All Things Must Pass

As a Beatles fanatic, I've never liked most of their solo output. There's something about the beautiful alchemy of them being together, as well as it being a true democracy within the band - none of them had any qualms speaking up if they thought something sucked. 

 

I'm reminded of a quote from the fantastic book, A Day in the Life:

"On April 26 1969, a young engineer at Abbey Road Studios named Jeff Jarratt was getting ready to work his first session with the Beatles. George Martin was unable to attend, but Martin tried to prepare the nervous Jarratt for what he was about to experience. Jarratt recalled Martin saying, "There will be one Beatle there, fine. Two Beatles, great. Three Beatles, fantastic. But the minute the four of them are there, that is when this inexplicable charismatic thing happens, the special magic no one has been able to explain."

That immediately changed once they went solo and were surrounded by "yes men" pinching themselves they were working with a Beatle, so it's no surprise they put out a lot of absolute dreck.

 

While of course I like some of the big hits by all of them, the only album I've ever loved is George Harrison's masterpiece All Things Must Pass. Just the other day I found myself listening to it for the first time in a while, and noted it had such a calm, soothing quality to it, and today I stumbled upon this article that it is in fact the perfect album for the quarantine:

 

It’s important to remember that, in 1970, Harrison was an old man at age 27. All Things Must Pass was his first artistic statement as an ex-Beatle, and it frequently plays like someone with the adequate space to get everything off their chest. At the same time, the record never works overtime to demand attention, even accounting for its mammoth length—three discs that span 100 minutes—and Phil Spector’s Wall-of-Sound production. Harrison’s songcraft radiates effortless confidence, combining the ’60s pop sensibility his former band perfected with a shaggier rock ‘n’ roll sound that would come to define much of the ’70s. It’s genuinely easy listening, sans genre connotations, but also musically complex enough so that it never feels like empty calories, i.e. perfectly befitting this elusive quarantine mood.