Home posts The song George Harrison used to mock his own fans
George Harrison always found it amusing to be called “The Beatles that changed the most”. As much as he may have been a different person from the shy, introverted guitar hero in 1963, the whole point of life for him was about moving on to the next cycle no matter what happened. The musical climate of the 1980s was a lot different than what he got to in the 1970s, though, and the ‘Quiet Beatle’ saw it fit to go after some of his own fans on ‘Unconsciousness Rules’.
Before we look at Harrison spitting venom, you really need context for this kind of setup. While Harrison had already made a fine batch of songs for what would become his album Somewhere in England, his record label had other ideas. Not liking the kind of spiritual angle he had gotten up to on his last records, Harrison was sent the record back and told to find something a bit more hip to what the kids were listening to.
Such recommendations were supposed to include the kind of breakup and/or love songs that had worked well with audiences, which seemed utterly alien to Harrison. Even with the added inclusions, the record didn’t have much of a single on it until Harrison penned ‘All Those Years Ago’, written in tribute to John Lennon’s passing the previous year.
Once fans got ahold of what Harrison thought the people wanted, the results were… interesting, to put it mildly. Kicking off the album, songs like ‘Blood From a Clone’ are practically a nihilistic hit back at Warner Bros from Harrison, practically grinning through his teeth and seething about having to go back to the studio.
We’re already on a bit of a nihilistic kick, but ‘Unconsciousness Rules’ is Harrison doubling down on his saltiness. After lambasting the business tycoons who wanted to see their cash cow make a million, this song is dedicated to all the braindead idiots who buy into this kind of record company schlock.
Throughout every verse, Harrison is snide about those who listen to the music but have no idea what the pieces are actually saying. Even though the song is a decent putdown from Harrison, it’s hard for him not to come off as a bit of a curmudgeon here. Next thing you know, he’s going to be telling his audience to pull their pants up and do their homework.
If you were to ask his bandmates, this was far from the ‘George’ that they knew every day. During a TV special featured in Living in the Material World, Ringo Starr said that Harrison was a bit more lenient in terms of partying, saying, “Oh, you know, he said that ‘I was never into discotheques’. You had to drag him out of them.”
Although ‘Unconsciousness Rules’ did nothing to endear him to the younger crowd, some of the other tunes that Harrison made for the album are decent… for very different reasons. While there are bits and pieces of that trademark spiritualism like ‘Life Itself’, there’s also a track like ‘Teardrops’, featuring some of the most dated 1980s production in the world and sounding like Harrison if he were trying to make a jingle for men’s cologne. Harrison’s style may not have been as en vogue as it was in the past, but if you pushed him to his limit, you were always bound to get songs like this.
