Not Guilty (song)

"Not Guilty"
Song by George Harrison from the album George Harrison
Released 23 February 1979 (1979-02-23)
Recorded March–October 1978
Genre Jazz-pop
Length 3:35
Label Dark Horse
Writer(s) George Harrison
Producer(s) George Harrison, Russ Titelman
George Harrison track listing
"Not Guilty"
Song by the Beatles from the album Anthology 3
Released 28 October 1996 (1996-10-28)
Recorded 7–9, 12 August 1968
Genre Hard rock
Length 3:22
Label Apple
Writer(s) George Harrison
Producer(s) George Martin

"Not Guilty" is a song by English musician George Harrison released on his 1979 album George Harrison. He wrote the song in 1968 following the Beatles' Transcendental Meditation course in India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and its lyrics refer to Harrison's relationship with his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney as a result of that experience. The Beatles recorded the song for the White Album in August 1968 but abandoned the track after several days' work, logging 99 takes. This last take appeared on the Anthology 3 compilation in 1996, as "Take 102".

Harrison revisited "Not Guilty" in 1978 during sessions for his eponymous solo album. Unlike the Beatles' original, which featured distorted electric guitar and harpsichord, the remake used acoustic guitar and was softer in tone.

Background and composition

George Harrison wrote "Not Guilty" in 1968 following the Beatles' Transcendental Meditation course in Rishikesh, India.[1] As the Beatle who had been most interested in attending teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's course, Harrison felt responsible for his bandmates' experience there.[2] Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney had each left the ashram early and returned to England, while Harrison and John Lennon stayed on, only to then depart hurriedly after hearing of alleged impropriety between the Maharishi and a female student.[3] In an interview with Billboard editor Timothy White in 1999, Harrison referred to "the grief I was catching" from Lennon and McCartney post-India, and explained the message behind the song: "I said I wasn't guilty of getting in the way of their career. I said I wasn't guilty of leading them astray in our going to Rishikesh to see the Maharishi. I was sticking up for myself …"[4]

The line "I won't upset the Apple cart" was a deliberate reference to Apple Records,[5] while "making friends with every Sikh" referred to activities with the Maharishi.[1]

An acoustic demo of the song was recorded during May 1968 at Harrison's home, Kinfauns in Esher,[6] in preparation for what became the album The Beatles, also known as the White Album.[7] This version of the song has never been officially released, but is available on numerous bootlegs. On the tapes, the song follows a group performance of Harrison's tribute to meditation, "Sour Milk Sea", after which he refers to "Not Guilty" as "a jazz number" that would make "a good rocker".[8]

Beatles version

Recording

The Beatles recorded "Not Guilty" in August 1968 during sessions for the White Album.[9] The recording was produced by George Martin and engineered by Ken Scott.[10] The song as presented to the group was difficult to learn due to its time signature changes,[11] and during the first 18 takes on 7 August they focused only on the introduction;[12] after a further 27 takes, recording was abandoned until the next day.[11] The sessions still proved unsatisfactory, and ran to 99 takes,[11] many of which were incomplete performances.[12] Initial takes featured keyboard accompaniment from an electric piano, but this was replaced by a harpsichord that was installed in Abbey Road Studio 1.[11]

Harrison tried to salvage the recording on 9 August with a six-and-a-half-hour session of lead guitar overdubs, during which he sat in the control room playing the guitar, while the amplifier was recorded from an echo chamber.[13] After a further attempt to record guitar at live performance levels on 12 August, the song was abandoned, although the idea of recording amplifiers in a small room appealed to Lennon, who decided to use the technique on the next song the group attempted, "Yer Blues".[14] Harrison then spent a short holiday in Greece, fed up that none of his bandmates seemed to be helping him with the production of "Not Guilty".[15]

Exclusion from the White Album

According to musicologist Walter Everett, the song was one of the last to be cut from the final running order of The Beatles.[5] Although Lennon admired the composition initially,[16] author Simon Leng considers that, with its "barbs about the Beatles", the song "was just a little too candid in airing the band's dirty laundry".[17]

