The songwriter, guitarist and singer George Harrison was the younger member of The Beatles and knew Paul and John since they were teenagers. Although the three of them played together for years and formed the group together, George really didn’t have much space in writing songs for the band since Paul and John really bonded as songwriters and wrote most of the band’s hits. During the 10 years they remained together, Harrison had only a few opportunities to record his compositions and some of them were “Something”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Here Comes The Sun”.
Although every Beatles fan in the world was sad when they announced the end of the band in 1970, George was relieved. He revealed in an interview with Billboard in 2001, which was the best thing for him about the end of the group.
The best thing about The Beatles end for George Harrison
The musician had already demoed some of the songs which would appear on “All Things Must Pass” in 1969, during the making of The Beatles album “Let It Be”. So he told Billboard that the best thing about the end of The Beatles was that he could work on his own compositions, since Lennon and McCartney wouldn’t always be interested in what he or Ringo have written. Finally focused only on his solo career he could record all the compositions he had written over the years and were not used by the band.
“That’s right (I demoed them). I mean, I was probably trying to get them recorded in amongst all the usual John and Paul stuff. For me, that was the great thing about splitting up. To be able to go off and make my own record and record all these songs that I’d been stockpiling. And also to be able to record with all these new people, which was like a breath of fresh air, really.
He continued explaining that songs like “Isn’t It A Pity” were not originally intended for his solo career but for The Beatles
“This is the funny thing: imagine if the Beatles had gone on and on. Well, the songs on ‘All Things Must Pass,’ maybe some of them I would probably only just got ’round to do now, you know, with my quota that I was allowed (laughs). “Isn’t It A Pity” would just have been a Beatles song, wouldn’t it? And now that could be said for each one of us. ‘Imagine’ would have been a Beatles song, but it was with John’s songs. It just happened that the Beatles finished,” George Harrison said.
With the release of “All Things Must Pass” in 1970, his third solo album, George Harrison became the first member of The Beatles to score a number one hit. He managed to do that with the track “My Sweet Lord”, which peaked at number one on the charts all over the world.
The album sold millions of copies and had many classic songs. Some of them were the title-track, “Wah-Wah”, “What is Life”, “Run Of The Mill”, “Beware of Darkness” and “Awaiting On You All”.