Oct 6th in Pop History
On this day, October 6th, in:
• 1969 - Something, a song on The Beatles’ Abbey Road album, was released as the "A" side of a 45, a first for George Harrison, who wrote the song. The song went on to reach # 1 on the US charts the following month.
Something was a huge hit for The Beatles, and especially for Harrison, who was usually the band's lead guitarist. Together with his second contribution to Abbey Road, Here Comes the Sun, these two songs are widely viewed by music historians as having marked Harrison's ascendancy as a composer to the level of the Beatles' principal songwriters, most of the band’s songs having been written by John Lennon & Paul McCartney.
George’s original hand-written lyrics
According to Hunter Davies in his book The Beatles Lyrics, there was some suggestion that George might have “pinched” the first line from James Taylor — “Something in the way she moves…” That is the title of one of James Taylor’s songs which he was working on recording at Abbey Road Studios at the same time that the White Album and Abbey Road were being worked on. But it’s difficult to know and not always clear where lyrics come from. In any case, Taylor never protested, and was flattered to think that it might be true.
I remember the first time I heard this song back when I was in school. It was a Friday evening. My friend Vince had managed to get his Dad’s brand new black Chevy Pickup. It still had that new car smell. We were just sort of cruising around town hoping there might be some girls around somewhere. I don’t think we found any. But this song, Something, came on the radio, and we were both impressed with what a beautiful song it was. It seemed like the Beatles hadn’t released a simple love song in a long while, but here it was. And it was destined for greatness.
It was two weeks after Abbey Road’s release, when the song (Something) was issued on a “double A-side” single, coupled with Come Together (a John Lennon song) making it the first Harrison composition to become a Beatles A-side. A double A-side single is a 45 record (in those days) on which there is no “B” side, because both songs are expected to be hit records. The pairing was also the first time in the United Kingdom that the Beatles issued a single containing tracks already available on an album. While the single's commercial performance was lessened by this (usually), in this case both songs topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States as well as charts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and West Germany, and peaked at number 4 in the UK.
Something received the Ivor Novello Award for the "Best Song Musically and Lyrically" of 1969. By the late 1970s, the song had been covered by over 150 artists, making it the second-most covered Beatles composition after the song Yesterday. Shirley Bassey (famous for singing the James Bond movie theme-song for Goldfinger), had a top-five UK hit with her 1970 recording, and even Frank Sinatra regularly performed the song (though poor George couldn’t “get no respect” — when Sinatra performed the song, he’d introduce it as a Lennon-McCartney tune!).
Other artists who have covered it include Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Booker T & the M.G.s, James Brown, and Smokey Robinson. In 1999, Broadcast Music Incorporated named Something as the 17th-most performed song of the twentieth century, with 5 million performances. In 2000, Mojo ranked Something at number 14 in the magazine's list of The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was ranked 110th on Rolling Stone’s 2021 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2002, a year after Harrison's death, Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton performed it at the Concert for George tribute at London's Royal Albert Hall.
So in the end, George Harrison, though feeling much disillusionment with The Beatles, still managed to create one of the great Beatles’ classics. Something
Here’s Something on Spotify:
Here’s a live performance of Something at a tribute to George in 2002. Includes Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton, and Ringo on drums. Paul starts off playing a ukulele that had been gifted to him by George (George was an avid ukulele enthusiast!):
This video is George Harrison performing Something live - this was George post-Beatles:
And continuing on October 6th…
• 1956 - Elvis releases Love Me Tender
• 1979 - Robert John's Sad Eyes hits # 1
Also, on this day in…
• 1979 - Led Zeppelin’s In Through The Out Door hits # 1 on the US album chart
• 1979 - Gotta Serve Somebody gave Bob Dylan his twelfth US top 40 hit when it entered the chart for the first time. Recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the song won Dylan the Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Male in 1980
