I don’t see anything wrong with it per se…sigh…I was just concerned that younger people might get the wrong idea and think Harrison wrote “Yesterday”.
Subconciously, I was thinking about how disproportionately Harrison was represtented on the Beatles’ albums, compared to Lennon and McCartney. What I really meant, although I didn’t articulate it, was that if there ever was a time when his songs should be brought to the forefront, this is it.
Carry on.
“Give Peace a Chance” was a Beatles song? I have it on a John Lennon compilation. I thought it was just his, and never affiliated with the Beatles.
My sister reminded me of the time I heard “Oh My Love” (beautiful, beautiful song) and thought it was Beatles. She informed me, then, that it was Plastic Ono Band, and says now, “You had the ear if not the knowledge”.
peepthis wrote
Ironically, Frank attributed the song to Lennon/McCartney.
And there you are.
You know, in that sense, I agree with you. He was definitely under appreciated to some extent. Maybe not by John and Paul but by the general public. I think people don’t always realize how much he contributed.
I guess I am mourning the loss of the Beatles as well as the loss of George so hearing their tunes is comforting in some small way right now.
This really annoys me too. Back on 0ctober 9, (John’s birthday) a local radio station was having a “John Lennon Birthday Celebration”. They just picked Beatles songs at random and played them, regardless of who wrote them. The same station did this this weekend with George Harrison. They also do the same thing on December 8.
The least thay could do is play the correct songs on the correct person’s day. I mean The Beatles just changed the face of modern music, no need to get it right for them.
This is probably a seperate topic, but a peeve of mine is when radio DJs know less about bands than I do. I don’t listen to the radio much anymore, but I can remember my local DJ pronouncing to INXS as “inks” and R.E.M. as “rem”. Obviously dated examples, but they stuck with me. Sometimes I suspect that having an interest in what you’re playing would be a handicap to a DJ, given that at most stations they’re told what to play.
Montfort, don’t feel badly, I used to think the line was about clever pennies too.
As to playing Beatles songs not written by Harrison… well, he was in the band after all. They most likely played the popular songs that were already on the playlist, and those seem to me to be unlikely to be Harrison’s.
See my post above. When someone dies, you throw over the playlist, if only temporarily.
Ironikinit A few years ago Samhain, a band not normally on the radio anywhere, came to do a show. And the DJ, unaware of the band or its namesake, was enthusistically announcing that “Sammy Hain” was coming to town and “his” show was bound to be “kickass”.
Anyway, as long as they play Beatles songs with Harrison’s stamp on them, it’s appropriate.
For instance, “Norwegian Wood”…George wasn’t credited with writing it, but it is still very much his work. If it were just John singing with his acoustic, we would probably regard that song as a follow up to “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”, and a pleasant ballad with quirky lyrics. Instead George brought his sitar and made “Norwegian Wood” the forerunner of “Worldbeat” music.
(The worldbeat/rock group Cornershop paid a nice tribute not long ago by doing the song in Punjabi :))
Now on some of the later songs, such as “Blackbird”, “Julia” or “Goodnight Tonight” - George may very well have been in India or Greece when those were recorded at Abbey Road. So they don’t have much more to do with George’s legacy than a Ginger Baker drum solo would with Eric Clapton’s reputation as a guitarist.
I am glad that MTV, which rarely plays any actual music at all, much less anything from before 1999
actually ran some Beatles/Harrison clips we havent seen in ages. And SNL reran a clip of Harrison on the show too.
John gave Paul a writing credit on this non-Beatles tune as a gift for Paul’s assistance on “The Ballad Of John and Yoko” (Paul & John were the only two Beatles playing on that record; Paul handles drums, bass and–I’m pretty sure–lead guitar). I don’t remember where I read this.
I don’t have a problem with “non-Harrison” Beatles songs being used as a tribute to Harrison (though his solo work, much of which is excellent, ought not to be overlooked). I personally think George was an under-rated guitar player whose contribution in this regard–ignoring the fine composer he became–was vital to the Beatles’ work. While he was never the technical virtuoso some of his peers were (e.g., his good friend, Eric Clapton), George had a sense of melody and structure that made his guitars solos integral parts of the song, tuneful and crucial elements rather than just skillful but interchangeable add-ons like so many other solos are.
