From his 1970 triple-album, All Things Must Pass, the quiet Beatle's transcendental anthem of happiness and devotion synced to footage from the 1972 Concert. George Harrison, My sweet Lord, Hm, my Lord, Hm, my Lord, I really want to see you, Really want to be with you, Really want to see you Lord, But it takes so long, my Lord, My sweet Lord, Hm, my Lord, Hm, my Lord, I really want to know you, Really want to go with you, Really want to show you Lord, That it won't take long, my Lord (hallelujah), My sweet Lord (hallelujah), Hm, my Lord (hallelujah.

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.

1. By George Harrison, my all-time favorite Beatle.Lyrics:My sweet lordHm, my lordHm, my lordI really want to see youReally want to be with youReally want to se.
2. Lyrics to 'My Sweet Lord' on Lyrics.com. George Harrison. George HarrisonMBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles.

George Harrison was the George Harrison of the Beatles. This, presumably, was not an easy thing to be. Harrison was a bona fide star, a fascinating and omnivorous musical mind and a tremendous talent who happened to be in a band with two world-historical game-changing titans. In a lot of ways, Harrison was my favorite Beatle: the funniest, the most musically curious, by far the best-looking. He’s responsible for many of the twangy, snaky guitar lines and solos that add so much to so many of the great songs that he didn’t get any credit for helping to write. His influence subtly nudged the Beatles toward Motown, toward folk-rock, and toward Eastern mysticism. He was absolutely crucial to the Beatles’ success, and yet he was still the third horse in a two-horse race.

Harrison was the youngest Beatle, the Quiet One. He was almost never the focus of the band. He’d joined the Quarrymen, the pre-Beatles skiffle group, when he was just 15, and he’d gotten the Beatles’ first Hamburg residency shut down when he was deported for being too young to be in the clubs. As a songwriter, Harrison was still coming into his own as the band wound down. “Something,” arguably the last truly great Beatles single, was his. If the band had found a way to continue, it’s easy to imagine Harrison eventually taking his place alongside John Lennon and Paul McCartney, becoming a third partner. Instead, by 1970, Harrison’s profile was in an almost incomprehensible place. Think of it: George Harrison was probably one of the 40 most famous people on the planet, and yet he couldn’t help but be overshadowed by the two guys who had been his co-workers since they’d all been teenagers.

So I like to imagine All Things Must Pass, Harrison’s first move after the Beatles’ breakup, as his grand declaration of self, his big statement that nobody would ever overshadow him again. This guy got Phil Spector to co-produce a triple album full of nothing but shaggy all-star jams. And as his first single, he attempted to put forth the idea that all religions, all belief systems, are the same thing. Pretty ambitious! Imagine if John Paul Jones or Izzy Stradlin or Lance Bass or Michelle Williams had tried something like that.

From a certain perspective, “My Sweet Lord” is among the most radical #1 hits in history of the Hot 100. The lyrics, at least on a surface level, are simple enough: Harrison wants to see God, wants to know God, but it’s hard and it takes a long time. Probably every kind of religious music has expressed some variation of that idea again and again — the longing for transcendence, the frustration of not yet having it. But Harrison does this by fusing the iconography of his Christian upbringing with that of the Hinduism that he’d come to embrace later in life. The backing singers start out chanting “Hallelujah” and move on to “Hare Krishna” — same inflections, same cadence, essentially erasing any boundaries between the two. For Harrison, they were the same thing.

In structure, too, Harrison set out to fuse traditions. “My Sweet Lord” has a pop melody, but it doesn’t have a pop structure. It’s the same couple of phrases repeated over and over, with variations. Harrison got that from black American gospel music, a huge and overt influence on “My Sweet Lord,” and he also got it from Hindu mantras. Again, to him, the two meant the same thing.

Harrison wrote the song in Copenhagen, late in 1969. He, Billy Preston, and Eric Clapton were all special guests on the American duo Delaney & Bonnie’s European tour, and so they were all hanging out together. The Beatles hadn’t yet officially broken up, and Harrison didn’t know his next move, so he gave the song to his old friend Preston. Preston recorded his version first, and he released it first, too. Preston’s version of the song, recorded in London with the Edwin Hawkins Singers and the Temptations’ backing band, is both harder and more ebullient than the one Harrison eventually recorded. It’s closer, in form and spirit, to the gospel music that Harrison wanted to evoke. But Preston’s version of the song never had anything like the impact of Harrison’s. (Preston’s version peaked at #90, and only after Harrison’s take blew up.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mabaEff0s-E

Harrison recorded his version at Abbey Road a few months later, co-producing it with Phil Spector. There’s no official list of credits, and Harrison and Spector might have combined the tracks from a bunch of different takes, so we’ll probably never know for sure who all played on “My Sweet Lord.” But even without an official record, there were a lot of famous people involved in making this song. Billy Preston, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and all four members of Badfinger definitely played on the song. Peter Frampton and Gary Wright might have been on it, too. There’s even one report that John Lennon played rhythm guitar, though Lennon later drily made fun of the song: “Every time I put the radio on, it’s ‘Oh my Lord.’ I’m beginning to think there must be a God.”

