Retro Chart: George the first Beatle to have a solo number one

George Harrison was a prolific songwriter in his own right, but he spent The Beatles years very much in the shadow of Lennon/McCartney. He was granted one or maybe two songs per album, which ultimately left him with quite a back catalogue of unreleased material.

nd so, when the split finally came, George was first out of the blocks with a triple album called All Things Must Pass. The song selected to be a single from this album was My Sweet Lord, which George had composed a couple of years earlier having heard a song called Oh Happy Day by the Edwin Hawkins Singers.

"It really just knocked me out, the idea of that song and I just felt a great feeling of the Lord," Harrison, who was already immersed in the Hare Krishna religion, said in an interview. "So, I thought, 'I'll write another Oh Happy Day, which became My Sweet Lord."

When he penned it he was still a member of The Beatles and it wasn't making it onto any Beatles album, so he gave it to his pal and Beatles collaborator Billy Preston, who was actually the first to release it in September 1970. But when his own version was released it became a worldwide hit, topping the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and becoming the biggest-selling single of 1971.

Source: Jim Hayes/independent.ie

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