AllMusic critic Scott Janovitz describes "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)" as offering "a glimpse of the true George Harrison – at once mystical, humorous, solitary, playful, and serious".

Together with the Friar Park-shot album cover for All Things Must Pass, "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp" established an association between Harrison and his Henley estate that has continued since his death in November 2001.

[2] The house was a bungalow and too small to accommodate a home recording studio,[3] so the couple began a year-long search for a larger property,[4] concentrating on an area west of London encompassing the counties of Berkshire and Oxfordshire.

[7] Previously the home of an order of Roman Catholic nuns, the Salesians of Don Bosco,[8] the four-storey house and its grounds were in a dilapidated state,[9][10] and it was not until the start of March that Harrison and Boyd moved from a worker's cottage and into the main residence.

[17] The 10 acres of Crisp's formal gardens were so overrun with weeds that Harrison and his friend from the Hare Krishna movement, Shyamasundar Das, used World War II-era flamethrowers to clear some of the land.

[24][25] According to their friend and assistant Chris O'Dell, the guest list comprised all the other Beatles and their wives, as well as insiders such as Derek and Joan Taylor, Neil Aspinall and his wife Susie, Peter Brown, and Klaus and Christine Voormann.

[26][nb 2] Shortly afterwards, Harrison invited members of the London-based Hare Krishna movement to help with the restoration work, primarily in the grounds of Friar Park,[28][29] and accommodated the devotees and their families in a wing of the house.

[59][nb 6] Harrison went on to identify philosophically with Crisp,[64][65] of whom he writes elsewhere in I, Me, Mine: "Sir Frank helped my awareness; whatever it was I felt became stronger, or found more expression by moving into that house, because everything stepped up or was heightened.

"[16] Leng considers that the song, along with "All Things Must Pass", predicts Harrison's eventual "retreat into an internal musical dialogue, set amid the woods and gardens of Friar Park", a change of perspective marked by his 1979 eponymous solo album.

[68] Harrison completed the rewrite, "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp", within a matter of weeks, judging by the appearance of pedal steel virtuoso Pete Drake on the session,[69] which was held at Abbey Road between 26 May and early June.

[70] By late June, Drake was home in Nashville producing Ringo Starr's second solo album, Beaucoups of Blues (1970),[71][72] the recording of which, author Bob Woffinden suggested in 1981, "was probably completed more quickly than any one of the tracks on All Things Must Pass".

[70] Aided by the swirling sound of Hammond organ, and Leslie treatment on the piano and pedal steel tracks,[90] the effect of Spector's production enshrouded "the whole tale in a reverb-induced haze", as Scott Janovitz of AllMusic puts it.

[1] Delayed from its intended release date by over a month due to the extended period of production,[78] All Things Must Pass was issued on Apple Records in late November 1970 to great acclaim.

[58] Ben Gerson of Rolling Stone remarked that there were "lots of 'Ye's' to remind us it's a ballad", but identified the song as part of the album's "musical core", the "brooding essays on living, loving, and dying".

"[58] More recently, Clayson has described "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp" as "[c]ouched in mediaeval expression" and the most "Beatle-esque" of all the songs found on All Things Must Pass, featuring an arrangement that is "a breath of fresh air".

[97] Former Mojo editor Mat Snow also acknowledges the cryptic quality of the lyrics – "unless one happened to know that George and Pattie had just moved to ... a magnificent Gothic pile near Henley-on-Thames" – and considers the song "hauntingly beautiful".