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Songs like layla unplugged6/19/2023 ![]() ![]() The concert was a major success and the resulting triple album sold like hotcakes. Harrison organized it after his good friend Ravi Shankar told him of the plight of starving refugees from the Bangladesh Liberation War. The Concert for Bangladesh was one of the first big multi-celebrity rock concerts for charity. And here is a live clip of George Harrison performing the song at the AugConcert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden. Isn’t this beautiful? In addition to George’s lyrical guitar work, the song also features some subtle but impressive drumming from Ringo. So here is the audio of Something the video includes clips of the Beatles together with their wives. Since its release, Something has been covered more times than any Beatles song except Yesterday. John Lennon stated that Something was the best song on the entire Abbey Road album, and the song was the first George Harrison composition to comprise the “A” side of a Beatles single, where together with the flip side “Come Together,” it went to #1 on the pop charts around the world. Richie Unterberger of AllMusic describes “Something” as “an unabashedly straightforward and sentimental love song” The guitar licks mesh perfectly with the lyrics, and together they produce a warm glow in the listener. George Harrison’s guitar work on Something is haunting and memorable. The lyrics are actually quite simple: a man expresses his love for a woman, enumerating several small details – her smile, her style, the way she moves – that endear her to him. The song Something represents a beautiful combination of melody and lyrics. Here is a photo of George and Pattie in the mid-60s. However, not long afterwards they did have their first date, Pattie moved in with George in 1965 and they were married in January 1966. “Will you marry me? Well, if you won’t marry me, will you have dinner with me tonight?”Īt that time Pattie had a serious boyfriend, so she rebuffed George’s first offer of a date. This photo was taken for the Italian issue of Vogue – oh boy, this brings back memories of the 70s! Embed from Getty ImagesĪpparently George must have been pretty smitten with Pattie, because when he approached her on the film set he is reputed to have said, Here is a photo of Pattie Boyd and Twiggy from about 1972. At that time, Boyd had a successful modeling career, and had appeared on the cover of Vogue. Harrison had met Pattie in 1964 when she had a one-line part in the first Beatles film, A Hard Day’s Night. George Harrison wrote Something as a tribute to his wife, Pattie Boyd. In fact, once the Beatles broke up, George had accumulated so many of his own songs that he released them in a three-record album, All Things Must Pass! His contributions to that album – Something and Here Comes the Sun – are stunning, and many consider them to be two of the finest songs on that album. However, by the time of the final Beatles album, the 1969 Abbey Road, George’s songwriting had dramatically improved. George was also convinced that John and Paul considered his songs to be rather weaker than the best Lennon-McCartney tunes. However, Lennon and McCartney were such prolific song-writers that George always felt that he had to exert significant pressure to get his own songs recorded. In addition, once George Harrison began writing in earnest, they would include a couple of George’s songs on an album. The vast majority were written by Lennon and McCartney, and they would have Ringo sing one of the songs. ![]() However, fairly quickly the Beatles albums began to consist solely of original tunes. For example, their early British album Please Please Me contained eight Lennon-McCartney songs and six covers. In their early days, the Beatles were playing a mixture of covers and original Lennon-McCartney songs. In the remaining sections I will describe the circumstances behind the tunes, and the very poignant personal relationships behind these two songs. It turns out that both songs were written by two different men about the same woman, and they were written just over one year apart. So why would I compare the two songs in this post? The connection is the following. Something was written by George Harrison and performed by the Beatles and Layla was co-written by Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon, and was performed by Clapton’s group Derek and the Dominos. It should be very clear that Something and Layla are absolutely not two versions of the same song. Those of you who follow this blog know that my style is to contrast the original version of a song with one or more covers of the same song. However, we first need to explain why we are comparing what appear to be two completely different songs. Hello there! In this week’s blog we will review two exceptionally beautiful and haunting songs: Something by the Beatles and Layla by Derek and the Dominos. ![]()
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