George Harrison - Fear of Flying - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1971-1982)

Here's something I'm excited to post, because I've taken two snippets of unreleased George Harrison songs and improved them into full songs.

First, let me explain that this album gathers up all the acoustic Harrison performances that don't easily fit anywhere else. I posted one album like this already, covering the years 1969 and 1970. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/george-harrison-acoustic-versions-1969.html

This is the sequel, covering 1971 to 1982. Mostly, it contains acoustic demos that were included as bonus tracks to various official studio albums. But there are some unreleased performances too, especially four songs Harrison did with Paul Simon for Saturday Night Live in 1976.

Additionally, two songs I found for this album were good, but too short. One is the song "Deep Blue" done for rehearsals for the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. The audio comes from video footage (which can be found on YouTube), but apparently the recording only started in the middle of the song, for a total of a little over a minute. I decided to do some tinkering to flesh it out. This version began with the last line of the chorus, then goes through one verse and a chorus before coming to an end. I put another copy of the verse and the chorus at the start, matching it up with that last line of the chorus. Then I took some of the instrumental music near the end and put it at the very beginning, to imitate how the song begins on the studio version. The result is two minutes of the song instead of just over one minute. I think it now sounds like a proper song instead of just a snippet.

I did a very similar thing with the song "Fear of Flying." In 2014, Harrison's wife Olivia played a one minute long snippet of a demo of the song, which was originally done by Charlie Dore in 1979, and then done by Harrison not long after that. The snippet contained all of two verses and a chorus, plus a one line of another verse, which starts out the same as the first verse. So I replaced that one lats line with a repeat of the entire thing, and then repeated just the first verse once more. Finally, using a few seconds of strumming from the middle of the song, I constructed an instrumental fade out. Now, instead of one minute, the song lasts two minutes and 17 seconds. It sounds like a real song to me, not just a snippet.

Hopefully, someday the Harrison estate will finally get around to officially releasing all of the "Fear of Flying" demo as well as many, many more demos by him that are said to exist. Until then, hopefully this edit will allow you to enjoy the song. If you're more of a purist and just want to hear the one minute version, it can be found on YouTube.

On a different note, while checking to make sure I had all the acoustic Harrison performances available for this album, I came across a great performance from 1997 that I'd missed. That's a solo acoustic version of the Traveling Wilburys song "If You Belonged to Me." There isn't enough material for a third acoustic album after 1982, so I've updated my "Portraits of a Leg End" album and added that song to it. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/george-harrison-portrait-of-leg-end.html

Oh, by the way, I also edited the song "Bye Bye Love." There was some annoying buzzing and crackling during the first chorus. I was able to remove it by patching in parts of the second chorus. I also removed some crowd noise during the first chorus using the same method.  

01 The Light that Has Lighted the World [Demo] (George Harrison)
02 Deep Blue [Edit] (George Harrison)
03 If Not for You (Bob Dylan & George Harrison)
04 Sue Me, Sue You Blues (George Harrison)
05 I Don't Care Anymore (George Harrison)
06 Dark Horse (George Harrison)
07 Bye Bye Love [Live] (George Harrison & Paul Simon)
08 Rock Island Line [Live] (George Harrison & Paul Simon)
09 Homeward Bound [Live] (George Harrison & Paul Simon)
10 Here Comes the Sun [Live] (George Harrison & Paul Simon)
11 Let It Be Me [Demo] (George Harrison)
12 Here Comes the Moon [Demo] (George Harrison)
13 Life Itself [Demo] (George Harrison)
14 Blow Away [Demo] (George Harrison)
15 Fear of Flying [Edit] (George Harrison)
16 Save the World [Demo] (George Harrison)
17 Mystical One [Demo] (George Harrison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119279/GeorgeH_1971-1982_FrofFlying_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art, using the cover of Harrison's 1980 book "I Me Mine" as the basis.