Songwriting duties in The Beatles were famously taken up by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. In the early years, they worked as a pair to pen songs that would propel the Fab Four to the top, but their partnership would eventually fizzle out through creative differences. They grew up and grew apart, preferring to write alone rather than side by side. Meanwhile, George Harrison was only just getting started.
Harrison’s name has largely been missed out in conversations surrounding the lyrical talents of The Beatles. While lists of the greatest songwriters of all time almost always give a nod to McCartney and Lennon, the so-called quiet Beatle rarely makes the cut, but this isn’t an accurate reflection of his talents with a pen. Like his bandmates, he was a truly gifted songwriter.
Harrison contributed several compositions to the Fab Four’s catalogue, including the shimmering ‘Here Comes The Sun’ and the gorgeous ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. He even offered up ‘All Things Must Pass’ to the band, but they never recorded the track. Perhaps his songwriting talents were lost to his shy demeanour, flying under the radar amidst the more dominant voices of Lennon and McCartney.
Fortunately, when Harrison dove into his solo career following the demise of The Beatles, he truly came into his own as a songwriter. Nowhere is this more evident than on All Things Must Pass, the first record he put out following the break-up. Harrison showed off his romantic side on ‘I’d Have You Anytime’, created a hit with ‘My Sweet Lord’, and spawned endless covers with ‘It’s a Pity’, each song proving that he was underutilised in The Beatles.
Some of Harrison’s most daring lyrics on the record came on the disc two track, ‘Awaiting on You All’. The song featured lush layers of instrumentation, with tambourines and trumpets cushioning Harrison’s religious declarations. “By chanting the names of the Lord and you’ll be free,” he sings, “The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see.”
In the final verse of the track, Harrison takes aim at the Pope with the lyric, “While the Pope owns 51 per cent of General Motors, and the stock exchange is the only thing he’s qualified to quote us, the Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see.” The line referenced the Vatican’s investments in corporations such as General Motors, though the percentage is over-exaggerated.
Harrison’s lyrics seemed to contrast the state of religion in the modern world with the true meaning of spirituality, contrasing the Pope’s business affairs with God’s attempts to awaken and free people. Though the verse made it into the recording of the song, EMI deemed it too controversial to appear in the accompanying lyric book, and it was omitted.
Despite the label’s trepidation towards the line, it did show off Harrison’s talent as a songwriter. He juggled his spirituality with melody and metaphor, and ‘Awaiting on You All’ stood out as one of the best examples of this. It’s a gorgeous song instrumentally, dense and delicate at the same time, but it’s also meaningful in its lyricism and entirely George Harrison.
Those who purchased the record may not have been able to peruse and dissect all of the lyrics to ‘Awaiting on You All’ at the time of release, but the feeling and force of the song comes along nonetheless.
