"Readers of Boys' Life ancient history cartoons will doubtless recall the story of the king who directed his wise men to discover one true statement. After some 30 years of premise-testing, the wise men returned with his answer: 'All things must pass.' In the title song of his new, three-record album, George Harrison has come up with a novel interpretation of this truth -- novel, at least, for George in that it is basically optimistic. 'No, it's not always going to be this grey,' George sings. 'All things must pass' In other words, things are reassuringly cyclical; the inevitable pain of life must inevitably go away."

-- Timothy Crouse
Boston After Dark
December 8, 1970

I once heard someone say that not liking the Beatles is as perverse as not liking the sun. True enough. Indeed, the sun has an odd way of making itself visible where the band is concerned: "I'll Follow the Sun." "Good Day Sunshine." "Sun King." George's own "Here Comes the Sun." In 1994, Stephanie Zacharek wrote in the Phoenix that "Trying to deal with the Beatles' songs head-on is like staring into the sun. There's no looking directly at them, and as much as you may feel they're a part of your personal past, your own private history written in rock and roll, they're not really yours to keep."

Today, the sun seems a little dimmer.

When the first issue of the Phoenix's precursor, Boston After Dark hit the streets in March of 1966, the "Nowhere Man"/"What Goes On" single was in the charts, and John had just uttered his infamous "more popular than Jesus" quip. That was a long time ago. We've been covering the Fab Four ever since. Here are some of George Harrison's Phoenix moments.

May 12, 1970

With only a "a tape (with one cut missing) supplied to us through the courtesy of WRKO" to go by, music writer Craig Stinson penned an advance review of the Beatles posthumous Let It Be (recorded over a year before), in which he guessed at the title of Harrison's "I Me Mine" and makes a passing, anonymous mention of his bluesy shuffle "For you Blue." (Apparently, the cassette wasn't labeled.)

"The fourth song ('Ah Mi Ma'?), with its chromatically descending bass line, would affect me as a bit oversentimental, were it not for a couple of interruptions of genuine rock (heavy beat, traditional rock chord changes). The song is still a trifle cloying, somewhat in the manner of 'junk' on McCartney's new solo album. . . ."

"The last two numbers [include] a plain straight-forward love song with a solid rock backup ('Because you're sweet and lovely, girl, I love you more than ever. . .')."

December 8, 1970

Finally free from being forced to compete with Lennon and McCartney, Harrison relished the chance to show his stuff on a solo album and wasted no time in recording one (a big one) with the help of friends like Ringo and Eric Clapton. Timothy Crouse reviewed the triple-LP All Things Must Pass, and noticed a palpable optimism to George's writing.

"Most of the new record has the uplifting quality of 'Here Comes the Sun.' The general tone of the songs is relaxed and open; George has dropped his guard against the omnipresent dangers of living. The record begins with the Harrison-Dylan collaboration, 'I'd Have You Anytime." The lyrics show an eagerness to be immersed in life 'Let me know you; Let me show you/Let me roll it on you.' . . .

"Like Dylan's, George's earlier songs were brilliant but slightly inhuman. The songs are personal now, and the melodies have become warm and lush. . . .

"If al these songs share one thing in common, it is an element of mystery. Beyond saying that some of the songs have the gentle, floating feeling that It's A Beautiful Day evoke so well, I cannot really describe it. The mysterious feeling of this album cannot be measured, but it separates All things Must Pass from most of the other music that has issued forth this year. Without understanding it intellectually, one instinctively feels the sense of George's mysticism, of his acceptance of life, of his faith."

January 25, 1972

Before LiveAid, there was the Concert for Bangla Desh. But while music writer Ben Gerson admired Harrison's magnanimity in corralling his old cronies -- Dylan, Clapton, Ringo -- to play for the benefit of a starving nation, he thought the music suffered.

"George, in particular strikes me as an extremely admirable, sincere human being, and he, at Ravi Shankar's behest, was responsible for pricking the consciences of musicians, fans and ultimately the nation, and raising millions of dollars for Bangla Desh. Yet, because the concert was so successful as a philanthropic venture, there seems to be an unwillingness for people to deal with it sociologically or artistically. . . .

"Bangla Desh in its spirit strikes me as a profoundly anti-rock occasion -- too much holy reverence, not enough libidinal abandon. A bunch of near-mythic performers are wheeled out to perform for probably the first time in years, and the audience is more amazed by their sheer palpable existence, their mortality, than by the music they play, the music that made them demigods in the first place."

June 12, 1973

Ben Gerson reviewed Harrison's somewhat sanctimonious Living in the Material World.

"Now that George has proved to all the world that he's a mensch (All Things Must Pass) and a philanthropist (Concert for Bangla Desh), on Living in the Material World (Apple SMAS 3410) he's back to self-effacement. Not that All Things Must Pass sharply delineated George Harrison, musician and citizen, but at least the canvas on which the heavens were painted was vast; likewise, Bangla Desh, where George's presence was more moral than physical. Obviously, the yearning towards egolessness is a hallmark of Eastern religion, but in George's case, that very self-effacement he pursues spiritually is his prime characteristic, and deficiency, as an artist and public figure. Yet a strange mechanism is at work: by dwelling upon religion in his music, he presents us with something with which to identify him. Ironically, without religion to associate him with in our minds, George would be a far reedier figure than he is.

