George Harrison - Cockamamie Business

 

 (front cover by NothingBrightAboutIt from the Steve Hoffman forum)

 My goal here was really to gather all the stray 80's tracks together, in a more cohesive and musical way than just having them in chronological order... I took a sort of Brainwashed approach, having a mishmash of older and newer tracks, but all of them being pretty similar sound-wise (well to my ears anyway). It goes a bit into early 90's territory, but the album still fits pretty well between Cloud Nine (1987) / The Travelling Wilburys material (1988-1990) and Live In Japan (1992).
I left most of the Somewhere In England outtakes for a different project.

01. Cockamamie Business
02. The Hottest Gong In Town
03. I Don't Wanna Do It (Bob Dylan)
04. This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying) [Platinum Weird] w. Dave Stewart
05. Let It Be Me (Gilbert Bécaud/Mann Curtis)
06. Poor Little Girl
07. Shanghai Surprise w. Vicki Brown
08. Zig-Zag (Harrison/Jeff Lynne)
09. Ride Rajbun w. Dhani Harrison & Ravi Shankar
10. Tears of The World (1992 Remix)
11. Cheer Down (Harrison/Tom Petty)

Bonus tracks:

12. That's The Way It Goes (1987 Jeff Lynne Remix)
13. Save The World (Greenpeace 1985 Re-take/Remix)
14. I Don't Wanna Do It (Single Mix)
15. Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby (Live) w. Carl Perkins
16. Blue Suede Shoes (Live) w. Carl Perkins
17. While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Live at The Prince's Trust) w. Eric Clapton & Ringo Starr
18. Here Comes The Sun (Live at The Prince's Trust) w. Eric Clapton & Ringo Starr


"Tears of The World" was recorded during the Somewhere In England LP sessions in April 1980. It was remixed in a very Jeff Lynne-ish kind of way in 1992 for the release of the Songs By George Harrison Vol.2 EP. It features Jim Keltner on drums and Willie Weeks on bass guitar. 

The bonus track, "Save The World" is a remix of  the 1981 track from Somewhere In England with a new vocal recording and new lyrics, and was released on Greenpeace - The Album on June, 4th 1985.

 "I Don't Wanna Do It" was recorded in LA in 1984 with producer Dave Edmunds for the soundtrack of the film Porky's Revenge! It was released in March (US) and June (UK) 1985 (following its single release in April, backed with Edmunds' "Queen of the Hop" -the single version is also included here). The song was written by Bob Dylan in 1968 and given to Harrison, who demoed the song in 1970 when it was considered for inclusion on All Things Must Pass.

"Let It Be Me" is a cover of the french song "Je t'appartiens" by Gilbert Bécaud. The recording date is unknown but seems to have been recorded between 1983 and 1985 (compare the vocals with the 85 retake of "Save The World"...)

The two bonus songs "Everybody's Trying My Baby" & "Blue Suede Shoes" are taken from Carl Perkins' album Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session. Recorded on October 21st, 1985, at Limehouse Studios, London, they feature Carl Perkins, Eric Clapton (electric guitar) and Ringo Starr (drums).

"The Hottest Gong In Town", "Shanghai Surprise" and "Zig-Zag" were recorded in July 1986 for the soundtrack of the film Shanghai Surprise (co-produced by Harrison's HandMade Films & MGM and featuring Sean Penn & Madonna). The three tracks were produced by Jeff Lynne. The film also included "Someplace Else" and "Breath Away from Heaven" which were released on the Cloud Nine LP. "Zig-Zag" first appeared as the B-Side to "When We Was Fab" in 1988 along with a Jeff Lynne's remixed version of "That's The Way It Goes" (from Gone Troppo), also included here.

About "Hottest Gong": Harrison wrote the track after being told on the film set, in Hong Kong, that two 1937-era songs were required before the shooting schedule moved on to a UK studio, in a matter of days. A pastiche in the style of Cab Calloway, the jazz-influenced composition plays on the slang term for opium – "gong". The musical backing is credited to "the Zig-Zaggers", a reference to the fictional Zig Zag nightclub, where he performs the song in an early scene in the film. The recording features Harrison on banjo and singing in the jazz scat style he had used on earlier songs such as "The Answer's at the End" and "Not Guilty", and a piano part that recalls the playing of Jelly Roll Morton. Although a soundtrack album was scheduled, it was cancelled after the film's poor critical reception. In 1987, Harrison also cited the "rotten" experience of working with Hollywood actors Madonna and Sean Penn as one of the reasons, and described Shanghai Surprise as the only film that HandMade had not enjoyed making.

Bonus tracks "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" & "Here Comes The Sun" are taken from The Prince's Trust Concert 1987 album and was recorded on June 5th, 1987 in Wembley Arena. It features: Eric Clapton & Jeff Lynne (electric guitar), Ringo Starr & Phil Collins (drums), Elton John & Jools Holland (keyboards) and Mark King (percussions). It was the first time Harrison played live since his 1974 US Tour.

"Ride Rajbun" was released in 1992 on the multi-artist charity album The Bunbury Tails, which was the soundtrack to the British animated television series of the same name. Harrison co-wrote the song's lyrics with Bunbury Tails' creator David English. The eponymous Rajbun was a character in the series, one of a team of cricket-playing rabbits – in this case, from Bangalore in India.
The song was recorded in March 1988. Harrison's nine-year-old son Dhani and David English accompanied him on the recording, as fellow vocalists, and Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar provided the opening sitar part (Alap). According to English, Harrison visited Shankar at the London hotel where the sitarist was staying and taped Shankar's intro in his hotel room. Harrison otherwise played all the sitar parts on the song. As with Harrison's appearance on "Friar Park", a track on Shankar's album Tana Mana (1987), "Ride Rajbun" marked a rare collaboration between the two musicians in the years since their joint North American tour at the end of 1974. The song appeared in the Bunbury Tails episode "Rajbun Story", and on the soundtrack album alongside contributions from Elton John, the Bee Gees and Eric Clapton. Issued briefly in only the UK, "Ride Rajbun" remains one of Harrison's rarest releases.

"Cockamamie Business" and "Poor Little Girl" were recorded in July 1989 at Friar Park for the Best of Dark Horse: 1976-1989 LP. Also included is Harrison's contribution to the soundtrack for the film Lethal Weapon 2 with "Cheer Down" (later released as a single in August 1989). The three tracks feature Jeff Lynne on bass guitar, keyboards and backing vocals, and Ian Paice (from Deep Purple) on drums.

"This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)" is a remake of the 1975 song, recorded with Dave Stewart (former Eurythmics guitarist) in London in 1992. Overdubs were added after Harrison's death in 2006, with Ringo Starr on drums, Dhani Harrison on acoustic guitar and Kara DioGuardi on backing vocals. It was used to promote Stewart's Platinum Weird project, but only released on the internet. In the end the song did not appaer on Platinum Weird's album, Make Believe.

I also created a bonus Collaborations EP, that features the most notable featurings Harrison did between 1989 and 2001:

01. Gary Moore - That Kind Of Woman (1990)
02. Eric Clapton - Run So Far (1989)
03. Jim Capaldi - Love's Got A Hold On Me (1997)
04. Carl Perkins - Distance Makes No Difference With Love (1996)
05. Eric Clapton - That Kind Of Woman (1990)
06. George Harrison & Jools Holland - Horse To The Water  (2001 + 2007 mixes) 

      All tracks written by George Harrison except track 4 written by Carl Perkins.

ॐ