George Harrison My Sweet Lord Tribute Billy Preston

Harrison’s version of the song is warm and almost sedate. It sounds big in that impressive-cathedral sort of way, all these voices and instruments just barely audible in the mix. It makes for a fascinating collision of styles — the overwhelming echo of Spector’s wall of sound production, as applied to the sort of oblique and countrified folk-rock ramble that Harrison’s buddies Bob Dylan and the Band were doing at the time. Harrison plays slide guitar on the song, a weird but nice complement to the church-bell bongs that were a Spector trademark. The song builds and builds, but it never forces itself out of its easy, balmy groove.

“My Sweet Lord” is pretty, and a lyrically radical song probably has to be pretty to catch on the way “My Sweet Lord” did. In America, a few fundamentalist-Christian types denounced the song, but more Christians accepted it readily as worship music, either ignoring the “Hare Krishna” stuff — a lot of covers of the song leave in the “Hallelujah” but omit the “Hare Krishna” — or accepting it as part of the whole. Through implication, the song made some big statement about universality and about a need for global spiritual connection — something that’s at odds with Christianity as it’s often practiced over here. And the song still resonated widely, maybe because the music itself isn’t confrontational. It’s reassuring. It’s familiar.

About that familiarity: We are now about to get into the most famous thing about “My Sweet Lord.” Harrison has said that he was thinking about the gospel traditional “Oh Happy Day” when he wrote “My Sweet Lord.” But almost immediately after it came out, people started to recognize something else about the song. Melodically, it was almost identical to “He’s So Fine,” the #1 single that the late Ronnie Mack wrote for the Chiffons in 1963.

The 23-year-old Mack had died suddenly when “He’s So Fine” was still #1, so we never got to learn how he felt about George Harrison writing a song with his “He’s So Fine” melody. But Bright Tunes, the publishing house established by “He’s So Fine” producers the Tokens, owned the rights to “He’s So Fine,” and they sued Harrison for plagiarism. Harrison tried to settle the lawsuit a bunch of times, but Bright Tunes always turned him down.

The lawsuit went on for years, with the different sides bringing in different experts to argue their case. Allen Klein, the former Beatles manager, made attempts to outright buy Bright Tunes. Later on, Klein and Harrison split bitterly, and Klein started helping out Bright Tunes with their side of the case, bringing any inside-info ammo he could find on Harrison. As all of this was happening, the Chiffons, in a deviously beautiful troll-move, released their own 1975 cover of “My Sweet Lord,” and it’s pretty good.

Eventually, in 1976, Judge Richard Owen ruled in favor of Bright Tunes. Owen said that he didn’t believe that Harrison had intentionally ripped off “He’s So Fine” but that Harrison had subconsciously plagiarized the song. In the end, Harrison’s intentions didn’t matter. The court ruled that he owed $1.6 million to Bright Tunes – 75% of the proceeds from “My Sweet Lord,” as well as a chunk of Harrison’s All Things Must Pass money. Later on, that amount changed again and again. Klein finally did buy Bright Tunes, and lawsuits between Harrison and Klein went flying back and forth. The whole mess wasn’t ultimately resolved until sometime in the ’90s.

But the thing is: Harrison really did bite “He’s So Fine.” Lennon later speculated that there had been nothing accidental about it: “He must have known, you know. He’s smarter than that… Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off.” And even if Harrison hadn’t realized what he’d done, Phil Spector was right there, and he would’ve known the Chiffons song; it had been his competition. This wasn’t a Robin Thicke/Marvin Gaye situation where a court of law had to adjudicate vague matters of influence. Accidental or not, “My Sweet Lord” is a straightforward rip.

So what do we do with all this? “My Sweet Lord” is a well-intentioned message song, one that probably helped a lot of people and maybe altered a few perspectives. It represents a whole lot of talent coming together at a fascinating fulcrum point of pop-music history. It also takes a bright, gleaming girl-group pop song and transforms it into something vaguely, fuzzily spiritual. For me, the whole saga of “My Sweet Lord” is more interesting than the song itself. In the end, all the different parts of that story cancel each other out in my brain, and I end up thinking of “My Sweet Lord” as an amiably pleasant song, one that nicely fills the air without getting me any closer to God.

BONUS BEATS: Here’s Nina Simone’s firebreathing 19-minute 1972 gospel reimagining of “My Sweet Lord,” which she combines with David Nelson’s poem “Today Is A Killer” and which she recorded live in front of an audience of black servicemen at Fort Dix:

BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s the inexplicable and extremely funny acoustic “My Sweet Lord” cover that Megadeth recorded in Buenos Aires in 1997:

BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s audio of George Harrison superfan Elliott Smith covering “My Sweet Lord,” with Grandaddy backing him up:

BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS BEATS: Here’s the moment from 2017’s Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 where Star-Lord first arrives at his father’s planet and “My Sweet Lord” plays on the soundtrack:

more from The Number Ones

Music | August 31, 2020

Left: George Harrison in Cannes on January 30, 1976, for the Midem music industry trade fair. Right: The Chiffons' single Harrison was said to have plagiarized. Sources: Michael Putland/Getty Images; Pinterest

If you've noticed George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord' sounds a bit like 'He's So Fine' by The Chiffons, you're not alone -- in 1976, a judge ruled that the ex-Beatle's big hit and spiritual declaration had ripped off the girl-group oldie. The accusation of plagiarism was news to Harrison, who swore up and down he didn't steal the melody. Well, not knowingly -- and that was, in fact, the rub in this important case. It turns out an artist can steal a tune without even knowing he or she is doing it, and can be held legally liable for what the judge called 'subconscious' theft.

