Brainwashed (George Harrison album)

Brainwashed
Studio album by George Harrison
Released	18 November 2002
Recorded	1988–2002
Studio	FPSHOT, Oxfordshire; various locations
Genre	Rock
Length	47:41
Label	Dark Horse/EMI
Producer	George Harrison Jeff Lynne Dhani Harrison
George Harrison chronology
Live in Japan (1992) Brainwashed (2002) The Dark Horse Years 1976–1992 (2004)
Singles from Brainwashed
"Stuck Inside a Cloud" Released: 2002 (promo only) "Any Road" Released: 12 May 2003

Brainwashed is the twelfth and final studio album by George Harrison, released in 2002, almost a year after his death at age 58. The album was completed by Harrison's son Dhani and longtime friend and collaborator Jeff Lynne. It reached the top 30 in the UK and top 20 in the US, and saw reasonably favourable reviews.

History

Harrison began recording the tracks that eventually saw issue on Brainwashed as early as 1988 (with "Any Road" being written during the making of a video for "This Is Love" from the Cloud Nine album) and continued to do so in a sporadic manner over the next decade and a half. Progress was delayed by business problems with Harrison's former manager, Denis O'Brien, as well as his work with the Traveling Wilburys, Ravi Shankar, and his work on the Beatles' Anthology.^[1] In an interview in 1999, Harrison announced the title of his next album to be Portrait of a Leg End, and played songs entitled "Valentine", "Pisces Fish" and "Brainwashed".^[2] During the promotion for the 2001 re-release of All Things Must Pass, Harrison joked that the name of the album would be Your Planet Is Doomed – Volume One.^[3] After recuperating from being attacked in his home by Michael Abram on 30 December 1999, Harrison focused on finishing the album, simultaneously sharing his ideas for all its details (from the sound of the finished songs to the album's artwork) with his son Dhani – information that ultimately proved very valuable.

Harrison successfully battled throat cancer in 1997;^[4] in 2001 he underwent surgery to remove a cancerous growth from one of his lungs,^[5] and radiotherapy for lung cancer which had metastasised to his brain.^[6] Once he realised it was an irreversible situation, he worked further on the album's songs – in conjunction with Dhani and his old collaborator Jeff Lynne – until he was unable to do more. Harrison's final work on the album was carried out at a recording studio in Switzerland shortly before his trip to the United States for cancer treatment. On 29 November 2001, Harrison died, leaving Brainwashed unfinished, but with a guide to completing it in the hands of his son and Lynne.

After a few months away from the project, both the younger Harrison and Lynne returned to working on George's final songs and added the appropriate instruments, as per their composer's specifications, to the recordings. So close to completion was the project that the two used the exact timetable and session bookings that George himself had originally planned. After 14 years of indefinite delays and some difficult but rewarding sessions, the work was done and George Harrison's final album was completed.

Release

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	77/100[7]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[8]
The A.V. Club	(favourable)[9]
Billboard	"Spotlight"[10]
entertainment.ie	[11]
Entertainment Weekly	B+[12]
Los Angeles Times	[13]
Music Story	[14]
PopMatters	(favourable)[15]
Rolling Stone	[16]
San Francisco Chronicle	4/5[17]
Uncut	[18]

Brainwashed was released on 18 November 2002 to mostly favourable reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album scores 77, based on 16 reviews, which means "generally favorable".^[7] Writing in Uncut, Nick Hasted described it as "the best solo record by a Beatle since McCartney's Flowers in the Dirt (1989)". Although he found that "a certain monotony creeps in towards the end", Hasted wrote that "Harrison's songs and singing represent a burst of form".^[18]

The album was issued on LP and CD. A limited-edition CD box was also released, containing a Brainwashed poster, a Dark Horse sticker, a guitar pick with George's signature on it, and a bonus DVD with a seven-minute featurette about the making of the album. The album sold respectably, reaching number 18 in the US and going gold, and number 29 in the UK, where "Any Road" became a top 40 hit single in spring 2003. A live tribute to Harrison by an assembly of his musical contemporaries, titled Concert for George, took place at London's Royal Albert Hall simultaneously with the release of the album.

In 2004, Brainwashed's "Marwa Blues" won the Best Pop Instrumental Performance Grammy. Also that year, Harrison's former bandmate Paul McCartney named the song as one of his all-time favourites.^[19] The album itself had also been nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album, as well as Best Male Pop Vocal Performance (for the track "Any Road").^[20]

Three of the tracks from Brainwashed were included on Harrison's career-spanning compilation album, Let It Roll: Songs by George Harrison: "Any Road", "Marwa Blues" and "Rising Sun". Notably absent from the track listing was "Stuck Inside a Cloud", the first promotional single from Brainwashed.

Track listing

All songs written by George Harrison, except "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" written by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler.

1. "Any Road" – 3:52
2. "P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night)" – 2:38
3. "Pisces Fish" – 4:50
4. "Looking for My Life" – 3:49
5. "Rising Sun" – 5:27
6. "Marwa Blues" – 3:40
7. "Stuck Inside a Cloud" – 4:04
8. "Run So Far" – 4:05
   • First recorded by Eric Clapton on his Journeyman album in 1989, with Harrison on guitar
9. "Never Get Over You" – 3:26
10. "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" – 2:34
    • This recording is from a 1992 TV broadcast
11. "Rocking Chair in Hawaii" – 3:07
    • Originally demoed in 1970 for All Things Must Pass
12. "Brainwashed" – 6:07
    • Includes a concluding prayer, the "Namah Parvati", a mantra dedicated to the Hindu goddess Parvati, chanted by Harrison and his son Dhani Harrison in unison.

Charts

Personnel

• George Harrison – lead vocals, lead guitar, slide guitar, Dobro, ukulele, keyboards, bass, percussion
• Jeff Lynne – bass, guitar, piano, keyboards, percussion, backing vocals
• Dhani Harrison – guitar, Wurlitzer electric piano, backing vocals
• Jim Keltner – drums

Additional personnel

• Mike Moran – keyboards (3)
• Marc Mann – keyboards (3), string arrangement (5, 6)
• Ray Cooper – percussion (6), drums (10)
• Jools Holland – piano (10)
• Mark Flannagan – acoustic lead guitar (10)
• Joe Brown – acoustic guitar (10)
• Herbie Flowers – bass (10), tuba (10)
• Bickram Ghosh – tabla (12)
• Jon Lord – piano (12)
• Sam Brown – backing vocals (12)
• Jane Lister – harp (12)
• Isabela Borzymowska – reading from "How to Know God" (The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali) (12)

References

External links

• JPGR's Beatles site: George Harrison's Brainwashed