Following his pioneering backwards-recorded guitar solo on "I'm Only Sleeping", in 1966, Harrison's use of reverse echo-chamber effect on "Not Guilty" marked one of the last two examples of backwards audio on a Beatles recording, the other being one of the two reunion singles, "Free As A Bird".[18] In its three-part study of the 1968 double album, in 2008, Goldmine magazine commented that the song's exclusion has traditionally been one of the points of debate regarding the White Album, with some listeners finding the content of the set "exquisitely balanced", while others contend that the Beatles "really should have added 'Not Guilty' to the brew".[19] With reference to Martin's stated wish that The Beatles had been edited down to a single LP, Everett offers a 15-song running order in keeping with the producer's typical "preferences and constraints", in which he contends that Martin would have selected "Not Guilty", along with the Harrison compositions "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Long, Long, Long".[20]

The final take, numbered 102 (a reduction mix of take 99),[13] was edited and remixed by Geoff Emerick in 1984 for the aborted Sessions album.[21][22] It was leaked to the Ultra Rare Trax Volume 3 bootleg in the late 1980s,[23] and eventually released officially in October 1996 on Anthology 3.[11] Author and critic Richie Unterberger describes the Anthology 3 version of "Not Guilty" as a "bastardization" due to the editing out of a mid-song guitar solo and other features from the 1968 stereo mix. He adds that this treatment is "more roundly castigated than almost any other of the Anthology reconstructions".[24]

Solo version

After rediscovering his Kinfauns demo,[1] Harrison revisited "Not Guilty" in March 1978, during sessions for his album George Harrison, released the following year.[25] The sessions coincided with a period of domestic contentment for Harrison, during which he married his partner Olivia Arias and become a father for the first time, to son Dhani.[26] Leng views Harrison's remake of the song as typical of the singer's frame of mind on George Harrison, writing: "In complete contrast [to the Beatles' version], the 1979 reproduction is all shimmering cool and acoustic sea spray – here is a man looking back on events rather than being caught up in their heat."[27] Harrison restored two lines ("For being on your street / Getting underneath your feet") that were not in the Beatles' version and dropped a section of 3/8 time that had been one of the factors in making the 1968 recording difficult.[15]

Harrison recorded the song at his home studio in Henley, Oxfordshire,[25][28] with Stevie Winwood, Willie Weeks and Andy Newmark among the backing musicians.[29] Leng describes the musical mood on the track as "a loose version of the Rickie Lee Jones or Paul Simon jazz-pop sound, dominated by phased electric piano and breathy vocals".[27] Neil Larsen played Rhodes piano on the song.[30]

Personnel

Beatles version

According to Ian MacDonald:[11]

George Harrison version

According to Simon Leng:[31]

References

Citations
  1. 1 2 3 Brown, Mick (19 April 1979). "A Conversation With George Harrison". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  2. ↑ Doggett 2011, p. 33.
  3. ↑ Woffinden 1981, p. 4.
  4. ↑ Huntley 2006, p. 165.
  5. 1 2 Everett 1999, p. 202.
  6. ↑ Winn 2009, p. 169.
  7. ↑ Unterberger 2006, pp. 195, 198.
  8. ↑ Winn 2009, p. 170.
  9. ↑ Miles 2001, pp. 305–06.
  10. ↑ Lewisohn, pp. 147–48.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 MacDonald 1997, p. 266.
  12. 1 2 Lewisohn, p. 147.
  13. 1 2 Lewisohn 1988, p. 147.
  14. ↑ Lewisohn 1988, p. 148.
  15. 1 2 MacDonald 1997, p. 267.
  16. ↑ Clayson 2003, p. 253.
  17. ↑ Leng 2006, p. 38.
  18. ↑ Ryan & Kehew, p. 490.
  19. ↑ Goldmine staff (16 October 2008). "Cover Story – The White Album: Artistic zenith or full of filler? Part I". Goldmine. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
  20. ↑ Everett 1999, p. 343.
  21. ↑ Heylin 2010, p. 299.
  22. ↑ Everett 1999, p. 203.
  23. ↑ Ruhlmann, William. "Ultra Rare Trax, Vol 3". AllMusic. Retrieved 23 July 2014.
  24. ↑ Unterberger 2006, p. 210.
  25. 1 2 Madinger & Easter 2000, p. 457.
  26. ↑ Tillery 2011, pp. 120,163.
  27. 1 2 Leng 2006, p. 203.
  28. ↑ Badman 2001, p. 221.
  29. ↑ Leng 2006, pp. 199, 202.
  30. ↑ Planer, Lindsay (23 July 2014). "Not Guilty". AllMusic.
  31. ↑ Leng 2006, pp. 202–03.
Sources
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