George Harrison - The Quiet One Sounds Off

George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass gets the 50th-anniversary box set treatment, lovingly curated by his son, Dhani

- Alan di Perna

ALL THINGS MUST PASS IS THE WAR AND PEACE OF ROCK AND ROLL.

It’s a lot to wade through, but the wade is well worth it. Like Tolstoy’s great novel, George Harrison’s massive 1970 triple album is an epic, monumental, somewhat daunting masterwork. It captures the irrevocable march of time (the passing of the Beatles and the swinging Sixties) with a profound sense of loss, resignation, renewal and an all-encompassing spiritual perspective based on universal love. While it wasn’t the very first rock triple album — the Woodstock soundtrack album came out six months earlier — All Things Must Pass was the first triple-disc rock studio album by a single artist and an ex-Beatle at that. It would yield the first Number One hit by an ex-Beatle, the wistfully expansive “My Sweet Lord,” and now-iconic Harrison songs like “What Is Life,” “Isn’t It a Pity,” “Wah-Wah” and “Beware of Darkness.” All Things Must Pass also served as a gateway to the large-scale, “more is more” aesthetic of Seventies classic rock, and the emergence of Harrison from under the giant songwriting shadow of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He would prove to be one of the most compelling and original voices of the entire rock era.

The first Beatle to venture into solo recordings, Harrison had already released two previous instrumental albums on his own prior to All Things Must Pass — the Wonderwall Music film soundtrack (1968) and Electronic Sound (1969)