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George Harrison
"Cloud Nine" (1987)
Cloud Nine/That's What
It Takes/Fish On The Sand/Just For Today/This Is Love/When We Was Fab//Devil's
Radio/Someplace Else/Wreck Of The Hesperus/Breath Away From Heaven/Got My Mind
Set On You
'I
can rock as good as Gibraltar!'
We've said it before on this website and are running
out of time to say it again but...wasn't the 1980s weird? This was the decade
where introverts became loud and noisy and extroverts became obnoxious. You'd
think that George Harrison, ex-Beatle, full-time gardener, life-long cynic,
would have been the first person to see through the decade. But no, there he is
on the front of the album cover in a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, an
unconvincing photoshopped cloud disappearing behind him and an airbrushed look
about his skin-tones. When I first saw this as a Beatle-obsessed five-year-old
(already cynical and holier - or is that Holliesier given my other favourites
of the time? I was a very weird five-year-old by the way - than thou about modern
pop) I thought it was a joke, a parody from George's generation to the one
above mine about what music should be, could be and would be. But if anything
the contents inside get worse. George's music has been airbrushed, his vocals
digitally treated and his lyrics sweetened while the ex-Beatle least likely to
have ever agreed to a reunion without a gun to his head records using the most
Beatley production any of the fab four had used on their solo albums so far
(although, this being a Jeff Lynne production, the result is only a third
Beatles and a third-Rutle and w third-Womble). I was bitterly disappointed -
and more so when both album and first single made number one in the UK. Now my
schoolfriends on the playground thought my music tastes were, shock horror, on
a par with their love of Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. George, you
were the musician I trusted more than anyone else to tell the truth and never
sell out (yep, I really did think this, I really was a weird five-year-old),
how could you do this to me?
Well, here's how. Beatles don't speak about money
much - they're like The Royal Family and civil servants in that regard - but we
know now that George was, if not exactly poor, then closer to the breadline
than he was to being a millionaire. His solo career had stuttered to a quiet
halt since the release of 'Gone Troppo' in 1982. George had made that record
because he felt he ought to rather than because he wanted to and when it died a
death (thanks partly to George doing no publicity for it whatsoever) he
shrugged his shoulders and let music take a back-seat. Sadly the compositions
on this album suggest that George never really changed his attitude towards
making this album and only did so because of the latest of an endless sea of
legal troubles that had dogged him since the early 1970s. This time it wasn't
The Beatles of The Chiffons' legal team getting antsy though and George had
brought the court-case himself against his Handmade Films co-founder Denis
O'Brien for running off with the company's profits, embezzlement and fraud that
had left his wallet several billion pounds lighter. With a massive mansion to
keep up, several good friends and relatives on the pay-roll and a
now-eight-year-old Dhani to look after, George had to do something. The lesser
of many evils (reuniting The Beatles, appearing on MTV, maybe forming his own
F1 team 'Harrison Haas'?!) was to make another record. But making another 'Gone
Troppo' clearly wasn't going to get George very far. What he needed was a hit
record that appealed to casual music-goers, not just a few faithful Beatle
fans. What he needed was Jeff Lynne.
Lynne's band The Electric Light Orchestra had for a
long time been hailed as the 'true' heirs of the Beatle-sound, although to my
ears this argument was never as convincing as that made for Badfinger (who had
the sound and the moody ideas), CSNY (who had the attitude and the talent) or
Oasis (who had a similar record collection, Northern swagger and close-enough
haircuts). ELO had, you see, made some vaguely abstract concept albums on
vaguely the same lines as 'The White Album' (only most of their album covers
seemed to be red for some reason) and after years of being a Beatle fan and
years of being told he sounded like The Beatles, once his 'day job' ended and
he got more into production work, he was naturally eager to work with a real
live Beatle. George, a bit uncertain of strangers in his life (and especially
raving Beatle looneys at that) took to Jeff straight away, enjoying his music
and saw immediately what Lynne could do for his fading fortunes; despite first
coming to fame in the 1960s, as far back as the end days of The Move and being
best known for his songs from the 1970s, Jeff had a real grasp of the 1980s
sound and would be much nicer to work with than some young upstart teenage kid
with a baseball cap on. The pair found they shared the same musical tastes
(though Jeff's love of 1950s is never apparent in his productions, bar The
Traveling Wilburys occasionally) and the same humour, although they were still
very different characters, Jeff all logic and George all spirit (They also had
what sounds like an unintentionally hilarious 'cultural exchange' week where
Jeff took George to the cricket where he was bored to tears and moaned for a
whole ride home how bored he was before taking Jeff to a formula one grand prix
where he said exactly the same!) George even starts looking like Jeff, growing
out his hair into a 'Lynne' frazzle and adding stubble to his cheeks as can be
seen by contrasting the 'making of' gatefold sleeve pictures with the 'all
finished' front cover.
