding sociologist could write a
dissertation on this formula. Have at it!
With that said, this week I round out my “Solo September”
mini-series (which admittingly has leaked into October) by delving deeper into the
discography of that 3rd ingredient in the Beatles formula (and
arguably the most important when contemplating how popular they became); George
Harrison. The spiritual/moral compass of the band never wavered in his
otherworldly pursuits, all the way through to his dying days. That pursuit most
manifested itself to the public in Harrison’s 1973 album Living in the
Material World, which in essence is a long prayer.
Before I go further, I want to acknowledge my Cousin Tom Gilligan,
who anticipated this week’s song of choice, “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on
Earth)” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-KAvPbO8JY ). I can’t remember this ever happening in all the 340-plus blog entries
I have written over the past decade. Tom has been such a wonderful supporter of
this journey of mine, offering a never-ending supply of fantastic feedback.
This time around Tom also adds “sounding board” to his repertoire of support,
given his nailing my choice of song, and in turn reaffirming it. Thank you,
Tom!
“Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” opens Living in the
Material World. It’s the only song on the album that ever-got regular radio
time. It did this in grand fashion, reaching Number 1 on the Billboard charts
upon release. The song is a beautiful plea-of-a-prayer to God with the title
pretty much saying it all. I played it early and often all week and it never
got old. I’m pretty sure it never got old for the man who wrote it either.
Afterall, “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” is the only tune that George Harrison
would perform in every one of his concerts from 1973 on. I think this says a
lot about what the song meant to him.
Every other highlight on Living in the Material World is
prayerful too (only one song on the entire album – “Sue Me, Sue You Blues” -
does not fit the bill). My favorite of them all is “Who Can See It”, which
includes what I consider to be George Harrison’s all-time best vocal delivery. In
my mind, it is as close as anyone has ever come to achieving the majesty of Roy
Orbison’s angelic vocals, aside from the “the Caruso of Rock” himself.
The title track laments the over-materialistic values of the western
world and includes a nifty Ringo Starr drum solo just after Harrison mentions
him by name – as well as his two other former bandmates - in the song. “Be Here
Now” is a lovely song of conversion, which emphasizes living in the present. “Don’t
Let Me Wait Too Long” is the most underrated song on the album…how this composition
got overlooked by classic-rock radio is beyond me.
The odes to God (aka prayer) pile up with “The Day the World Gets
‘Round”, “The Light That Has Lighted the World”, “Try Some, Buy, Some” and “The
Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)”. After all that spiritual
bombardment, Living in the Material World fittingly closes with “That Is
All” which has the soaring feel of a soul transitioning from Earth to Paradise.
Be there no doubt after listening to this album; George Harrison’s lifetime aspirations
were entrenched in God, faith, and the afterlife. He was one of the first Rock
stars to include faith as a topic in song, and he did this repeatedly from the
mid-60s all the way to the end of his mortal life.
It was oh-so appropriate that I should be listening to Living
in the Material World all week, because my Mom spent the entirety of it in
the hospital with an aneurysm (which was finally successfully operated on early
in the week). There were many of us praying for Mom/Dot/Dorothy/Grandma and as the
days rolled by, I realized that much of my own prayer was playing out while
listening to George Harrison. Sometimes the stars align in amazing ways. This
was certainly one of them.
The situation with my Mom in the hospital also had me doing a lot
more driving than I typically have in these Covid times. Driving to and from
work pre-Covid (a 40-minute commute) was always such an advantageous time for
me to listen to music for this blog series. With the advent of Covid however,
I’ve had to find other ways to set aside the listening time, including on a
handful of occasions where I have resorted to a joy ride for old times “commute”
sake.
Anyhow, the playing and replaying of Living in the Material
World truly allowed me to get in tune with George Harrison’s message(s). Yes,
it’s a pretty overt spiritual (even religious) message Harrison is preaching
here. You could even say it borders on repetition and chanting in places. But in
many ways, that’s what prayer is, and all that driving helped me to fall under
its spell. It felt like saying the Rosary, and it put me at peace with the
situation with my Mom by keeping me in the present, which is where you want to
be in such times.
This mini-stretch of never-before-listened-to albums by the four ex-Beatles
was something I was looking forward to from the very beginning of this Fab
Foundation series. I started with John Lennon’s Walls and Bridges
three weeks ago, which was followed by Ringo Starr’s eponymous Ringo
album. Last week I tackled Paul McCartney’s Chaos and Creation in the
Backyard. And here I close with George Harrison’s Living in the Material
World. One big reason for my writing these blogs has been discovery, which
is impossible with Beatles songs, seeing as I already knew virtually all of
them. And so, I researched their solo albums, weeded out the ones I already knew,
and came up with these four with the help of critical reviews.
My Mom is on the mend now. She even texted me a humorous image a few moments ago, which I must refrain from including here. There are so many people that have played a role in my Mom’s progress to date, be their contribution through professional know-how or prayer (or both), and I’d like to think that George Harrison’s singing and chanting helped too, which was amateurishly accompanied by my added backing vocals while driving to the places that matter most this past God-given week.
- Pete
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