{"id":272450,"date":"2025-11-09T03:52:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T03:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/272450\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T03:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T03:52:09","slug":"on-this-day-in-1969-the-beatles-charted-with-the-george-harrison-penned-track-that-even-their-fiercest-critics-loved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/272450\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1969, The Beatles Charted With the George Harrison-Penned Track That Even Their Fiercest Critics Loved"},"content":{"rendered":"

The final album recorded before their April 1970 split, Abbey Road<\/a> became one of The Beatles\u2019 most recognizable projects. Selling more than 30 million copies, the trusty duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney penned the bulk of its 17 tracks. However, many would argue that the real standouts came from lead guitarist George Harrison. On this day in 1969, The Beatles entered the UK singles charts with one of Harrison\u2019s finest songs.<\/p>\n

Did George Harrison Write This Famous Beatles Track About His First Wife?<\/p>\n

Typically, by the time George Harrison walked into the studio, he had at least a rough idea of how his guitar solos would sound. On The Beatles\u2019 \u201cSomething,\u201d however, he threw all of that out the window.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u201cNow\u00a0that,\u201d Harrison said in a 1988 interview<\/a> with Guitar World, \u201cis an example of that kind of thing where I find roughly where I can go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison, who died in 2001 at age 58, admitted, \u201cI think also I sort of smoked something, and I didn\u2019t really know what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

After repeating the solo \u201ca number of times,\u201d The Beatles left for vacation. Harrison didn\u2019t hear the final product until they returned.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very pleasantly surprised, because I\u00a0did\u00a0hit some right notes, and it\u00a0did\u00a0have a certain spontaneity to it,\u201d said the \u201cMy Sweet Lord\u201d crooner.<\/p>\n

[RELATED: The George Harrison Song That Chastised Those Who Fear Change]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSomething\u201d Received High Praise From Music\u2019s Elite<\/p>\n

Largely believed to be about George Harrison\u2019s first wife, Pattie Boyd, \u201cSomething\u201d is now The Beatles\u2019 second-most covered song after 1965\u2019s \u201cYesterday.\u201d That included the legendary Frank Sinatra, who hailed the ballad<\/a> as \u201cthe greatest love song of the past 50 years.\u201d (Notably, however, Ol\u2019 Blue Eyes often mistakenly introduced \u201cSomething\u201d as a Lennon-McCartney collaboration.)<\/p>\n

Sinatra famously wasn\u2019t a Beatles fan<\/a>, so this was exceedingly high praise. Another high-profile Beatles critic, Elvis Presley, also begrudgingly gave \u201cSomething\u201d its flowers. In fact, Presley\u2019s stepbrother, David Stanley, revealed in a March 2025 interview<\/a> with The Daily Express that the King of Rock n\u2019 Roll was particularly fond of Harrison\u2019s catalog.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe thought George was the most prolific writer. He really liked his writing,\u201d Stanley said.<\/p>\n

In addition to \u201cSomething,\u201d all four of Presley\u2019s favorites came from George Harrison\u2014\u201dNorwegian Wood,\u201d \u201cIf I Needed Someone,\u201d and \u201cHere Comes the Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Featured image by Keystone\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final album recorded before their April 1970 split, Abbey Road became one of The Beatles\u2019 most recognizable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[16764,64,63,134,34935,136,10160,36484],"class_list":{"0":"post-272450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-1960s","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-george-harrison","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-rock-music","15":"tag-the-beatles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}