George got what he wanted thanks to Jeff - a
successful hit record that raked in badly needed millions and out-sold anything
Paul and Ringo were doing in this period (though Macca's similar 'Press To
Play' wins on every level, especially courage). It appealed to current
pop-goers who had never heard of George (with the single 'I Got My Mind Set On
You' greeted as if it was by a 'new unknown' for a while until parents pointed
out the name and their Beatle LPs to their teenage offspring; Harrison getting
the last laugh as it was a cover of a song that dated back to his own teenage
days in the 1950s!) and Beatle fans who wanted something 'normal' and 'Beatley'
to buy (Jeff really knew his Beatle stuff, especially the drum sound and
harmony arrangements). 'Cloud Nine' even appealed to casual music fans who'd
heard of the 'super-group' at the core of this record (George, Ringo, Jeff,
Eric Clapton and Elton John, all but the drummer pictured in the gatefold
sleeve in a pose that looks in retrospect like a first try-out for the first
'Traveling Wilburys' album later in the year). This album was hailed by many a
critic as the album of the year, many casual Beatle-fans really adored it and
for a glorious year there George was regularly being called 'the nation's
favourite Beatle' rather than 'grumpiest Beatles' as per usual (this is also a
measure of how low Paul McCartney's stock had fallen for the first time since
the 1970s; his own 'comeback' album 'Flowers In The Dirt' is very much modelled
on this one, winning on points - again mainly for bravery).
What Jeff never ever understood - and what true
Harrison maniacs like me can't stand about this LP - is that he never for a
minute understood solo George. There is not a single reference to God on this
album for instance - though there is a song about the devil, sort of. Wahoo,
you might be thinking (especially if you're come to this album direct from
'Living In The Material World' where that's the only subject matter the whole
album). But that leaves George nothing else to write about. His songs used to
be, if not always the very best then certainly the deepest of solo Beatle-dom,
concerning our passage through the human world, the sea of distractions that
keep us from our path of life and how to prepare for what comes 'next'. Though
George's albums often had silly moments in them, they are by and large
substantial, serious creations. 'Cloud Nine' by contrast feels trivial, the
flimsiest Harrison album since the
I've-just-bought-a-moog-and-do-you-kno-w-how-much-they-cost?-I'm-making-an-album-to-p-ay-for-it
'Electronic Sounds' in 1969. What does George have to write about now he no
longer has life, death and the universe to play with? Happy songs about feeling
on top of the world, grumpy songs about modern music not being what it used to
be, silly banal songs designed for the radio not for the soul. A 'normal'
Harrison production might have rescued it, but Jeff Lynne's frivolous
production, full of twinkly synths, brass horns and cute mass harmonies makes
this sound like a 'Beatles-lite' production, with all the 'fat' taken out (no
calories maybe and it won't take that long to digest, but it's hardly going to
make your head and heart feel better the way, say, 'All Things Must Pass'
always does even though it tries a similar trick of taking 'humble' songs and
making them feel 'big'). This time round, though, 'Cloud Nine' isn't a cloud
but just a lot of hot air, the one George Harrison album that has little or nothing
to say. After five years of being away gardening, you'd have thought George
would have had a little something to say, even if he'd kept it for a B-side or
something. The result is the least interesting Harrison solo album, even if it
was by far his best-selling (at least since 1970, arguably more so judged by
merely instant sales rather than re-issues).
There are exceptions to this rule that show how well
this idea could have worked and what George perhaps wanted Jeff to do a little
more of across this album. Hit single 'Got My Mind Set On You' is catchy as
hell, even if it says nothing (whereas 'Devil's Radio', funnily enough, hasn't got a chance in hell
of being a hit single however much Jeff tries to dress up George's grumpiest
song in years). 'When We Was Fab' is fabulous, Jeff taking every Beatle cliché
he can think of and offering up a genuine sense of awe, mystique and wonder
that contrast nicely against George's manically acerbic lyrics about what a
horrid time he had in the 1960s when everyone else was off having fun. 'This Is
Love' - the relative flop third single - may actually be the best, with a lyric
written from the heart about Olivia (and maybe God?) simplified to the part
where everything is simple, an 'All You Need Is Love' for the 1980s that's
similarly warm and glorious. And then there's the one moment where George sings
from his heart and not his bank balance on the mournful ballad 'Just For
Today', his more immediate response to his financial difficulties: just when
things were looking up and he felt he had his life under control something
comes to make him question everything, making him desperate to live through
this time of agony and get to the happy stuff. It's a moving moment because,
singing in a lower register and without the bouncing freak show of Lynne's
other productions, it reminds you just how good George is at this sort of thing.
