The Beatles song George Harrison almost gave away

When The Beatles returned after exploring the realms of transcendental meditation, they had more songs than they knew what to do with. Expanding their awareness of the cosmos made them open up more in their songwriting, causing both John Lennon and Paul McCartney to explore their own skills more often than writing together. As the rest of the band descended to cut demos with George Harrison, he had one folk-influenced song ready to roll.

While the Fab Four’s expansive White Album included some of the most varied material of their career, it also marked the most Harrison songs on a Beatles album thus far at four tracks. Although some classic material ended up on the album, like ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, the breezy sounds of ‘Not Guilty’ never cut it in the studio.

When listening back on the Anthology discs, the version that Harrison was working on at the time was dominated by a plodding acoustic guitar as his soothing voice played throughout the song. Given his laid-back demeanour, Harrison never really intended the song to be on a Beatles project.

Discussing the themes of the song, Harrison attributed the lyrics to be about his problem trying to get a word in amongst Lennon and McCartney, recalling during a conversation with Rolling Stone: “‘Not guilty for getting in your way/While you’re trying to steal the day’ – which was me trying to get a space.”

Whether for fear of alienating his bandmates, Harrison put his song on the back burner, even thinking of giving it to acclaimed singer Peggy Lee. Despite his rock credentials, it’s easy to see where Lee’s voice would fit within the song, having a delightfully fruity melody and a biting lyric behind it.

Instead of fine-tuning it, Harrison kept the material on the shelf for a little while before resurrecting it for his self-titled solo album in the 1970s. Compared to the ramshackle demo recording, Harrison’s recorded version is a lot more mellow, almost sounding like something coming out of the folk scene around the same time.

More than anything, this song marked a drastic change in what Harrison was writing about. Since most of his bandmates were never able to let him get a word in, the ‘Quiet Beatle’ normally channelled all of that frustration into his heavy material, famously writing his solo hit ‘Wah-Wah’ after briefly quitting the band following an argument during the sessions for Let It Be.

Though Harrison always tried to push his ideas into the group, it’s easy to see why he wanted to give away some of his material to other people. Since the rest of the band was more concerned with their own material, Harrison was undoubtedly thinking of the millions of artists dying to work with him, even giving away songs like ‘Something’ to Joe Cocker before nailing down his sublime version on Abbey Road.

The days of Harrison writing for other people weren’t going to last, though. By the time he was free from The Beatles, he would get his songs out however he could, and All Things Must Pass signalled his bold reinvention as a solo star. The White Album may have been fraught with tension, but ‘Not Guilty’ is a look into the future of what Harrison had planned for his work.