Ring out the false, ring in the true (George Harrison) # 133 - 137

George Harrison Dark Horse/ I Don't Care Anymore (Apple, NZP 3493, 1974)

George Harrison Dark Horse/ Hari's On Tour (Express) (EMI, A 10696, 1974)

George Harrison Ding Dong/ I Don't Care Anymore (Apple, NZP 3494, 1974) 

George Harrison Dark Horse/ You (Starline/ Capitol, 6245, 1974/1975)

George Harrison You/ World Of Stone (Apple, NZP 3520, 1975)

The second batch of Hari's singles sees us in the dark days of 1974/1975. The days of the Pattie Boyd/ Eric Clapton romantic triangle with George, the dark days of lives ruined by alcohol and cocaine,  the dark days of the disastrous 1974 tour (George, never the most willing tourist, quickly lost his voice and had to soldier on - I have bootlegs of the tour and, believe me, it was embarrassing for all concerned) and the dark days of Extra Texture - for me, George's worst record ever.

Here's a taster of that tour:




Of course these things are relative and George is a bleedin' former Beatle so even Extra Texture has one bright moment of sheer class - You. A superb song and a great single.

I have a soft spot for Dark Horse (song and album) and so I have no real problem with the singles listed above. Even good old Ding Dong is worthy! George is remarkably frank about the love triangle on the album (Bye Bye Love and others), which is against character for him. He doesn't generally subscribe to Lennon's confessional style of songwriting so this is quite refreshing. BTW Dark Horse (the album) has an awesome cover - just saying!

The slew of singles with roughly similar tracks can be explained by looking at the numbers of each single: they come from Australia, NZ and the USA - each country seems to have been a law unto themselves as we saw from my earlier trawl through the Beatle's singles (and we'll see again when we get to the other solo fabs).

Hidden gems: Slim pickings here. I'm a loss to explain the popularity of I Don't Care Anymore and the Starline single is a double A side Capitol reissue. That leaves Hari's On Tour (Express) - a pleasant instrumental throwaway (Express is a reference to Tom Scott's band L.A. Express who played on the Dark Horse album and '74 tour) and World Of Stone which is just depressing (from The ET album which I also find depressing - except for You).