A whole album like those four songs and I wouldn't
be complaining a bit. But the rest is ugly, bordering on offensive. 'Breath
Away From Heaven' unwisely returns to the Chinese stereotyping of the recent
'Shanghai Surprise' film flop, a debacle that cost Madonna and Sean Penn their
marriage and George very nearly his livelihood. The fact that most of the album
sound like outtakes from his written-on-the-spot soundtrack (made at the last
minute when another musician fell through and George realised he needed a big
name to sell it so might as well use his) suggests that this record too was
written in a hurry. Maybe, too, there's an alternative agenda here, George
crying for 'Help!' behind the pop facade. What, really, does 'Cloud Nine' mean?
George has clearly been told to sound 'cheerful' and there's a booming
drum-track anyone who survived the 1980s will recognise from every hit single
released in a three year period back then. But George sings deep, scarily,
sombre, anywhere but on cloud nine. We never find out what 'it 'takes' in the
album's second song where he admits to us he doesn't want to pay such a high
price. 'Fish On The Sand' admits to being totally helpless and out of his
comfort zone. 'Devil's Radio' complains that all modern music is patronising
and filled with messages of hate - and then does exactly that by putting down
everything in the charts even though it's that sort of music that offer George
his lifeline here. 'Wreck Of The Hesperus' is a bunch of weak jokes about
middle-age in a song that strains at the leash to portray George as young and
vibrant when he feels a million years old. 'Someplace Else' longs to be a
million miles away from 'here' with a past loved one that George used to be
with (God? His old production team?) You get the message...this is a Beatle
playing at being a 1980s rockstar for fun and the joke feels a little bit on
'us' for swallowing it and making it such a big hit. Clever? or mean?
One other irony of this record is that it's the one
that features George on the front cover clutching his guitar like a lucky
talisman, while the back cover gets a much weirder picture of a guitar neck
sticking up through a 'lumberjack' shirt., the bottom half removed and replaced
with a table. This is, you see, George's least guitar-driven album - certainly
since the keyboard heavy 'Extra Texture' and even that had a few solos in it.
On 'Cloud Nine' only the songs 'Someplace Else' and the solo in 'When We Was
Fab' feature that recognisable guitar sound as the most important thing in the
mix - elsewhere Lynne clobbers it over the head with extraneous noise like
drums, saxophones, Eric Clapton and synths. My guess is that George got told
somewhere down the line that in order to 'sell' this album he had to remind
people of his 'signature sound' (hence the cover) but under no account was he
allowed to play it on the record for anything other than 'colour'. Hence,
perhaps, the 'joke' on the back where the guitar has literally become 'part of
the furniture'. In more practical terms George asked a guitar expert to
preserve his original teenage guitar for posterity and was so proud of the work
he decided to use it on the cover instead (the back cover, too, may be a shot
George too while visiting the 'workshop' where his guitar was being put back
together), but hey I like my theory more!
The revelation - and what nearly makes the album
work anyway - is George's vocals across the album. Even if I'm right and this
album's collection of songs started off as sarcastic 'Blood From A Clone'
diatribes about having to go through with the process of making an ironically
'material' album for a 'material' world when George's heart and head is already
in the 'spiritual', he sounds like he's enjoying himself here. Heck, George
sounds as if he's attending a party - and as The Beatle least likely to attend
a real-life party, that's a surprise. Most past Harrison albums sound solemn
and as if George has the weight of the world on his shoulders (all except the
beautiful 'George Harrison' album from 1979 where he sounds in love and at one
with the universe). This album sounds like fun. There's a twinkle in George's
voice that puts it at one with Jeff's ho-ho-ing production rather than the
grimness of many of the lyrics. The three singles, especially, wouldn't sound half
as good had George sung them in his more 'normal' tones and even the acid
tongue in 'When We Was Fab' is also laced through with affection. George is
sending up his legacy something rotten here and seems to be wanting to prove
that he can sound every bit as young, vibrant and 'hip' as any newcomer - he
just chooses not to because he's above all that. The runaway success of the
album somehow masked his original intentions that's all and the fact that
George got distracted into making the similarly good-time 'Wilbury' records
with Jeff Lynne and friends immediately after this delayed the 'serious' sequel
he had been attempting to deliver since 1990 (the record that became the basis
for 'Brainwashed' fifteen years later).
The end result, then, is a record that's divided
Beatle fans right down the middle ever since its release. To 'us' fans who
understand how deep, sincere and magical George could be when he wanted to be
it's a travesty, a joke, a waste of talent
and a bitter disappointment whereby George feels like a guest on his own
album, his ideas somewhere down below the booming drums somewhere down the
album's pecking order (seriously the name in bigger print on the back is
Jeff's, as if George is already distancing himself from it, expecting a critical
disaster as his price for a few extra sales). To the 'non-we' it's what every
Beatles solo album should have sounded like: fun, funky, trendy and catchy.
