- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The Best of George Harrison features Beatles songs that George Harrison wrote, and an excellent selection of songs from his solo albums.
George Harrison – The Best of George Harrison (1976): Sometimes called the “quiet Beatle”, George Harrison is the Beatles’ lead guitarist and later developed into a songwriter in the same category as John Lennon and Paul McCartney if you ask me. Coming along comparatively early in George Harrison’s recording career (he was 33 years old when The Best of George Harrison was released), Side 1 features Beatles songs that George Harrison wrote where he also performed the lead vocals, and Side 2 provides an excellent selection of post-Beatles singles from his solo albums. In the sort of tacky move that record companies are known for, The Best of George Harrison was shipped to record stores in the same month as George Harrison’s first album on his own label, Dark Horse Records (affiliated with Warner Bros. Records, while Apple Records was distributed by EMI). That album, Thirty Three & 1/3 was Harrison’s fourth solo album after the release of the triple album All Things Must Pass (1970) that came out right after the Beatles broke up.
I am not the first to note that nothing on The Best of George Harrison shows the Indian music influences that mark so much of George Harrison’s work; and there are also no tracks from Harrison’s two solo albums that he made while the Beatles were still active, Wonderwall Music (1968) and Electronic Sound (1969), with Wonderwall Music being the first solo album released by any of the Beatles. Of the Beatles songs, certainly “Something” (the only #1 Beatles song that George Harrison wrote), “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Taxman”, and “Here Comes the Sun” are essential. However, of the other three songs, only “For You Blue” (from the Beatles’ final album, Let it Be) appeared on a single, as the B-side of “Long and Winding Road”; the other two songs, “Think for Yourself” and “If I Needed Someone” are album-only tracks (on Rubber Soul in the U.K., and on Yesterday and Today in the U.S.). I would argue that “Long, Long, Long” and “Savoy Truffle” from The Beatles (the so-called “White Album”, when George Harrison really came into his own as a songwriter IMHO), “Love You To” (from Revolver, and the first Beatles song to show full influences of Indian classical music), and “Only a Northern Song” (from the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album) are all better (and better-known) songs than these three. Two other retrospective albums of George Harrison’s music have come out since The Best of George Harrison, though none could be described as comprehensive.