George Harrison All Things Must Pass
Given his own studio, his own canvas, and his own space, George Harrison did what no other solo Beatle did on All Things Must Pass:
He changed the terms of what an album could be.
In 1970, the year the Beatles officially called it quits, divorce was on the American mind. One year earlier, California then-Governor Ronald Reagan had signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law, freeing couples from the burden of having to produce evidence of wrongdoing in order to legalize their separation. From 1965 to 1970, the number of divorce filings nearly doubled, and in the wake of similar laws pending in other states, the rate would surge through the beginning of the next decade. By the time Kramer Vs. Kramer won Best Picture in 1980, the number of divorces had nearly doubled again. But 1970 remains a mysterious fulcrum point: Whenever a new study is issued on separation rates, our progress or regression is always measured “since 1970.”
Like everything else the Beatles did, their dissolution in that year invented a new way for a band to be—in this case, painfully and publicly splintered. In their death throes, the group would become rock music’s proxy divorcees for the ensuing decade. Just as there had been a Fab Four Beatle for every adolescent discovering the giddy thrills of rock and roll in the ‘60s, there was a divorced Beatle for every teenager caught between screaming parents in the ‘70s. The solo albums appeared immediately, like bruises on a wound, and each had the quality of argument brought to a deposition, a side of a story argued. Paul hightailed it off into new love and a second round at domesticity; John gazed into the ugliest parts of himself and wailed; Ringo retreated into the schmaltzy pre-rock ’n’ roll standards of his youth.
By: Jayson Greene
Source: Pitchfork