This is, in short, the Harrison album you're most likely to love if you've come
here straight from the '1' or the 'red' and 'blue' Beatles compilation albums,
rather than the 'Rubber Soul' and 'Revolver' fans of this world (who mainly go
for 'All Things Must Pass'). Personally I think my inner five year old is still
beating strongly as I still look on aghast as this album gets celebrated in a
way that quirkier, more original and certainly deeper and more moving albums
like 'George Harrison' and 'Gone Troppo' get short shrift compared to this
album of dance tunes. My older thirty-four-year-old self, adrift a bit more in
the material world myself, understands and sympathises with it a bit more -
that still doesn't mean it's 'right'. 'Cloud Nine' still leaves me feeling in a
very very low place indeed.
It speaks volumes that the first instrument you hear
on the first track, title track 'Cloud Nine', is actually Clapton's and even
then the guitar part is drowned out by a thick and heavy drum part (which is
almost certainly Ringo's). This deeply odd song ticks all the right production
boxes (happy lyrics, saxophone production, heavy beat accentuated) and yet
still sounds deeply odd and probably the single most non-commercial track on
the album, as if George is hinting at us that he's only going along with this
'rockstar pose' for reasons he doesn't want to reveal yet. Musically this is
just a cooked-up sped-up blues and even though everything is quicker, sillier,
louder and more frivolous than your average blues song George's vocal is still
right there in doom and gloom. George sings at the bottom of his register and
sounds deeply depressed even though what he's singing should be joyous, about a
loved one agreeing to date him and join in his idea of 'ecstasy' ('Join my
dream! Tell me yes! Bail out should there be a mess!') It's as if George was
told that if he wants to write a 'hit' album he needs to write about love - not
religious or married love but teenage crush kind of love - and in no way should
he be writing blues songs (so, being George, he simply 'adapted' a blues song
instead, having his cake and eating it). The result is an odd song that tries
to be happy and ecstatic from the title on down, but never quite allows itself
to 'let loose' and throughout seems to have on eye on things ending in disaster
even while he's offering up love and romance in a way we haven't heard from
George since The Beatles' 'Help!' album. The song ends too with the distinctly
unromantic line 'if you want to quit that's fine!' ringing in our ears. This
song is though a welcome chance to hear George and Eric trading lines for the
only time in their careers (with the possible sole exception of 'Ski-Ing' from
the 'Wonderwall' soundtrack, which some say is just Clappers overdubbed
anyway).
'That's What It Takes' sounds like a more genuine
attempt at writing a catchy hit song, although yet again the mood is oddly
downbeat considering the plethora of production, the sunshiney melody and the
strummed acoustic guitar chord changes. This song sounds at first like much
more of a natural 'love' song, but even more than the last song it's the
antithesis of the 'normal' love song. George's narrator, faced with a choice
between falling in love or running away, has to dig deep, sounding deeply
uncertain about what he's taking on and sighing over all the major life changes
that are about to happen whether loves work out or not. By the time of the
chorus he's more sure of himself, offering up the idea that 'if that's what it
takes then I've got to be strong', but even then he adds again 'if that's what
it takes' for good measure. This isn't the sound of a man head over heels in
love (the song even starts off in an awkward minor key) but one whose in love
and clearly doesn't want to be. Could it be, given that George was by this time
celebrating his tenth wedding anniversary to Olivia, that this song isn't about
'love' at all but George's nervousness at suddenly sounding 'commercial'. is
the relationship, which he both craves and fears, actually the partnership with
Jeff? This is the first real chance to hear Lynne's fingerprints on the album
and they're everywhere - Wilbury style backing harmonies, strummed guitars,
bleating saxophones and goodness-knows-what played on the synth, which sounds like
a cross between a doorbell and the clanging bell of doom. Unfortunately what we
don't have is a 'song' to go with the production, as George gets all poetical
and vague in the opening verse ('And now you found the eyes to see each little
drop at the dawn of every day...') and never quite gets round to writing a
second one (delaying it with repeated middle eights, instrumental passages and
'oohs'). Not so much of a song, more a sentiment with production effects.
Meanwhile, on the next song, George isn't so much a
man, more a 'fish on the sand'. Lyrically this may be George's strongest set of
words on the album, recalling the lost humble narrator sounding huge style of
'All Things Must Pass' exaggerated to the point where he sounds sure and loud.
George, however, goes perhaps a stage too far in relating his latest
existential spiritual crisis in terms of a love affair and seems to 'borrow'
many of his words from other 'hit' writers be they Smokey Robinson ('You really
got a hold on me') or even himself (copious references to 'Teardrops', but
without the doo-dah-doohs for good measure). The music, too, is downright ugly,
a sea of pinged guitars that no longer sound much like guitars, repeating the
same stabbing lines over and over. This kind of thing works for bands who excel
at repetition (The Rolling Stones could have a good stab at this song one day) but
George is a subtle writer, not an aggressive one and he just sounds silly
trying to offer his version of a 'Mick Jagger' lead vocal, barked rather than
sung. He's clearly realising how daft he sounds by the time of the last repeat
when he's trying hard to stem the tide of giggles. Perhaps not coincidentally,
he also sounds lost - just as lost as the lovestruck narrator who again sounds
oddly teenage, unable to function properly without his lover by his side.