"Of course, amid all the self-scrutiny and admonition on Living in the Material World we see not so much the beaming, radiant disciple as the proudly imperfect Calvinist. When George in the past would occasionally step out from behind his role as ultimate sideman, we'd see a crabbed, sarcastic, materialistic, unsociable fellow. Minor as these tendencies were against his prevailing invisibility, they were what made him concrete. Now George is doing penance for those traits, and all we see in their place is a monolithic piety."

December 17, 1974

In a piece entitled "Harried Krishna," Peter Herbst reported from the Boston Garden, where he witnessed Harrison holding his own (kind of) against a drunken and unruly audience.

"Harrison was [poorly] equipped to overcome the Garden's ravenous, revening hordes. He was a man of God, of Krishna, as he put it in Rolling Stone. 'I'm just a dog and I'm led around by me collar by Krishna. . . .I'm just a groveling lumberjack lucky to be a grain of dirt in creation.' That statement, in addition to chancing the wrath of the ASPCA, is full of precisely the kind of humility rock stars cannot afford. A humble man can't command the attention of a sprawling mass, most of whom can't see him too well and most of whom can hardly hear him at all. . . .

"Harrison was in a mood to fight, though, by the time he got to the Garden. He'd been in too many sodden auditoriums, played too many disrespectful crowds, and he wanted to say his piece. 'You don't find Lord Krishna in a bottle,' he told his listeners. And when he put in a plug before intermission for a concert program that would benefit the Appalachian poor, he rasped 'Poverty, y'all. Think about it.' He said he was glad there were mikes on stage because there was so much noise going on offstage, and when he introduced a piece done by Ravi Shankar's orchestra, he prefaced it with 'For all you hecklers up there, this is called "Dispute and Violence."'"

May 1, 1979

Tom Carson gave a listen to Harrison's self-titled solo album, and found that, if it wasn't quite as bad as 1974's Dark Horse (generally considered his career nadir), it was definitely lacking.

"The only real lesson to be learned from George Harrison's new album is that Beatles and Enlightened Ones alike lead lives so hopelessly elevated that not much interesting is ever allowed to happen to them. George Harrison, as its title suggests, is an attempt to dismantle the off-putting, didactic persona of most of George's solo work in favor of a more intimate and uncluttered approach -- which is to say that it means to be more commercial. . . .

"Only a superstar of George's caliber could treat material this trivial and empty with the smug self-importance that comes across here. Almost none of these songs is about anything: they're just little collections of luke-warm platitudes, tidily packaged like Lipton tea bags, about love being a good thing and faith as the answer to all problems."

December 4, 1987

Unfortunately, even by the mid-'80s, George's work hadn't much improved in the eyes of critics. The Phoenix's Jimmy Guterman sharpened his knives for Harrison's new one, Cloud Nine.

"Capitol's release of the Beatles' catalogue on compact disc this year should make this an ideal time for George Harrison to release his first album since 1982's pathologically laid-back Gone Troppo. Yet it's the same old story/problem: he can't stand on his own. His compression of Chuck Berry and Scotty Moore stylings, and later his equally earnest distillations of Ravi Shankar's sitar fundamentals, helped fill out the Beatles' dance card. Yet he was only a passable singer (dry-voiced, arthritic with rhythms), and he wrote few top-rank songs. Harrison's solo career has been a series of relaxed meditations on spirituality, with the occasional respite for a picturesque single. Even his ostensible high-water mark, the triple LP All Things Must Pass (1970) is bloated with aimless jams and arduous offerings to a deity so inoffensively vague it's offensive. His new Cloud 9 (Dark Horse) is being touted as his best since All Things Must Pass, but what kind of achievement is that?

"Harrison stares out from the cover of Cloud 9 with a pearly-toothed rictus and mirrored sunglasses, to clue you in that this album isn't a somber meditation -- George wants to have fun. Too bad it's mindless fun. When the first two lines of a record are 'Have my love/It fits like a glove,' you know you're in for frivolity."

July 15, 1994

Looking back over Harrison's majestic career with his fellow Liverpuddlians, Stephanie Zacharek remembered the bittersweet end -- and reminded us why we listened in the first place.

"It only makes sense that the Beatles -- almost closer than brothers through much of their career together, though bitterly divided at the end -- would write one of the best, most grown-up break-up songs in rock and roll. 'Two of Us' (from Let it Be, released in 1970, after the band's demise) is more about relief than rancor and regret. 'Two of us wearing raincoats, standing solo in the sun/You and me chasing paper, getting nowhere, on our way back home' -- as if the whole ride had been nothing more than a field trip. . . .The Lennon and McCartney harmonies are there again, leaning -- and pulling -- against each other. Ringo's drumming has the easy feel of spontaneous tapping on a coffee can. Even George Harrison, the serious minded one, seems to have let his guitar out for a frolic. 'You and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead.' Paul, naturally, sings the corny part, but it's true, not just for the Beatles as a group, but for everyone, of any age, who had come so far with them and now had to stand back and watch them fall apart."