Throughout the one decade they had together, there was never a moment where The Beatles seemed to get monotonous. If they had decided to stick with one sound for the rest of their lives, they would have gotten bored pretty quickly, so why not sample a bit of every single genre they could get their hands on? Although George Harrison was slowly growing as a songwriter alongside John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the response to ‘Only a Northern Song’ was total disinterest at first.
But Harrison was always going to have an uphill battle, even if he brought in a classic. He was always the one who had the late start to songwriting, and with no partner to help balance everything out, he usually had to rely on himself to make tracks blossom, only relying on the band for help when he needed it.
When the band got down to making Sgt Peppers, Harrison was already starting to move away from the traditional sounds of rock and roll. He had already immersed himself in the world of Indian music with the sitar, and looking at his material on Revolver, he was slowly starting to leave the traditional rock and roll behind to make the kind of ragas he heard from the East.
Once he had to come up with tunes for this fictional band, Harrison didn’t have any interest in just repeating himself. Since he already had to try his hand at a concept he didn’t want to make, Harrison was not happy to go from his Indian inspiration to suddenly veer into whimsical Beatles mode again. While he acquiesced with ‘Only A Northern Song’, the band were shocked that he would bring in such a drab track for the album.
When producer George Martin heard it, he didn’t take kindly to what Harrison brought to the table, telling Living in the Material World, “He had come in with this song that I thought was boring, and I said, ‘George, do you mind going back and coming up with something better?’”
Martin wasn’t the only one shocked that Harrison made such a dour track, with most of the band rejecting the number for the album. If you look at what Harrison is singing about, though, there might be a bigger reason why he wanted a song like this released.
Considering the band were giving half of their publishing money to Northern Songs LTD, this is Harrison’s way of getting back at his business partners, even saying that it doesn’t really matter what he plays because he knows that the money isn’t going to be coming to him. The chords are also particularly Harrisonian, going from one dissonant chord to the next with no real structure to them.
While Harrison’s track was competent enough to be recorded for the Yellow Submarine soundtrack, it would have completely changed the vibe of Sgt Pepper had it been released. ‘Within You Without You’ might have been closer to where Harrison’s heart was at the time, but there’s a good chance that a bitter song may have evened out all of the uber happiness that McCartney jammed into nearly every other track.
