{"id":262951,"date":"2025-11-14T19:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/262951\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T19:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:13:11","slug":"the-beatles-album-george-harrison-didnt-want-to-listen-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/262951\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles album George Harrison didn’t want to listen to"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"George<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Fri 14 November 2025 16:11, UK <\/p>\n

Towards the end of the 1960s, The Beatles<\/a> were already breaking up. Despite making the most adventurous music that rock had ever seen on albums like Sgt Pepper, every member had started to branch out in their own direction, with John Lennon and Paul McCartney\u2019s songwriting partnership breaking down to every member writing tracks by themselves. While George Harrison was just spreading his wings as a songwriter, he admitted to not having as much affection for one of their largest projects.<\/p>\n

Looking to get the band out of their creative headspace, Harrison originally suggested meeting with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, with the group venturing to India to meditate. Having much time to themselves, every member began writing material at the retreat, eventually stockpiling more songs than they could fit on a traditional LP.<\/p>\n

By the time the Fab Four regrouped in England, though, no member wanted to give up their strongest material. Spread out across two discs, The White Album would be the only double album the band would release during their lifetime, featuring a host of different styles depending on who wrote the songs.<\/p>\n

Although each member had their own way about how the songs should be played, Harrison thought that the long runtime hurt the album, recalling, \u201cI think it was a mistake doing four sides because it\u2019s too big for people to really get into it. There are things that we could\u2019ve done without on the album and make it a tight, say, 14 tracks or something\u201d. <\/p>\n

While Harrison didn\u2019t think there was anything wrong with the record, the album\u2019s replay value rapidly diminished with him, explaining<\/a>, \u201cThere was nothing really shocking on it. Don\u2019t think there was anything particularly poor about it. But it was a bit heavy, and I find it heavy to listen to it. In fact, I don\u2019t listen to it myself. I listen to side 1, which I like quite a lot\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"George<\/a>George Harrison and Ringo Starr of the Beatles. (Credits: Bent Rej)<\/p>\n

Harrison wasn\u2019t the only one who thought the album could have been trimmed down. When asked about the project\u2019s focus, producer George Martin thought it would have been best if they had focused on making an air-tight single album experience instead of drawing it out across two albums.<\/p>\n

While the album featured a handful of the group\u2019s finest material, it didn\u2019t come without its fair share of hang-ups. During the production of \u2018Back in the USSR\u2019, tensions got so heated between the members that Ringo Starr eventually left the session<\/a>, thinking that he wasn\u2019t playing well until he received a telegram asking for him to come back.<\/p>\n

Even with his indifferent feelings towards the final product, Harrison was responsible for keeping the peace across the record. When the band were at their lowest and unable to take his songs seriously, Harrison\u2019s inclusion of Eric Clapton on \u2018While My Guitar Gently Weeps\u2019 helped bring the band together, featuring stellar harmonies by Paul McCartney and \u2018Slowhand\u2019 laying down the most lyrical guitar playing of his entire career.<\/p>\n

Despite the nitpicks, The White Album remains a pivotal moment in the history of The Beatles, showcasing every band member\u2019s abilities that they would utilise to great effect in their future solo careers. The Fab Four may have been holding everything together since leaving the road, but this is where all the tension from years together started to creep into the recording sessions.<\/p>\n

Was\u00a0The White Album\u00a0the only Beatles record George Harrison disliked? <\/p>\n

In essence, no. He did like some of the album, \u201cI liked when we got into\u00a0Rubber Soul,\u00a0Revolver\u00a0\u2014 each album had something good about it and progressed,\u201d Harrison opined in a 1977 interview via\u00a0George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters.<\/p>\n

However, the guitarist continued to reveal some records he wasn\u2019t such a fan of. \u201cThere were albums which weren\u2019t any good as far as I was concerned, like\u00a0Yellow Submarine,\u201d Harrison continued. \u201cWe put all the songs together into an album form \u2014 I\u2019m talking about the English albums now, because the States we found later that for every two albums we had, they\u2019d made three because we put fourteen tracks on an album, and we\u2019d also have singles that weren\u2019t included on albums in those days. They\u2019d put the singles \u2014 take off a bunch of tracks, change all the running order and then they\u2019d make new packages like\u00a0Yesterday and Today, just awful packages.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Fri 14 November 2025 16:11, UK Towards the end of the 1960s, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,26940,128,10447,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-262951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-george-harrison","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-the-beatles","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}