George Harrison’s Widow Dissects His Spirituality, Previews ‘Material World’ Deluxe Edition

In her office at the Friar Park estate where she and George Harrison lived, Olivia Harrison grabs a piece of correspondence she only recently saw: a handwritten letter from her late husband to his mother when the Beatles were hanging with the Maharishi in India in 1968. “I became famous and made all this material wealth,” the letter reads in part. “That was only to enable me to see that there was more in life … I now know that I’m going to make it to the real top, which is the full self-realization and attainment that man can make.”

For Harrison, who oversees the estate of her late husband with their son Dhani, the timing — and the use of the word “material” — couldn’t have been more eerily perfect. Following the deluxe blow-out edition of All Things Must Pass from 2021, the Harrisons are now prepping a similar treatment for its follow-up, Living in the Material World. Coming Nov. 15, the 50th Anniversary Edition of the album (available in various formats) will include a remixed version of the original LP and 12 outtakes and alternate takes, plus nerd-out goodies like a Recording Notes booklet that details each day of the making of the album. There, you’ll learn that Phil Spector was involved in the early sessions, but “personal problems and fatigue,” as well as issues with the British immigration office, eventually led him to leave the project.

Along with acoustic demos of two of its best songs, “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” and “Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long,” one of the treats is the previously unheard demo of “Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond).” The song ended up on Ringo Starr’s Ringo album, with the Band backing Harrison’s former bandmate. But now we get to hear Harrison and the Band working out the song on their own in what amounts to a rare Harrison hoedown. “They were doing it for Ringo,” Olivia Harrison says. “But George did a guide vocal, and he was just trying to teach them how to play it and what the song was. He really loved playing with the Band. He thought they were so free and loose.”

Released in 1973 (Harrison admits they missed the actual 50th but, she says, “What’s the rush?”), Living in the Material World had the burden of following All Things Must Pass, the triple LP that more than proved he had plenty to offer on his own post-Beatles. The album continued that trend. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” bumped Paul McCartney’s “My Love” out of the Number One position on the singles charts, and the album itself knocked McCartney’s Red Rose Speedway out of the top slot and stayed there for five weeks.

Olivia Harrison, who didn’t meet her future husband until the following year, when she was working at A&M Records in Los Angeles, remembers hearing “Give Me Love” on the radio. “I drove all the way from Hermosa Beach to La Brea every day to work, and the radio played it constantly,” she says from her home. “And it was such a buzz in the morning, just such a positive song. I felt very attuned to George and his music at that time. I was feeling the same way in my life, and I started meditating and going to lectures. So that was the soundtrack for that experience I was having. It was just perfect for me.”

When the album would come up in conversation with George, who died of cancer in 2001, Harrison says he spoke warmly of it and the studio dates, where he recruited friends like bassist Klaus Voormann, drummer Jim Keltner, keyboardist Gary Wright, and members of Badfinger. “He was very fond of it,” she says. “He had all his close friend working with him on it.  He had more confidence and more fun with this one.” The album also arrived before a troubled stretch in his career, starting with his throat-plagued 1974 tour and a plagiarism lawsuit over “My Sweet Lord.”

For all its commercial success, Living in the Material World also dealt with some very material criticism. Harrison had begun expressing his Krishna beliefs on All Things Must Pass tracks like “My Sweet Lord” and “Awaiting on You All.” But critics and some longtime Beatle fans were dismayed by the more blatantly devotional songs on Living in the Material World, where “Give Me Love” sat alongside “The Light That Has Lighted the World” and “The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)” as well as “Sue Me, Sue You Blues,” his stinging song about the legal breakup of the Beatles.   

“All Things Must Pass really does lead into Material World, which really solidifies where he was coming from and what he was feeling,” Harris acknowledges. “I know somebody wrote a long time ago, ‘Oh, it’s so holy, I could scream.’ George didn’t care. When he did ‘My Sweet Lord,’ he did say, ‘You put your neck on the block because people don’t want to hear it.’ But he kept on doing it. He said, ‘That’s what life is about. You have to change.’”

Was he ever concerned, though, about turning off fans who yearned for a more carefree Beatle George? “I think he was aware of it, but he didn’t worry about it because he knew there was something in it, whether you liked it or not, and that was it,” she says. “There were maybe certain things you don’t want to hear, but that didn’t deter him. He was saying, How do you balance such an incredibly material life with some semblance of an inner life that cultivates wisdom?”

Harrison feels George’s confidence in making the record was bolstered by the Concert for Bangladesh, the all-star benefit show he organized the year before the sessions for Living in the Material World began. “I don’t think he was intimidated [by following up All Things Must Pass] because of that concert,” she says. “He never imagined he could pull something like that together. He’d never been a front man. He didn’t realize the influence he wielded with his friends. It just wasn’t on his radar to be able to do that and have people he respected standing alongside of him, supporting him. It must have been and was an incredible confirmation and boost to his own self, and I think that must have propelled him. I don’t think he had any doubts what he was doing at that point.”

If Harrison needed any reminder of her late husband’s beliefs, she found another — apart from the letter to his mom — when she came across a bottle cap in her home and found a piece of paper inside, in his handwriting, with the phrase “Be here now,” another of the album’s song titles. “You can say what you like about this or that, but he was sincere and had conviction, and that’s the thing that makes [the album] so good,” she says. “Today, people are open, and the world has changed in the way it looks at meditation or all this self-help. Nobody’s saying they could scream anymore. Dhani always tells me, ‘Don’t sanctify him!’ But George had a wisdom, and he was honest.”