George might perhaps have done better to drop the idea and switch it for the
'stop playing games with me!' verse, which sounds much more suitable to the
ringing relentless guitars and George's desperate cries to go back to something
a bit 'safer' and 'simpler'. I'm not convinced by the endless metaphors about
George's lover being a 'fish' either (only Neil Young can pull off that sort of
thing, believe it or not), 'swimming in your teardrops', although he might be
throwing some Christian symbolism in to go in place of where his usual Hare
Krishna and Hindu references would be (or, perhaps, referring to his
astrological sign of Pisces as per the follow-up).
After three pretty lacklustre opening moments 'Cloud
Nine' suddenly gets going. The gorgeous 'Just For Today' is, for the only time
on the record, the 'real' George and no amount of Jeff Lynne production
novelties (and there are a lot thrown at this song) are going to get in his
way. Harrison is heartbroken, his trust betrayed by someone he trusted and he
longs to go back to a time in his life when he was happy - when, indeed, it
appeared he had so much going for him he could never be unhappy again. He longs
to go back and make the most of his past happiness, even if its 'just for
today', instead of dealing with 'all life's problems'. In many ways it's
George's equivalent to Paul's 'Yesterday' and if anything even more beautiful
and poignant as Harrison kicks himself for not realising sooner what he knows now
(the piano lick meanwhile recalls John's 'Imagine' and indeed George is using
his imagination as an 'escape' here too). It's clearly about his 'Handmade
Film's court case (oddly Denis O' Brien, his co-founder who'd just been in
court for embezzlement, is in the 'special thanks' list on the back sleeve -
which is either George being nice and forgiving his latest adversary in a very
public manner or a 'clue' to his fans as
to why this album turned out the way it did, as without Denis' financial
pressure you sense 'Cloud Nine' would never have turned out the way it did).
The lyrics to this song don't say much and merely repeat the same verse in
slightly different ways, but somehow that doesn't matter: this is a revelation
so overwhelming that George can't move on and see past it, 'stuck' as he tries
to count his blessings as always but still comes up short. It's the melody
though that makes this song, all warmth and heart and big gloopy tears where
much of this album is sterile and artificial. George's double-tracked guitar
solo is also really lovely, as if he's so 'sad and lonely' that the only
comfort he can find comes from himself, while his vocal is - for the only time
on this album - sung from the heart rather than with a manic grin. Lynne tries
to ruin the effect of a simple straightforward song with some off-putting Beach
Boys style harmonies, 10cc style synthesised 'aaahs' and more big clobbering
drums, but even they just make George sound out of place and isolated, even in
the middle of a sound as busy as anything else on the album, just slower.
The solution arrives like a bolt out of the blue
with the most convincingly commercial album track 'This Is Love'. While the
majority of this album has George either kicking and screaming or pastiching
current commercial pop songs circa 1987, this one sounds as if he's found a way
to meet halfway between what he wants to say and what his public want to say.
Told to write a catchy 'love song', he does just that, writing about how great
love is and how much it changed his life for the better and that love is as
much a part of the cycle of life as heartbreak. In many ways it's a sequel to
'Blow Away', itself a sequel to 'Here Comes The Sun', in which all it takes is
a change of the 'weather' as provided by 'God' to make him feel happy and at
peace once again. The decision to put this track after the last song sounds
deliberate, George kicking himself for ever getting miserable and ignoring his
own advice from 'Beware Of Darkness' that sadness is manmade and 'not what we
are here for - instead love 'helps me to remember what we all came here for'.
Along the way George remembers how he first felt falling in love with Olivia
(we forget it now but there was some aversion to George marrying his secretary
and for a time many assumed he'd gone a bit potty leaving a blonde model wife
for an olive-skinned unknown), the 'us against the world' feeling they got from
'knowing' that their love was sacred and meant to be in a way that no outsider,
thinking rationally, ever could. A celebration of how 'little things can change
you forever', this is George remembering to count his blessings anyway and he
makes the most of Lynne's production energy here too, offering up a neat
recycling of all sorts of proven pop formulas from Jeff's squeaky synths, to a
Motown style 'la-la-la-la-love' chorus and even a snatch of Culture Club's 1983
hit 'Karma Chameleon' ('come-a come-a come-a come-a...') George also turns in
his 'fanciest' guitar solo in the song and it's a delight, his slide guitar for
once used to express joy rather than sadness when set against another 'rattled'
aggressive arpeggio burst. This is love and it's an obvious hit - so why was
this only the third single from the album, released after the LP had already
been a success (and everyone who was going to already owned it?)
