George’s tour of North America in late 1974 with Ravi Shankar
was not a happy time. Returning home to Friar Park in January 1975
George told Derek Taylor “When I got off the plane and back home, I went
into the garden and I was so relieved. That was the nearest I got to a
nervous breakdown. I couldn’t even go into the house.”
Almost three months later he was back in Los Angeles to record a new
album; it was to be his last under his Apple Records contract with EMI.
He was also in LA to attend to business for his record label, Dark Horse
and the company’s recent signings – Stairsteps, Henry McCullough, and
Attitudes.
Splinter, another Dark Horse artist, was booked into A & M’s
studios on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles but they, for various reasons,
could not make the session and so George decided to use the time to
record the album that became, Extra Texture (Read All About It) – to
give it its full title. Among the musicians that helped to make this one
of George’s most sustained emotional statements were many old friends
including Gary Wright, Jesse Ed Davis, Klaus Voormann, Tom Scott and Jim
Horn.
Another old friend who played on almost the entire album is drummer
Jim Keltner, who had formed Attitudes with the brilliant Canadian
keyboard player David Foster, who plays piano, organ, synthesiser on
Extra Texture and contributed some string arrangements for ‘This Guitar
(Can’t Keep from Crying), ‘The Answer’s at the End’ and ‘Can’t Stop
Thinking About You’. Attitudes’ Paul Stallworth, shared the bass playing
duties with Voormann on the LA sessions, along with George himself.
George laid down the basic tracks for the new songs he had written,
starting on 21 April and finishing on 7 May 1975, beginning with ‘Tired
of Midnight Blue’ and ‘The Answer’s at the End’. On 31 May the overdubs
began and this included George revisiting a song called ‘You’ that he
had begun recording in London during early February 1971 with Ronnie
Spector for a proposed Apple solo album that was being produced by Phil
Spector. In Los Angeles, Jim Horn came in to play the sax solo and other
instrumental parts were added. There’s also a reprise of the song
appropriately entitled, ‘A Bit More of You’ on the album.
Trumpeter, Chuck Findley, who played in George’s touring band, joined
saxophonist Tom Scott for horn overdubs on Harrison’s gorgeous tribute
to Smokey Robinson, ‘Ooh Baby (You Know That I Love You)’, and ‘His Name
Is Legs (Ladies and Gentlemen)’. The Legs in the title is ‘Legs’ Larry
Smith the drummer with the 1960s group, The Bonzo Dog Band that were so
influential to among others, the Monty Python comedy team. The basic
track had been recorded at Friar Park the previous year during the
sessions for George’s Dark Horse album.
George’s Smokey inspired song is not a track that stands apart from
the majority of the rest of the album as you might expect. This is
George’s ‘soul record’, one where he both bares his soul and takes a
more soulful approach to the songs than he had done on his solo material
to this point in his career. And while it is melancholy in places it is
also a very beautiful record, one that stands the real test of time.
There is arguably no song more beautiful on the record than ‘The
Answer’s at the End’ that was inspired by George’s home at Friar Park.
The Victorian Gothic mansion in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire was built
in the 1890s by Frank Crisp, a City of London solicitor and enthusiast
for microscopes, on what was the site of a 13th Century friary. Both the
house’s interior design and the gardens reflected Crisp’s love of
whimsy and eccentricity and it was above an entrance-way in a garden
wall that George found the inscription, “Scan not a friend with a
microscopic glass , You know his faults, now let his foibles pass. Life
is one long enigma, my friend. So read on, read on, the answer’s at the
end.” It’s one thing finding such an inspirational text (one that George
apparently was mindful of during some of the difficult times as the
Beatles were breaking up) but it’s quite another to be able to put it to
such a lovely melody. It’s a track that benefits greatly from a lovely
David Foster string arrangement, but most of all from his brilliant
piano playing. George’s greatest, most overlooked recording?
‘This Guitar (Can’t Keep from Crying)’ was written by George in
response to some of the criticism he received during his 1974 North
American tour and came out as a single in December 1975 but failed to
chart. Almost inevitably it is compared with ‘While my Guitar gently
Weeps’ and it is unsurprising that it does not come up to the standard
of George’s 1968 anthem. But, imagine for a minute that there had not
been the former song? ‘This Guitar’ would be viewed entirely
differently; for it is an excellent song. It too benefits from Foster’s
piano playing and string arranging skills. George’s slide guitar is to
the fore, which in itself is something of a rarity for Extra Texture.
George re-recorded ‘This Guitar (Can’t Keep from Crying)’ in1992 as a
demo for Dave Stewart, who plays electric guitar on it. Ten years later
Ringo overdubbed drums and Dhani Harrison added guitar and Kara
DioGuardi vocals for Stewart’s Platinum Weird project and it is included
as a bonus track on the re-mastered album.
‘Can’t Stop Thinking About you’ is another soul song and while some
have dismissed it as ‘pop’ they are missing the point. There’s nothing
wrong with pop, and there’s nothing at all wrong with this song, which
despite its soul-like feel is still quintessential George with the
harmony chorus and backing vocals that have a hint of All Things Must
Pass about it. Perhaps most surprising is this song never made it as a
single release.
The other obvious single is ‘You’ and it was released two weeks ahead
of the album’s release. Despite it being picked as BBC Radio 1’s
‘Record of the week’ in the UK it could not peak higher than No.38. In
America it just made the Billboard top 20, where it stayed for 2 weeks.
‘You’ features Carl Radle and Jim Gordon and was recorded in February
1971 shortly before they began working on the second, aborted, Derek and
the Dominos album.
When Extra Texture (Read All About It) came out in America on 22
September 1975, and two weeks later in the UK, it failed to receive
universal acclaim – in fact just the opposite. People, and critics are
people too, harboured high expectations of any George Harrison release
and as is all too often the case they base their judgements on what has
gone before, not what they are listening to at the moment of writing
their review. Reviewers also have another issue to contend with, a lack
of familiarity. Editors need reviews churned out quickly and without the
level of listening that so much music needs. This album is no
exception; it is a grower, one that has stood the test of time far
better than many by George’s contemporaries from the middle years of
that strange decade. It still made #8 on the Billboard album chart and
was #16 in Britain.
If you’ve overlooked this album then you will not be disappointed when you give it a listen… and remember, once is never enough.
The album has been newly remastered for The Apple Years 1968-75 box set, now available.
Official George Harrison Store: http://po.st/GHAppleYears
Amazon: http://po.st/GHAppleYearsAmiTunes: http://po.st/GHAppleYearsDigi
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