A Valuable Reminder From an Often Overlooked Beatle

If Vegas oddsmakers had paid attention to rock music in 1970, they’d surely have been evenly split on setting odds for whether John Lennon or Paul McCartney would be the first Beatle to score a U.S. Top 40 hit single after the group disbanded.

Just as certainly, George Harrison and Ringo Starr would have been longshots to beat Lennon or McCartney to the punch.

So when Harrison’s first single, “My Sweet Lord,” reached No. 1 in the fall of that year, ahead of John and Paul, Beatle fans were stunned. Indeed, “My Sweet Lord” went on to log four weeks in the top slot, eclipsing the Beatles’ final single as a group, “The Long and Winding Road,” which held No. 1 for just two weeks.

Even so, few pop fans were prepared for Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass,” a sprawling triple album that prompted serious debate over whether he’d been unjustly shunted into the background while the group was together.

“I think with the passage of time, people have forgotten the impact George’s album had when it was released,” says Pete Howard, editor of ICE, a newsletter for CD collectors. “At that time, he was on a par with John and Paul.”

Three decades later, Harrison has overseen the remastering of “All Things,” which arrives in stores Tuesday with several bonus tracks and an update of his first hit, titled “My Sweet Lord 2000.”

Equally noteworthy, it sounds dramatically crisper and brighter than earlier CD versions.

“With the other Beatle solo albums,” Howard says, “the previous CDs were acceptable. But with the CD of ‘All Things Must Pass,’ we’ve heard a lot of complaints over the years about the sound, which was always really muddy. So this is a double bonus, not only because of the enhanced packaging and bonus tracks, but because it has acceptable sound for the first time ever on CD.”

*** 1/2 George Harrison, “All Things Must Pass,” Capitol. The sheer magnitude of this triple album, now on two CDs, suggested that the Beatles’ breakup broke open the creative floodgates for Harrison.

In the Fab Four, he was competing with one of the great songwriting teams of the 20th century, limiting him to one song--two at the most--per Beatles album.

“All Things” included 18 songs over two LPs, plus a third disc with four instrumental jams by the album’s all-star cast, including Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, and saxophonist Bobby Keys.

One of the big surprises about “All Things,” which spent seven weeks at No. 1, was how much deeper musically and lyrically it reached than McCartney’s modest debut solo effort, “McCartney,” which preceded Harrison’s album by seven months.

Lennon, of course, shattered the pop world with the emotional power of his “Plastic Ono Band” post-Beatles solo debut, released just a week after “All Things.” Without a hit single, Lennon’s album peaked at No. 6 on the chart, but it stands as one of the monumental works of the rock era.

Harrison started out as the quiet Beatle, but over the years he turned into the spiritual Beatle. That spirituality is all over this album, whose title comes from an Eastern proverb warning against getting caught up in the travails of temporal existence.

Songs such as “Awaiting on You All,” “The Art of Dying” and “Beware of Darkness” reflected this philosophical bent, but they were clothed in lovely Harrison melodies and an open-up-the-heavens production by Phil Spector.

Spector’s heavy touch overwhelmed some lighter songs that would have been better served with simpler arrangements, but it was the perfect complement to Harrison’s loftier lyrical flights.

Most of the songs hold up quite well. The album opens modestly with Harrison singing, “Let me in here / I know I’ve been here / Let me into your heart” in “I’d Have You Anytime,” a song he wrote with Bob Dylan.

“What Is Life,” the album’s second single, also remains a melodic grabber, with its great guitar-lick intro that cannily inverted the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” hook.

The “All Things” bonus material includes “I Live for You,” a country-soaked outtake that’s something of a companion piece to “Behind That Locked Door,” which did appear originally on Harrison’s album. Both prominently featured the steel guitar of Nashville session great Pete Drake.

Stripped-down demo versions of “Beware of Darkness” and “Let It Down” provide a closer look at Harrison as a writer of introspective, melodically inventive songs. “My Sweet Lord 2000,” with a new vocal by Harrison and added sitar and slide-guitar licks, is a curio rather than an improvement on the gently reassuring hit version.

Two other historical footnotes out of these recording sessions: When Harrison brought Clapton together with keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle, drummer Jim Gordon and the Bramletts, it was the start of what became Derek & the Dominos. Their jamming here still sounds pretty tasty.

Then, listen closely to “The Art of Dying,” and if you can pick out the congas, you’re hearing a 19-year-old rock-star wannabe named Phil Collins.

As it turned out, all things did pass for Harrison, and his first post-Beatles effort remains his best. Though his next solo album, “Living in the Material World” from 1973, also climbed to No. 1, each successive outing offered fewer and fewer musical rewards. It’s now been 14 years since his last album of new material, “Cloud Nine.”

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).