The Beatles made sublime music together, the likes of which people had never heard. Their iconic melodies turned fandom into Beatlemania, to the point that John, Paul, George, and Ringo couldn’t walk down the street without getting mobbed. Once people reach that point of deity, they sometimes want to branch out and go on their own. “Imagine” by John Lennon ranks as perhaps the most successful song by a solo artist spreading their wings from a hall of fame group. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s “Ringo The 4th”, a blinding bad album by its namesake. Somewhere in between lands the curious case of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.” The song made it to #1 but landed the long-haired Beatle in some legal trouble.

The Seeds For 'My Sweet Lord' Were Planted Early

George Harrison My Sweet Lord/tab

When George Harrison was a kid, his mother would take him to a Catholic church and like many kids, Harrison wasn’t a huge fan. For Harrison, “If there's a God we must see him. If there's a soul we must perceive it. Otherwise, it's better not to believe. It's better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.”

In 1968, when he and the Beatles went to India, Harrison became interested in Eastern philosophy and transcendental meditation. That depiction of religion fit Harrison’s eye. “You just believe what we tell you. And don't ask questions. Whereas the Swami's saying, If there's a God we must see him. I thought, Right on, that's the one for me! If there's a God, I want to see him.'

Harrison’s #1 Mantra

In his words, 'First, it's simple. The thing about a mantra, you see... mantras are, well, they call it a mystical sound vibration encased in a syllable. It has this power within it. It's just hypnotic.' Harrison combined his favored religion with a Christian call of Hallelujah. As Harrison saw it, 'Hallelujah and Hare Krishna are quite the same thing.'

“My Sweet Lord” became the first #1 hit by a Beatle since their break up. Peter Frampton played the lead guitar using Harrison’s legendary Les Paul. Paul Spector sang backup with the blessing of Harrison and Lennon but against the objections of McCartney. Lennon, Yoko Ono, Billy Preston, and Eric Clapton were all present during the recording.

Bobby Whitlock remembers the strange scene, 'All during the sessions, the door would pop open and in would spring three or four or five Hare Krishnas in their white robes and shaved heads with a pony tail coming out the top. They were all painted up, throwing rose petals and distributing peanut butter cookies.'

Legal Trouble

Three years after the release of “My Sweet Lord”, Bright Tunes Music sued Harrison, claiming the song was too similar to the Chiffons’ 1963 hit “He’s So Fine.” It took five years for a ruling but more than 20 years to reach a final resolution. According to Harrison, he wrote the song while playing with the group Delaney and Bonnie in Denmark. He also claimed the song came from Edwin Hawkins Singers' 'Oh Happy Day,' not 'He's So Fine.'

A fallout between Harrison and his manager Allen Klein, who switched sides during the proceedings likely hurt his case’s chances. The two songs shared a pair of notes “G-E-D” and “G-A-C-A-C.” “My Sweet Lord” repeated the first set 4 times and the second set three times. Since Harrison couldn’t identify any other songs that used this pattern, the court ruled that “the two songs are virtually identical.'

The judge felt Harrison never intentionally copied the song but found him guilty of 'subconscious plagiarism.' He went on to say,” It is perfectly obvious to the listener that in musical terms, the two songs are virtually identical.' In the end, the case cost Harrison $587,000 and not the $1.6 million that it could have, had Allen Klein’s company not bought Bright Tunes in 1978 for $587,000. Essentially, another judge ruled that Klein shouldn’t profit from the judgment. The joys of legalese.

The Lawsuit’s Effect On Harrison

Naturally, the long ordeal took its toll on Harrison. He took three years off writing and told Rolling Stone magazine, 'It's difficult to just start writing again after you've been through that. Even now when I put the radio on, every tune I hear sounds like something else.' His buddy, Ringo Starr came to his defense, “There's no doubt that the tune is similar, but how many songs have been written with other melodies in mind? George's version is much heavier than the Chiffons’ – he might have done it with the original in the back of his mind, but he's just very unlucky that someone wanted to make it a test case in court.'

Incidentally, credited the mantra “Hare Krishna” with saving his life. On a flight from L.A to New York in ‘71, Harrison’s plane was struck by lighting. He told an Indian magazine, Back to Godhead, 'I know for me, the difference between making it and not making it was actually chanting the mantra.'

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Tags: George Harrison | Hes So Fine | My Sweet Lord | Song Meanings, Lyrics, And Facts | The Chiffons | Lawsuits

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My Sweet Lord Tribute

Kellar Ellsworth

Writer

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