All Things Must Pass was critically acclaimed on release and, with long stays at number 1 on charts around the world, commercially successful. The sessions produced a double album's worth of extra material, most of which remains unreleased. Among the large cast of backing musicians were Eric Clapton and Delaney & Bonnie's Friends band – three of whom formed Derek and the Dominos with Clapton during the recording – as well as Ringo Starr, Gary Wright, Preston, Klaus Voormann, John Barham, Badfinger and Pete Drake. Production began at London's Abbey Road Studios in May 1970, with extensive overdubbing and mixing continuing through October. Commentators interpret Barry Feinstein's album cover photo, showing Harrison surrounded by four garden gnomes, as a statement on his independence from the Beatles. The original vinyl release consisted of two LPs of songs and a third disc of informal jams, titled Apple Jam, and it was the first studio triple album by a single act in the history of rock music. The devolved "My Sweet Lord" aside, the bonus tracks here offer new insight: the unreleased "I Live for You" further highlights the album's oft overlooked country facet spare takes of "Beware of Darkness" and "Let It Down" underscore the strength of Harrison's songwriting an alternate backing track of "What Is Life" demonstrates the meticulousness of Spector's production.The album introduced Harrison's signature sound, the slide guitar, and the spiritual themes that would be implicit throughout his subsequent solo work. It remains Harrison's unequaled masterpiece. Still, no amount of grumpy auto-revisionism can subtract from the admittedly overwrought majesty of these tracks, which were the logical sonic extension of Abbey Road. With such a mindset, it's unsurprising Harrison has allowed a nearly decade-and-a-half gap to grow between recordings. If the mini-boxed set's booklet and twin inner CD sleeves won't convince you (the album's familiar cover is colorized and altered to include backdrops of a freeway-tangled cityscape and nuclear reactor cooling towers, respectively), then maybe his liner-note apology for Phil Spector's "big production" (kind of like Da Vinci grousing about Mona's crooked smile) or his laconic, stripped-down, 2000 rethink of "My Sweet Lord" will. We offer as evidence this splendidly remastered 30th-anniversary edition of his 1970 multidisc solo epic. It's hard to imagine, but Beatles resident mystic George Harrison has arguably become the band's most curmudgeonly cynic.
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