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Rating: I won't cite the famous analogy that George Harrison used to describe the natural creative process that led to the composition of "All Things Must Pass," but the image of something being suddenly released conveys the idea well. The liberated river carved grooves that became eternal on a triple vinyl that became legendary. In 2021, his son Dhani curated the reissue of his father's first true solo LP, focusing on the sound's quality, revitalized, dusting off the baroque architecture of Spector the chisel, but above all, officially making available the demos, alternative takes, and unreleased tracks of that mammoth creative process. Spector recorded everything from the beginning, cataloged each day, so it wasn't difficult to browse the archive in search of interesting material. In recent years, critics have started to frown a bit upon certain reissue operations and musical archeology, often considering it a series of activities aimed at giving a little oxygen to an industry resistant to change and now worrying returned to pre-rock 'n' roll levels regarding investing in artists and producing new things. However, we must recognize that "archeological excavation" operations like these, fifty years later, are important and help historians better understand the period, very troubled in this case, in which the work was created. The box is not only, rightly, a commercial operation but is useful to those who want to immerse themselves fully within the work. That said, the essence is that in the 3 additional discs, Dhani Harrison gifts us his father's demos with Klaus Voormann and Ringo Starr, day one in which the songs are raw but reflect light cleanly and allow us to glimpse what the final result will be. 1970 for Harrison is the year of his first collaboration with Dylan (here the unreleased "Nowhere to Go") and with the nucleus from which Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes would originate, present at his best in the sessions before obsessive love for Pattie Boyd led him to a personal nadir immersed in alcohol, drugs, and loneliness. The brightness of the demo versions is surprising, the same title track already tried multiple times with the Beatles here seems like something completely new. George Harrison appears to the listener as confident and serene, he has his material and knows that at least a double album must come out of it. Apple would like to split it in two to avoid burning all the songs at once, but the spiritual Beatle proves unyielding: double and then triple with the jam sessions that many critics dismiss as mere stylistic exercises.
In 1969, George Harrison was already an alien body to the Beatles, the torrential documentary "Get Back" clearly shows the end of a group and the birth of the members' independent paths, now sure of their own roads to follow. Leaving aside all the personal disagreements that accompany the three main thinkers of the group at least until 1973, it is undeniable that 1970 brought about four very different solo LPs, written and composed in peculiar and often opposite psychological situations, as in the case of Lennon and McCartney. However, behind his beard, Harrison was essentially happy, free.
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