George Harrison - Fear of Flying - Song Edit (1980)

I want to say upfront that I didn't have much to do with this. Credit should go to Walrusz for his musicianship here.

In 2014, George Harrison's widow Olivia Harrison played a one-minute-long snippet of a song George recorded around 1980 with just his voice and acoustic guitar. It was a cover of a song by Charlie Dore released in 1979, but it sounds pretty much exactly like a Harrison original. I found that snippet and found a way to repeat parts of it and make it about two minutes and twenty seconds long. I posted that here, as part of an album of acoustic Harrison songs:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/09/george-harrison-fear-of-flying-various.html

I had also previously posted an album of Harrison's stray tracks from 1970 and 1971, which I called "Cosmic Empire." Unusually for me, for five of the songs there, I used versions with extra instruments and vocals overdubbed by a fan, named Walrusz. People call this kind of thing an "outfake," and normally I disdain them, but in this one case I included them because they were so well done, with lots of musical talent. They sound exactly like you'd expect a Harrison full band version of these songs would sound like, complete with slide guitar and backing vocals.

Anyway, I don't know Walrusz from Adam, but he found my blog and discovered my edit to "Fear of Flying." He took that and added his overdubbing musical talent to it. In addition to adding in drums and bass and all the rest, he added in a guitar instrumental section in the middle, and extended the outro, making the song over three minutes long. I think it sounds great!

I hope you'll agree. He emailed the mp3 to me, and he's also posted it on YouTube. Here it is:

https://www.upload.ee/files/15239535/GeorgeHFearoFlyngSongEdit.zip.html

I think it's pretty remarkable that this has come to exist thanks to a mere one minute snippet of a solo acoustic performance played on the radio one time. Thanks to Walrusz for doing this.

Oh, and if you like his overdubs on this song, make sure to check out the five other Harrison songs he gave the same treatment to on the "Cosmic Empire" album I put together:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/06/george-harrison-cosmic-empire-various.html