Listen to his guitar work some time–at once simple and clever, always serving the tune (never to showcase his own ability just for the sake of it), particularly so as he evolved past the Chuck Berry variations that were the foundation of his earliest work. So, no, I have no problem with using Beatles tunes as an homage to George. (I’m still very sad. 
RIP, George. We will miss you.)
That being said, a DJ shows his ignorance if he simply selects Beatles songs at random, as jaimest points out. “Ballad of John and Yoko” (for the reason noted above) or “Yesterday” (a record on which only Paul, of the Beatles, played) are not terribly thoughtful or meaningful tributes. I, myself, will now move on to CD #2 All Things Must Pass, which I expect to finish listening to today.
Rilchiam, you and I would, if it were up to us, but the stations I’ve dealt with wouldn’t. I’ve tried requesting songs from classic rock stations by artists they play all the time (the instance I’m thinking of I was trying to get them to play “The Girl With the Far Away Eyes” by the Stones) and the DJ told me that he could lose his job if he deviated from the playlist. In some ways classic rock stations seem as restricted as top 40, just with a bigger and mustier playlist.
Talking to DJs I’ve been struck by how little they know the artists they play. One was unfamiliar with Hendrix’ “If 6 Were 9” which I thought was a pretty well known track.
I may have just had bad luck and dealt with yokels. Oddly, country radio DJs seemed more listener friendly when I’ve dealt with them.
Scuze me while I try to get on topic.
If any Beatle could be said to have been under rated, it was Harrison. If his solo work doesn’t get played but Beatles songs that he didn’t even participate in do, well, I don’t know what to say but that sometimes the quiet ones get cheated. It’s an odd situation given how much airplay his songs got when released. “Got My Mind Set on You,” for instance, was a pretty big hit. The retrospective documentaries and stories I’ve seen recently haven’t talked about that period of his career but have gone on about the Travelling Willburys. Did Harrison disown that song or something?
Well, it’s not a big surprise that George is not as represented as Lennon-McCartney. George really didn’t start turning out songs until 1965. Up till then he had one or two, (Don’t Bother Me immediately springs to mind) but he wasn’t really a song writer in the sense of Lennon-McCartney.
It’s interesting to note that one of the biggest problems between George and Lennon&McCartney in the later years was that he had a lot of songs for the albums, and they simply were not allowing him to release them. There just wasn’t enough room for everybody’s contributions. That’s why George was able to release a double album (ATMP) so soon after the Beatles officially broke up.
GPAC is credited to the Beatles, but it was John and Yoko who recorded it.
I remember when I first really heard Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”-I thought it was a Beatles song.
:o
I forgot to add, however, that at LEAST your stations are doing something. We’ll get a random 10 minutes of people talking about George, or the occassional Beatles song (but they ALWAYS play the Beatles, so it doesn’t count), but other than that, they’re not doing anything.
Though I agree with the OP, I should point out that writing a song isn’t all there is to the song. Should we be upset when people reference Elvis by ‘Elvis songs’ and (horrors) he didn’t write any of them?
The fact that George didn’t write Norweigan Wood doesn’t change the fact that he had enormous impact on it’s sound. And in that particular example, he had a large impact on popular music in general, introducing the sitar and psychodelia into pop music.
I saw the video for GMMSOY on MTV2 about 4 or 5 times this weekend. And on MTV at least once. I also liked “When We Was Fab” from the same album, but I haven’t seen or heard it in any tributes.
VH1 played “When We Was Fab”, as well as “Got My Mind Set On You,” “Crackerbox Palace,” “This Song”, “All Those Years Ago”, and “Handle With Care”, from the Traveling Willburys. THAT’s a good one…I especially like Roy Orbison’s solo in that one…he’s another one George is probably jamming with now.