George Harrison was never meant to stay in The Beatles by the end of the 1960s. He had developed into a far greater songwriter to just be known as second fiddle to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and if All Things Must Pass is any indication, he may have been even better than his bandmates in some respects. While the resentment between Harrison and his bandmates had been building up for a while, ‘Only A Northern Song’ may have been the first sign that he wanted out of the group.
Then again, there was always some question as to what the Fab Four were going to do after they departed from the road in 1966. No group had ever become a studio-only act and survived for very long, but throughout Sgt Peppers, they proved to be a cultural force to be reckoned with, kicking off the Summer of Love in epic fashion with one timeless classic after the next.
But out of all those songs, do you ever notice how Harrison only had one on the track-list? Granted, ‘Within You Without You’ may have been one of his most complex delves into Indian music thus far, but looking through Revolver, it may have been considered a major step down since he had three songs on the last record.
Well, ‘Only A Northern Song’ was intended to turn up on Sgt Peppers, but everyone was surprised that he would write something so mean-spirited. Just looking at the lyric sheet, Harrison is incredibly salty about the way he was being treated not only by his bandmates but also by his record company, constantly complaining about how Northern Songs was screwing them out of their money.
It’s no shocker that the same guy who wrote ‘Taxman’ would write something like this, but it speaks to a greater problem in the group’s history. Harrison knew that he could be making the same amount of money as Lennon and McCartney, and yet here he was, getting told what to play on every Macca tune and no one really giving his songs the time of day.
Even when working on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, the others weren’t taking the tune seriously at all until Eric Clapton showed up at the studio, by which time they were on their best behaviour. So, in essence, a song where Harrison complains that it doesn’t matter what he’s playing because it doesn’t matter anyway could have also been a slight jab at McCartney for stifling his ideas.
It’s not exactly as scathing as ‘Wah-Wah’ would be on his solo album years later, but by the time the group hit Abbey Road, no one could argue the fact that Harrison was peaking as a songwriter. Of all the tracks on the project, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ may be the most optimistic song he would ever write, and over the passage of time, ‘Something’ has given ‘Yesterday’ a run for its money in terms of how many people have covered it.
Still, for a group that was peaking around the time of Sgt Peppers, ‘Only A Northern Song’ should have been the first real sign that not everything was right in The Beatles’ camp. They all looked great standing side by side in their military jackets on the front sleeve, but that droll expression on Harrison’s face could have been the first clue that he was slowly outgrowing the need to be Fab all the time.
