Vault Release: George Harrison, ‘Living In The Material World (50th Anniversary Edition) – Revisiting The Oft Overlooked Gem

It’s been a busy year down at the George Harrison archives run by his wife Olivia and son Dhani. Earlier this year they finally got around to releasing Harrison’s pioneering charity show, The Concert For The People Of Bangladesh, on all the streaming services. And now they’ve released a new deluxe version of Harrison’s second solo, post-Beatles album Living In The Material World (50th Anniversary Edition). It’s his second solo album if you don’t include Wonderwall Music or Electronic Music his more experimental works released while he was still in the Beatles. My younger brother was always a big George fan, the quiet Beatle for the quiet brother and I don’t think even he owned those first two Harrison records and he was a “completist” back in the day. Clearly Oasis was listening… While they’re calling this the 50th anniversary edition, the album actually came out in 1973 so it’s actually 51… for you sticklers out there.

Living In The Material World is a strange record in the solo Beatles canon. It’s arguably one of the best Beatle solo albums and one of Harrison’s best solo records yet it’s not held in the same regard as other Harrison records. Harrison, as a solo artist sort of burst on the scene with the triple vinyl album, All Things Must Pass in 1970. He had so much material stored up from being limited to only 1 or 2 songs per Beatles album. It is truly Harrison’s magnum opus. And if we look back in retrospect, anything Harrison was going to put out afterwards was probably going to wither in the shadow of that album. Sort of like Fleetwood Mac after Rumours. Whatever came out was likely to be a disappointment.

Harrison had followed it up with the aforementioned live album Concert For The People Of Bangladesh, another great record, but then to his credit Harrison got so immersed in the nuts and bolts of making sure the money actually got to Bangladesh, that the charity work sort of absorbed him. How many rock stars get so involved in a charity project they don’t release a follow up album for two and a half years? In the 70s that was a lifetime between albums. Back then you didn’t see folks like the Cure waiting 16 years between albums. I guess attention spans were shorter back then…and record companies more powerful.

The album, in 1973, was described as being one of the “most anticipated” records of the year. Harrison decided to change directions on Material World much like the aforementioned Fleetwood Mac after Rumours. On All Things he brought in Phil Spector who brought his “wall of sound” production technique. I think each song had two drummers and a dozen guitar players. Spector brought everything but the kitchen sink and a marching band to the proceedings. Harrison decided to pare that down for his next album and really formed basically a core band…much like his erstwhile friend Paul McCartney who had formed Wings. He had Ringo and Jim Keltner on drums, Klaus Voorman on bass, Nicky Hopkins (who played with the Stones) and Gary Wright (of “Dream Weaver” fame) on keyboards for most of the tracks. Tellingly, Harrison chose to play all the guitars. For most of the rhythm guitar parts, he played acoustic guitar. So you went from the bombast of Spector’s production to a much mellower kind of sound. I do think this album has some of Harrison’s finest guitar playing.

The album hit number 1 in the U.S. and number 2 in the U.K. However, it was seen as a bit of a disappointment when compared to All Things which went 7x platinum. Material World only went gold. It’s like it exploded behind the first single, a song more relevant today than ever, “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace)” and then faded away. Apparently, as I recently read, it wasn’t until the mid 70s that Beatles would deign to release a second single. They’d release an album, release 1 single and then walk away. I don’t know who came up with that marketing strategy but it sounds insane. I mean, I get it, you’re a Beatle, but use your heads guys.

“Give Me Love (Give Me Peace)” is such a great song. It kicks off the album and sets the tone. Harrison had leaned heavily into his Hindu spiritualism. I guess when you’re a working class stiff from a port city in England and suddenly you’re one of the four most popular people on the planet, a little spiritual searching is in order. Kudos to him for not just falling into the Western Judeo-Christian rote thinking. I’ve always considered religion to be like sexual preference… practice whatever brings you peace, just don’t preach to me about it. I’m sure with titles like “Living In The Material World” or “The Lord Loves The One (Who Loves The Lord)” might have come across as… preachy, especially in the “Me Decade” of the 70s. The revolution failed, all the hippies had cut their hair and gotten jobs selling insurance. Harrison’s life was a bit of a dichotomy back then… his ex wife once said, “I didn’t know if George was reaching for his prayer beads or more coke…” One foot on the gas, one foot on the brake, as I’ve always been fond of saying.

The album opens on the great “Give Me Love.” The next track is a slightly bluesy number, “Sue Me Sue You Blues.” It’s a great song, with some great acoustic slide… but how excited can anybody get about a song about litigation. Such was the Beatles existence back then. George may have eventually lost his wife to Eric Clapton, but at least some of Clapton’s blues rubbed off on him…he was the only Beatles who ever touched on the blues and I’m here for it!  “The Light That Has Lighted The World,” an awkward title at best, is still a beautiful song, whose piano reminds me of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.” Harrison’s vocals are a little thin – he wasn’t a belter like John or a love song crooner like McCartney – but I think he conveys a lot of emotion in his singing. He employs falsetto at certain points during the album to up and down results. “Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long” is a wonderful, acoustic strummer of a tune. I can’t tell if George is singing about his devotion to his deity or trying to get a woman to sleep with him. Maybe both?

The title track sounds like something off of Slowhand. “Be Here Now” is such a great song, it reads like a prayer. It’s a lovely acoustic based track. “Try Some Buy Some” is a great track that laments our materialistic ways and was later covered by David Bowie who always had great taste in songs to cover. “That’s All” ends the album on another beautiful ballad-y, falsetto high point. This is a really great album and if you don’t have it, you need to…

But as long time readers know, it’s the bonus material that I judge these sets on. The second disc, with all of the bonus material recreates the sequence of the album, but with earlier takes of the tracks. It’s all very “nice to have” stuff, although probably only “need to have” for Harrison/Beatles completists… Many of the bonus tracks come across like acoustic demo’s… sort of a “Material World Unplugged” kind of a thing. Which isn’t a bad thing. I just don’t know if the price is worth what we’re getting here. The new mix on the original album is nice. Harrison includes the previously available bonus track “Miss Odell” but doesn’t include the great little bluesy number “Deep Blue.” Of particular interest here is that they did include the previously unreleased track “Sunshine Life For Me (Sail Away Raymond)” a country, almost Celtic kind of track. Acoustic guitars, fiddle and drums… I had never heard it but it was widely bootlegged… I did add it to my Playlist: Summer Songs.

The bonus stuff here is a good Xmas gift for the Beatles fan in your life, but other than “Sunshine Life,” for me, this isn’t a purchase. Stiff price for some cool, acoustic based demos. I love George and I love the Beatles but this one is more of a streamer than a must have. The sentiments and emotions of this record still resonate and this is an important album that every one should own in some form… but as I already own the original album, I’m good. At the very least you should crank this record up with a little brandy as the sun goes down…

Cheers!