George Harrison “Cloud Nine”
How’s this for a bummer opener? Yesterday, we had to put our darling dog down and it was gutting. Frequently throughout the day, I thought of George Harrison.
“All Things Must Pass” is my 40-something talisman. It’s — by a great margin — my favorite Beatles’ solo album. It’s hard to fathom Pop music confronting life and death so plainly and humbly. It’s perhaps even more difficult to fathom something so profound not turning out pretentious or offputting. And, yet, George made some of the best music of the last fifty years on “All Things Must Pass” in no small part because he was fearless about facing his own meaninglessness. George realized that he was both everything and nothing. Important and meaningless. Living and dying.
In “Living in the Material World,” the excellent Scorsese documentary, Olivia Harrison said that George was basically preparing for death his whole adult life. Searching inwardly. Getting closer to god, closer to everything and closer to nothing. She says that George smiled as he passed. All of this sounds hokey and kind of inconceivable except for the fact that this was the man who made “Hear Me Lord,” “My Sweet Lord,” “The Art of Dying” and “What is Life.”
It’s a wonder that he had any Pop music left to make after “All Things Must Pass.” Some would say that, truthfully, he didn’t. And, by 1982, staring down middle age, George Harrison — the Rock star — sounded ready to fully disappear. “Gone Troppo” is so breezy, whimsical and insubstantial that it was easy to wonder if it mattered to George Harrison; or if it mattered at all. It did not chart in the UK. Brits had ostensibly let him go. And perhaps that was his intention.
In many ways, he was well suited for middle age. He had apparently disabused himself of many material concerns and pretense. He had gazed inward and meditated on it for decades. He pursued other passions, like family, film and race cars. He was a man, living and dying one day at a time. From 1982 to 1986 there would be no more new music.
And then, surprisingly, George delivered “Cloud Nine.” Seemingly coaxed, coached and sculpted by Jeff Lynne, it’s fair to wonder if “Cloud Nine” was a deft, confident return to form, as it was frequently celebrated in 1987, or simply a Jeff Lynne product with George Harrison as the primary ingredient. On the one hand, the album went platinum in the U.S. and produced a bonafide smash hit in the chart topping “I’ve Got My Mind Set On You.” On the other hand, it would prove to be Harrison’s final solo album. His primary musical outlet for the next few years would be, most unsurprisingly, Jeff Lynne’s Traveling Wilburys.
All of this begs the question, to what extent is “Cloud Nine” the work of forty-four year old George Harrison? Did the ex-Beatle find a well of creativity and really miss making popular music? Did he just want to provide a kindness to his fans? Or is the album a product, logically designed, developed, fitted and marketed by Jeff Lynne, the most famous of Beatles’ fans?
These questions are inspired in part by Harrison’s long absence and apparent ambivalence about continuing his Pop music career. But they are also notable in the challenge of reconciling the kindly middle-aged guitarist, surrounded by Chuck E Cheese contraptions in the “I’ve Got My Mind Set On You” video with the zen master in pursuit of total consciousness. Who was really the man behind “Cloud Nine”? And, as if those former questions even matter, it’s also worth asking, “is the music any good?”
In 1987, the consensus seemed to be an emphatic “yes.” Many critics and fans went further, suggesting that this was Harrison’s best album since “All Things Must Pass” (not a huge stretch) and that it was more than a comeback — that it was actually an important rock album on its own merit, notwithstanding any of his own or The Beatles’ history (a massive stretch). “Cloud Nine” is not an important album on its own merit. It is, in fact, only important because of its context as his first album in five (5) years, his final solo studio album and the formal beginning of his collaborations with Jeff Lynne. Aside from that, it’s all just OK.
It’s almost impossible for me to consider the idea that George Harrison could make a boring pop rock record. It’s easy to imagine him making a quiet, modest record or a complicated mess. But the man who bends guitar strings the way he does; the man who sings like a serpent around those guitar leads, in a voice that can be brittle, or strong with vibrato or yearning and pleading; or the man who wrote “Here Comes The Sun” and “What Is Life”? or the man who had seen more outside and within himself than most any living man had. How could that man be capable of making a professional, middle of the road record.
But that’s exactly what “Cloud Nine” is. The album opens with the title track — a smooth, modest, familiar and easy song that feels good. It has a bit of swagger in its bottom that is unusual for both Harrison and Lynne. The guitar is clean and quick, like Mark Knopfler in tone, but less acrobatic. The mid-temp stuff on this album, once the domain where Harrison thrived, falls flat here. “Someplace Else” and “That’s What it Takes” are plodding. There’s not enough lead guitar, Harrison’s voice lacks much of the tension that made it interesting and they don’t provide Jeff Lynne an opportunity to add synths, strings or big chorus echoes.
The upbeat songs fare much better. They stay on track and chug along on a steady 4/4. They are unfancy compositions, but they are sweet and buoyed by some extra syrup in George’s voice and the production flair that Lynn is (in)famous for. “Fish In The Sand” gets your toes tapping. “This Is Love” is pure proto-Wilburys. And “Devil’s Radio” is a perfect little song about gossip, given so much production love that it could fit in on E.L.O.’s greatest hits. And I consider that high praise.
There is “When We Was Fab,” a literal and stylistic Beatles’ reference that no doubt once thrilled fans but has aged like a cheap souvenir or CGI from the 80s. And, yes, there are a couple ponderous, ballads. “Breath Away From Heaven” is a lot of exotic strings and bad poetry over a non-existent melody. Its saving grace is its relative brevity and the fact that it is followed by the undeniable closer, “Got My Mind Set On You.” “Got My Mind Set On You” reached number one in the US and was, amazingly, on constant MTV rotation. It’s a cover of a 1962 song and is the ultimate earworm. The refrain is repeated twelve times and then an abridged refrain is repeated eight times. It’s catchy. The video is weird and fun. And it runs out of steam somewhere between the first chorus and the two minute mark.
And with that smash hit, George Harrison’s career as a solo, studio artist ended. “All Things Must Pass” is, in retrospect, about as middle-aged an album as has ever been made. George Harrison was twenty seven when it came out but was already singing about the living as dying. It’s hard to imagine where else a man could go musically after he had been in the Beatles and made a triple LP magnum opus. He would release more good music. He would have more hits. But he would never return to form. Because that’s not what we do. We live and then we pass.