'When We Was Fab' makes it a third clever song in a
row as George finally gives in to pressure to record a 'beatley' style tune and
uses it instead to both affectionately mock and grumpily scowl at how tough
those times really were. Everyone else around George talked about The Beatle
days as if they were the highlight of their life, but they weren't even the
highlight of his own. To put us right he scowls that the 1960s was a time when
'income tax' was high, 'the fuzz' (ie the police) thought they could 'claim
you' and in ther song's funniest line that instead of a constant hug from
adoring admirers he found himself being 'fleeced' by 'caresses' of people out
for something more than he was prepared to give them. He then chunters about
the way the Beatle days have been viewed since, pored over with a microscope so
that every 'wart' is 'magnified' and basically says that everyone more
interested in the Beatle days than the Beatle themselves should get a 'life'.
But that's only half of George's nature: there's an affection there too and -
aptly for the one Beatle to actually write about Beatlefans affectionately in
'Apple Scruffs' - he slots in lots of lines he knows will please his fans, from
the 'gear...fab' chorus shout, the presence of Ringo on drums and the fadeout
that 'borrows' from everything from Dylan ('It's all over now baby blue') to
Smokey Robinson (again, that 'you really got a hold on me') and himself ('Still
the life flows on and on' recalling 'Within You Without You'). The joke too is
that staunch Beatle fan Jeff Lynne hasn't noticed the words and treats the
production as if George really was affectionately talking about the past as if
it was glorious. We get a whole bunch of tricks here on easily his best production,
from the 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' style piano riff to the 'I Am The Walrus'
style strings to the gorgeous Indian raga playout finale that instantly takes
you back twenty years. In 1987 the twentieth anniversary of 'Sgt Peppers' was
everywhere with even George (still needing the money) joining in - this track
sounds like an attempt to correct the balance, showing us that what the world
enjoyed in memory as a halcyon time wasn't quite so fun for the people caught
up in it and that those times were 'long ago' and George no longer feels quite
so 'fab'. There is, though, enough of a twinkle behind the words and enough of
a genuine joy behind the production for George and Jeff to get away with this
song, especially thanks to a very clever music video (by 10cc's Kevin Godley,
who must have admired the familiar-sounding synth 'aaahs' nicked from his
band's own 'I'm Not In Love') that both wickedly sends up and successfully
conjures up memories of a bygone Beatle era. George has his cake - and scoffs
it too.
Alas side two isn't just a step down from the end of
side one but a sudden fall through a trap-door. After turning on his own music,
George next turns on 1987's with 'Devil's Radio', a damning and grumpy song
about how awful then-contemporary music is, made up of gossip and attacks on
people ('like vultures swooping down below'). Not withstanding the fact that
this is all true and 1987's music scene was amongst the worst and certainly the
emptiest (see, my playground chums, George agreed with me - we must be right!),
it's a strange song that uses the sounds of 1987 to appeal to music listeners
of 1987 in order to sell lots of copies to music buyers of 1987 that is also
being a slap in the face to 1987 music buyers that's actually quite rude.
George can be as rude as he liked about other styles of music if he uses his
own to 'argue' why he can offer something they can't - or he can enthuse
about other styles of music if he uses
them too. But using a snarling sarcastic song about how modern music sucks, while
using that modern music backdrop against a lyric that complains that all modern
music does is be rude to people, is a slap in the face too far. There's no
redeeming feature about this song, which doesn't even have much to say other
than 'gee, this is awful' and though George teases us with a mention of the
'devil' there's nothing here about 'God' and why thoughtful, kind music might
be better for mankind's spiritual progression. The fact that Jeff and Eric (who
plays all the guitar) sound so at home here says more for how much they'd both
gone over to the 'dark side' in this era than it does about the song itself,
with its snarled gibberish, big booming drums and mass-layered George n Jeff
backing vocals. 'It shapes you into something cold, like an eskimo igloo' sings
George at his most antiseptic'. Yeah, you got that right, I'm feeling pretty
chilly about this song myself. Oh and why is 1987 music 'white and black like
industrial waste?', surely one of George's strangest lines in his career and
perhaps summing up just how little time he spent thinking about this song.
