Monday, August 16, 2021

George Harrison - All Things Must Pass - Acoustic, Volume 2 (1970)

When George Harrison released the "All Things Must Pass" double album (okay, technically a triple album if you count the bonus jams) in 1970, he'd stockpiled a bunch of excellent songs. Sadly, the other Beatles didn't appreciate his songwriting talents until shortly before the Beatles broke up, when the quality of classic songs like "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun" couldn't be denied.

It turns out that Harrison had so many songs that even the "All Things Must Pass" double album only contained about half of them. Some of these songs were done by him on later albums, such as "You" and "Beautiful Girl," but most were not, and have never been released in any form, until the super deluxe edition of "All Things Must Pass" came out recently. ("It Don't Come Easy," supposedly written by Ringo Starr, appears to be mostly written by Harrison. He gave it to Starr, who had a big hit with it in 1971.)

A few days ago, I posted an all-acoustic version of the exact songs of "All Things Must Pass," using the same song order. This is the sequel to that, containing all-acoustic versions of all the other known songs from those sessions that fit the acoustic format. (There were a couple of instrumental jams and such that I left off.) 

As with that earlier post, I had a problem in that some of the songs were done with a full band instead of in solo acoustic mode. So, just as I did with that album, I used the program Spleeter to remove the drum track, and in some cases the bass track, turning them into acoustic versions. This worked better on some songs than others. It worked best for songs that were strongly based on acoustic guitar to begin with, such as "Dehra Dun" or "I Live for You." It didn't always work well with the full band, electric guitar ones, such as "It Don't Come Easy" or "You," but I've included them here anyway. You can choose to keep them or not. The songs where I made Spleeter edits are marked with "[Edit]" in the title.

This album is an hour and two minutes long. That's actually one minute longer than the acoustic "All Things Must Pass" that I posted. It's true that a few of the songs are covers: "I Don't Want to Do It," "Wedding Bells," "Get Back" (the Beatles song, but Harrison didn't write it), "Mama, You've Been on My Mind," and "Woman Don’t You Cry for Me." A couple more were more like jammy larks. But still, there was enough quality material here for him to have easily released a strong album in 1971. I'll always be mystified why he waited until 1973 for a follow-up album to "All Things Must Pass," and then didn't put any of these songs on it at all.

By the way, I'd previously posted a famous George Harrison acoustic bootleg called "Beware of ABKCO." Between this album and the other acoustic one I posted a few days ago, that is not rendered moot. Plus, the entire bootleg has now been officially released, and in better quality, as part of the super deluxe edition release. So I'll be deleting that from the blog over the next few days.

01 It Don't Come Easy [Edit] (George Harrison)
02 I Live for You [Edit] (George Harrison)
03 Going Down to Golders Green [Edit] (George Harrison)
04 Dehra Dun [Edit] (George Harrison)
05 Om Hare Om [Gopala Krishna] [Edit] (George Harrison)
06 Sour Milk Sea (George Harrison)
07 Everybody-Nobody (George Harrison)
08 Window Window (George Harrison)
09 Beautiful Girl (George Harrison)
10 Tell Me What Has Happened to You (George Harrison)
11 Nowhere to Go (George Harrison)
12 Cosmic Empire (George Harrison)
13 Mother Divine (George Harrison)
14 I Don't Want to Do It (George Harrison)
15 Wedding Bells [Are Breaking Up that Old Gang of Mine] [Edit] (George Harrison)
16 Down to the River [Rocking Chair Jam] [Edit] (George Harrison)
17 Get Back [Edit] (George Harrison)
18 Mama, You've Been on My Mind (George Harrison)
19 You (George Harrison)
20 I'll Still Love You [Whenever] (George Harrison)
21 Woman Don’t You Cry for Me (George Harrison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119210/GeorgeH_1970_AllThingsMstPassAcousticVolume2_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I wanted to use another outtake from the "All Things Must Pass" photo session. But I couldn't find any good ones in color. So instead I used the same garden background as with the previous album, but I superimposed a photo of Harrison playing acoustic guitar that was taken during the "All Things Must Pass" sessions. I hope the cover more or less works.

10 comments:

  1. Thank you again! The first part was excellent! Your use of Spleeter was seamless!

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  2. Any chance of looking at Nick Drake's Bryter Later? I had some good results using the online website. Hazey Jane 2 has some great potential for separation. but I think Spleeter results you are posting are far better.

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  3. Also John Martyn's Solid Air I hear could be stripped back to pure acoustic guitar and vocals from my experiment with the title track.

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  4. Thank you so much for George Harrison. My favorite Beatle and musician.

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  5. Thanks for this.
    FYI - Woman Don't You Cry For Me is a Harrison composition.
    The reason he didn't release anything for a while is between producing Apple acts, arranging the Bangla Desh concert and associated charity stuff and paying back all his friends who had helped him by guesting on their albums or producing there was no time for him to "capitalize" on ATMP's success until early '73 (when he knocked McCartney from the #1 spot).

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  6. Thanks so much - playing catch up and this is awesome.

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  7. Apparently, my virus defense regards Zippyshare as approximately the gates of hell. Could you use a more congenial vehicle for posting? Thanks!

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  8. I have used Spleeter but I have found that Ultimate Vocal Remover give better-sounding results.

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    Replies
    1. I also have discovered that. If you look at some of my recent posts, you'll see that I'm using UVR5 already.

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    2. OK. I only discovered your blog tonight and haven't been through it all. Anyway, thanks for 'Fear of Flying'.

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