Living in the Material World underpins the talent of George Harrison

Many of his spiritual and political concerns during and after his work that brought about the two benefit concerts in New York featuring, among others, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Ravi Shankar, found their way into his evolving musical ideas that resulted in the release of Living in the Material World in the early summer of 1973.

This album, now re-issued in an excellent re-mix by Paul Hicks, and overseen by the Harrison family, brings greater clarity to (and therefore allows our greater appreciation of) Harrison’s remarkable musical range. Here are some first rate pop tracks alongside some heartfelt and, in some cases, more musically-complex, socially-aware compositions. It needs to be kept in mind that he was only twenty-six when The Beatles fell apart, yet on this record, as on All Things Must Pass, there is an extraordinary maturity evident.

This 2024 edition of what was originally a single LP has an additional album, on both the vinyl and CD incarnations, of alternative takes and acoustic versions that demonstrate the breadth of Harrison’s creativity and his sense of artistic purpose as he worked towards the final and, in his mind at the time, definitive accounts of the titles on the record. There is an attractive slipcase for the gatefold, and a booklet with a personal retrospective by Olivia Harrison and a well-written contextual essay by John Harris that gives a good description of the personnel involved in the recording and of the atmosphere in the Savile Row recording studio, a state of the art place at the time.

Although beset by legal complexities arising, inter alia, out of the collapse of the Apple company following the dissolving of the band, Harrison channelled his spiritual convictions into such tracks as the beautiful “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)”, though his sardonic side is well to the fore in the rhythmically forceful “Sue Me, Sue You Blues”: “Get together, and we could have a bad time. / It’s affidavit swearing time."

However, it’s his generous spirit that characterises most of this album, and his gift for emotional expression that brought earlier gems such as “When My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Something” is heard in “Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long”, the keening vocal even more yearning on the acoustic version (Take 49!) on the second disc. Fragments of studio chatter such as at the start of Take 3 of “The Lord Loves The One (That Loves The Lord)” convey how even in the studio while tapes were rolling Harrison was working through significant possibilities, with the conclusion of the final released version featuring some marvellous guitar work.

The care that has gone into the sonics of this edition is especially noticeable on the first disc’s re-mixed version of the lovely slow “Be Here Now”. There is a depth and fullness to the soundstage, and it makes an interesting comparison with Take 8 of the song, on the second disc, which has arguably a greater delicacy, bordering on fragility, in its more bare rendering, yet it’s most gratifying to have both.

As they did with the fiftieth anniversary edition of All Things Must Pass, Paul Hicks and the Harrison family have delivered an excellent reminder of the greatness of George Harrison after and, in certain instances, the equal of his musicianship in The Beatles.