The calm of George

I’m sharing this month’s Loper Language Model early to celebrate the birthday of one of my music heroes, George Harrison.

Happy birthday, Quiet One. You’d be 83 today.

I’ve been watching a lot of Beatles content lately—from the entire Anthology, which was recently released and expanded, to the Get Back miniseries. I’m not necessarily a Beatles fanatic—if you know me or have the wherewithal to dive into my monthly playlists, you know my musical taste is all over the place. When it comes to music, I’m foremost a student and highly distractible. That said, I was raised on the Beatles, and I’ve had most of their songs and solos memorized since I was a kid.

I’ve always known that Paul McCartney was “the best,” and of course, this comes through in the documentation. Paul is so talented, and he knows it—it's objectively annoying! But it was his grasp of music theory and his astounding musical abilities that made the Beatles innovative. I can identify with Paul because he was precocious, and he had a preternatural need to just “work” (he says as much in Get Back!) and that’s what made the Beatles good. He can also be a sap, but that’s okay.

Over the course of watching these series, I also gained a greater appreciation for John Lennon. John was killed the year before I was born, so while my Beatles upbringing happened in his wake, I never really experienced what made him great. John had comparatively fewer works than Paul and, as a result of his death, more or less left the mainstream conversation by the 90s. Even though he had iconic songs like “Imagine” and “Give Peace a Chance,” his solo work always felt less polished, more indie-feeling. He was a pioneer in this sense, of course.

But John didn’t have the drive to write earworms the way Paul did; he never made albums like Ram or Band on the Run—designed to achieve this—and he never lived long enough to be washed up and need to become a Wilbury like George, or to participate in the retrospectives except as the elephant in the room. It’s a shame. But in Get Back in particular, you can see a warm side of John. Even if he is strung out sometimes, you can see a human—someone with empathy, someone unexpectedly mediating the drama—and that he really was the funny one. I can identify with John because he was so serious about serious things, and yet he was so silly inside. His silliness was his charm.

And Ringo is a good chap. He doesn’t really feature much in these series except as a reliable, patient, competent, and non-egotistical guy. People like Ringo don’t tend to get a lot of fame, but they’re an essential part of life—of trying to do anything at all. Someone has to be the Ringo, and for the Beatles, I’m glad it was Ringo. As we all know, he was a consummate session drummer who ended up in a great band, both as a fill-in and as a founder. Ringo was certainly the glue, the dad of the group, never getting much credit. But this isn’t about Ringo. And really, it isn’t about the Beatles.

Over the years, George Harrison has become my favorite. During the pandemic, All Things Must Pass was remixed and re-released, and it is one of a handful of albums that helped my family—with a newborn—get through it. The album is multifaceted, infused with George’s affinity for Eastern philosophy and religion, and also his characteristic frustration (as on “Wah-Wah”—slang for “headache”—composed after he temporarily left the Beatles, as documented in Get Back). The most important part of All Things Must Pass, to me, is that it takes a long view of life. You might be able to figure that out from the title.

I’ve come to appreciate George more because I think we share some traits: an understanding that you need to find ways to live within impermanence, not the other way around, or you’ll go crazy; an uneasy feeling that this world is material and we’re just living in it; a frustration with societal restrictions imposed on us that keep us from being human; an idealism; an understanding that we all come to the end one day, and no matter what we plan, it has to happen. It’s interesting that George seemed to grasp this long before he knew he would die of lung cancer at age 58.

It’s been a tough couple of months, and I’ve come back to George for help, as I have often turned to art when I’m at an impasse. Recently, after watching these documentaries, I found George’s posthumous album, Brainwashed, again. He wrote it with his death in mind and even provided detailed instructions for his family and friends to complete the album. For a couple of reasons, I haven't listened to it since around then. One is because it can be a tough listen for the reasons cited above. The other is that I wore it out! It was one of two albums my friends and I took with us on a drive down the East Coast for a backcountry trip in the Everglades. We listened to it so many times I bet we all still know the lyrics.

Brainwashed is a sad album because it means George Harrison died well before he should’ve. But he didn’t really write it that way. He wrote it as a final act of George-ness, a message to the world: whether you believe in God or not (I don’t, which is one thing George and I don’t agree on), there is something more here beyond earthly pains and pleasures. Look for it and you might find it. You’re a billion years old. No matter where you’re going, any road will take you there. The river runs through us, and we’re part of the river.

The music is lovely and layered, but also still a little cynical, sardonic, and smirky—the way George was. It’s the sound of a man grappling with his own impending death, at peace and ready but still a little cranky.

My son, also named George (probably(?) a coincidence), loves the song on Brainwashed called “Pisces Fish.” He can’t explain why, but he says, “I could listen to this all day.” He doesn’t understand Eastern religion, but I think he likes it because it has a chant-like quality, and George’s timbre is like a cello—one of the most beautiful instruments—not coincidentally the same register as the typical male voice and close to my own, making for good singalongs.

And the chorus is good, even if the lyrics—about geeses crapping and breweries belching—are a little cartoonish: “I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul.”

The river doesn’t know anything but to keep going.

Each month, I put together a Spotify playlist of the songs that caught my ear. Some are familiar to me, some aren’t. Some are old, some are new. The playlist tends to span eras, genres, and sounds. It’s probably not for everyone but here it is!

2026

2025

2024