'Someplace Else' is the album's second and final
ballad which after the sincerity of 'Just For Today' just sounds dull and
dreary. One of the slowest songs in the Harrison songbook, it's a shame that
this melody got [paired with this set of words, which are a rare love song to
Olivia about how much inspiration she gave him when he needed it and recalls
Paul's similar tribute to Linda on 'Maybe I'm Amazed' (George, wanting a
certified 'hit' album, may have assumed that it was one of Macca's highest
sellers given that everyone else assumes so too, but actually he kept it
private as an album track only his wife and true Beatlenuts were ever meant to
hear - you wouldn't think Paul would be the Beatle with the most scruples about
his private life, would you?) While the lyric has some occasional gems in
there, reflecting on the last time George felt so depressed and sorry for
himself, back in 1975 when Patti and much of his audience had disappeared ('I
don't know how you found me, but you did - it stopped me heading 'someplace
else' and George's shy chat-up lines as he tried to find the courage to speak
to Olivia as more than just her 'boss'). There's also the classic line where
George sums up a difficult spell in his life when everything was falling apart
but he didn't want the world to know that just yet that he's pleased she's
still beside him now that things are getting 'untidy'. The way George emphasis
that word makes it clear that this is the 'polite' way of putting things!
Unfortunately the melody is slow and the production soggy, robbing what should
have been a magical song about the transforming powers of love and devotion
into a song that sounds like the most tedious relationship ever. Note too how
none of the lines in this song actually rhyme with each other (well, 'tidy' and
'me' is as close as it gets), as if George wrote it as a poem first and only
later set it to music, which would explain a lot.
So far both album cover (where George looks really
good for forty-four) and the songs could just about have fooled younger
listeners into thinking that George was a hip new artist that had just been
discovered, rather than an aging Beatle. 'Wreck Of The Hesperus' is another
album joke aimed at just those sorts of people, as George jokes about being
middle-aged, 'getting as old as my
mother' and 'feeling like Big Bill Broonzy' (a blues singer who died around
aged sixty-five in 1958, when fan George was fifteen - the favoured demographic
in 1987 - and he must have seemed, like, well old). George isn't played out
just yet though - the title is that he doesn't feel like the 'wreck of the
Hesperus' (an ancient wooden schooner
from Biblical times in the poem by Longfellow) but more like 'the great wall of
China', built to last the years in an active, useful state. Along the way
George re-acts to awards like the Oscars and Tonys as if they're 'real' people,
meets a 'snake climbing ladders' and calls himself a 'plucked spring chicken'!
Unfortunately what could have been a fine middle eight or a rip-roaring B-side
sounds rather dull when drawn out to a full song and it's clearly another one
written to short measure to cover up for other things on Harrison's mind (just
check out the odd line 'I'm not the power of attorney', which makes no sense in
context of the song but every sense given the weary year George has just spent
in court).
'Breath Away From Heaven' may have been the best
thing about the wretched 'Shanghai Surprise' movie (another bottomless pit that
took much of Handmade Films' money), but it's still easily the worst thing
here. George sings over some vaguely oriental sounding chords, played by Jeff
as if he's in a Chinese Restaurant while George sings about a goodtime Geisha
girl as if he's a randy Mick Jagger. It's clear she's broken-hearted and will
only contemplate love again if its deep and real - it's equally clear that the
narrator simply lusts after her and isn't going to offer her the life she
dreams of and is simply taking advantage of her. It's all terribly 'wrong'
somehow, both the patronising backing and the closest George ever came to
writing sexist lyrics - fitting for the film it may have been, but without the
context this is just inexcusably low for a writer who usually reached so high.
George's narrator, much like Sean Penn in the film, is simply taking advantage
of a local girl's vulnerability, describing her as 'a wounded tiger on a
willowy path' and praising her not for her character but purely for her looks. As
for Jeff's cacophony of Oriental keyboards, it always made 'Shanghai Surprise'
feel a lot more like one of those 1950s B-movies with evil Chinamen played by
Americans with dodgy accents rather than the film revolution that took place
somewhere around the mid-1970s and 'allowed' actors from ethnic backgrounds to
play themselves, by and large. Out of time and out of luck, this song sounds
particularly out of place on an album that's otherwise always trying to think
'modern', even if George is simultaneously a bit of a grump over how good that
sound actually is. Imagine if someone else had made this song about girls from
India, a place he loved - George would have been the first to cry 'foul'.
The album then ends with the first single which had
already proven to be a hit. Many casual Beatle fans are amazed when I tell them
that George didn't actually write 'Got My Mind Set On You' - and even more
amazed when they learn that it's actually a song that dates back to the 'Love
Me Do' days, back in 1962 (long before the demographic for this album were
born!) Not that big a hit on first release (though written by Rudy Clark,
author of 1960s classics 'It's In Her Kiss' and Good Lovin', as covered by AAA
bands The Hollies and The Grateful Dead respectively, it was given away to
singer James Ray, whose version just missed the charts), you can see why not
many fans then now or always ever knew of it. George himself only knew the
track because it was his elder sister Louise's favourite song - she'd travelled
out to America circa 1960 and the pair were reunited during the Beatles' first
tour where she played it to George and gave him a spare copy. The younger
brother loved it too and a quarter century later played it to fellow 1950s nut
Jeff Lynne, who loved it too. A cover version seemed obvious, especially as it
was the kind of repetitive, nonsensical catchy fluffy song George needed to be
singing if he wanted a 'hit' and the pair had far more faith in an 'oldie'
cover (even a flop oldie cover) than in George's own attempts at this. Weird Al
Yanokovic later spoofed the song with his cover 'It's Only Got Six Words!', a
measure of just how repetitive this chorus us, but the track makes more sense
if you realise it's an R and B cover where repetition is the name of the game.
