It was the mantra that took over the world. George Harrison’s first solo No.1 single stands alone in rock history for going against the secular grain as a full-on love song to the Creator. While there’d been some precedent with both the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows and Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit In The Sky, My Sweet Lord was different. The lyric offers nothing but praise – loaded with 40 ‘Lord’s 16 ‘hallelujah’s and nine ‘Hare Krishna’s.
Harrison started writing the song while he was on tour with Delaney & Bonnie in Sweden in late 1969. His main inspiration for it was Oh Happy Day, an old gospel tune rearranged into a hit that year for the Edwin Hawkins Singers. Responding to that record’s joyful call-and-response vibe, Harrison said: “It really just knocked me out… I just felt a great feeling of the Lord. So I thought: ‘I’ll write another Oh Happy Day, which became My Sweet Lord.”
Harrison knew the song was both a departure and a commercial risk, both in its spiritual theme and its specific references to the Hare Krishna movement, which back then was a favourite punch bag of comedians.
“I was sticking my neck out on the chopping block,” Harrison wrote in his autobiography I Me Mine. “I thought a lot about whether to do it or not, because I would be committing myself publicly and I anticipated that a lot of people might get weird about it.”
Bu hikaye Classic Rock dergisinin June 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Classic Rock dergisinin June 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Joan Armatrading
The singer-songwriter on her new album, inspirations, being a 'band', what her key was about, meeting Nelson Mandela...
Meat Loaf: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
It was the power ballad to end all power ballads, and 30 years later people still ponder what the it’ is that the singer wouldn't do.
Kris Kristofferson: June 22, 1936 - September 28, 2024
Kris Kristofferson, the iconic, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and actor who played a key role in advancing a strand of country music into a more raw and confessional direction now recognised as outlaw country, has died peacefully at his home in Maui, surrounded by family. He was 88 years old.
"I have come a very long way in the last two-and-a-bit years"
Back from the brink: the Thunder vocalist who survived major medical trauma returns.
EVER MEET LEMMY?
He's heard Lemmy's unreleased solo album, had dinner with Chris Holmes, told Paul McCartney to get a round in, been told gangster Reggie Kray wanted to have a word with him... He is Dogs D'Amour frontman Tyla 7 Pallas, and these are some of his stories.
"LET'S NOT FORGET ABOUT HAVING FUN"
With their ninth studio album In Murmuration, Finnish rockers Von Hertzen Brothers have replaced their erstwhile prog epics for a more honest approach to songwriting reflecting their personal lives.
IN THE BEGINNING
With previously unseen photographs from their early days as featured in the new Queen | Collector's Edition, Sir Brian May talks us through sights of the band in the early seventies.
BASS-IC INSTINCT
Plucked from obscurity in 1975 to be in David Bowie's band, then unceremoniously out of the picture five years later, bassist George Murray looks back on his time with the Thin White Duke.
High Rollers
When Ronnie Wood, the Stones and some A-list mates holed up at his house to help with his solo album, it sparked a days-long party, a Rolling Stones hit and the last album by arguably their finest line-up.
THE NAME OF THE GAM
When ABBA-mad Opeth leader Mikael Akerfeldt met one of their singers, he lost it”. She didn’t sing on their new concept album, but some other, perhaps unlikely, big names did.