George and Jeff really smarten the song up too, adding an 'Elvis' flavour to
the middle-eight not there in the original ('This time I know it's for
real...'), lots of sax and a snazzy drum part that dominates the song (the only
two things really in common with 1950s and 1980s productions). The new
arrangement is also 'looser' limbed, making more of the song's groove compared
to the awkward stop-start beats of the original while the sections flow
together more easily. Together with George's best vocal on the album, bright
and bold and clearly enjoying himself, this single was always going to hit big and
big it did, becoming only George's second - and final - number one single in
the UK. It was exactly what Harrison needed to do for his bank and marketing
prospects, but still feels a little flimsy as an album closer, even for an
album as lightweight as 'Cloud Nine'.
The result is at once George's most immediate and
heaviest-going LP. While Harrison was never one for consistency (except for
'All Things Must pass' perhaps) and his albums are all an uneven ride at times,
this one especially has just gaping chasms between what does work and what
doesn't that it's hard to accept they are part of the same album at all. The
very in-yer-face 1980s production and the amount of slow songs where nothing
much is happening except the booming drums makes you wonder, thirty years after
the fact, how this album sold any copies at all the first time round - and yet
to this day this record is held up as an example of how good 1980s albums can
be when delivered in the right way and that it's one of George's best (I sense both
those comments are probably made by people who only know the three singles and
didn't bother to hear the rest). The result is an album that did what it had to
do (i.e. sell millions of copies) but didn't go the extra mile for what George
usually wants to do (offer fans some comfort, some hope and some advice). Short
on ideas, big on synths and the catchiest, emptiest moment in the Harrison
discography, 'Cloud Nine' has divided fans ever since release and to my ears
sounds like a wasted opportunity, even if it is still arguably the best album
Jeff Lynne ever made. Sadly George will be 'stuck inside a cloud' for far too
long, with the lesser half of the abandoned sequel that became 'Brainwashed'
(likely dropped when George realised he didn't need the money quite so
desperately anymore) and most of the Traveling Wilburys pair of records
suffering from a similar case of 'brain drain'. Personally I'd rather have paid
George not to make this record and let him 'Go Troppo' again (both a holiday or
a second album like that one, I'm not fussed) rather than hear him be given the
identikit 1980s treatment, but that in itself is a measure of how great George
usually is and how much we generally expect from him. There are, you see, worse
1980s albums around than this one - but somehow, being a George Harrison album
and being quite so 1980s this one sounds spectacularly, woefully, painfully
wrong at times.
A NOW COMPLETE LIST OF GEORGE HARRISON ARTICLES TO READ AT
ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:
'Wonderwall Music' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/george-harrison-wonderwall-music-1968.html
'All Things Must Pass' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-42-george-harrison-all-things.html
'Living In The Material World' (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/news-views-and-music-issue-58-george.html
'Dark Horse' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/news-views-and-music-issue-127-george.html
'Extra
Texture (Read All About It)' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/george-harrison-extra-texture-read-all.html
'Thirty-Three
And A Third' (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/george-harrison-thirty-three-and-third.html
'George Harrison' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-74-george-harrison-1979.html
‘Somewhere In England’ (1981) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/george-harrison-somewhere-in-england_20.html
'George Harrison' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-74-george-harrison-1979.html
‘Somewhere In England’ (1981) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/george-harrison-somewhere-in-england_20.html
'Gone
Troppo' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/02/george-harrison-gone-troppo-1982.html
‘Cloud
Nine’ (1987) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/george-harrison-cloud-nine-1987.html
'Brainwashed'
(2002) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/george-harrison-brainwashed-2002.html
'Hidden
Harrison - The Best Unreleased Recordings' http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/george-harrison-hidden-harrison-best.html
Live/Compilation/Spin-Off
Albums Plus The Occasional Wilbury http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/george-harrison-live.html
Non-Album
Recordings 1968-2001 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/george-harrison-non-album-recordings.html
Surviving
TV Appearances 1971-2001 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/george-harrison-surviving-tv.html
Essay: Why The Quiet Beatle Always Had So Much To Say https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/george-harrison-essay-why-quiet-one.html
Essay: Why The Quiet Beatle Always Had So Much To Say https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/george-harrison-essay-why-quiet-one.html
Five
Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Songs https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/george-harrison-five-landmark-concerts.html
