Not Guilty (song)
The lyrics serve as a response to the recrimination Harrison received from his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the aftermath to the group's public falling out with the Maharishi, and as the Beatles launched their multimedia company Apple Corps.
George Harrison wrote "Not Guilty" in 1968 following the Beatles' highly publicised spiritual retreat in Rishikesh, India, where they studied Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
[1] Harrison had led the Beatles' interest in meditation and Indian culture,[2] influencing their audience and musical peers,[3][4] but the band's falling out with the Maharishi in April 1968 became the source of public embarrassment.
[29][30] In author Peter Doggett's description, the band's stay in Rishikesh marked the end of a period when Harrison's championing of Indian culture had guided the Beatles' musical and philosophical direction.
He adds that the "old balance of power was uneasily resumed", as Harrison had to push to have his songs included on the group's albums, and Lennon, further to their self-produced 1967 TV film Magical Mystery Tour, continued to resent McCartney's attempts to manage their career.
[36] Musicologist Walter Everett highlights the song's musical form as an example of "the composer's typically outlandish chord juxtapositions", which in this case reveals "a new level of sophistication similar to jazz methodology".
[43][44] On the tapes, the song follows a group performance of Harrison's tribute to meditation, "Sour Milk Sea", after which he refers to "Not Guilty" as "a jazz number" that would make "a good rocker".
[52][60] In the description of Guitar World's editors, Harrison's playing on the song has a "sinewy" quality and a "sizzling tone" made more effective by being performed at full volume.
[61] Author Simon Leng writes that the recording "might have passed for grunge", with its "phased vocals and ... pseudo-harpsichord under attack from George's heavily distorted guitars and fierce riff".
[62] Following his pioneering backwards-recorded guitar solo on "I'm Only Sleeping", in 1966,[63] Harrison's use of reverse echo-chamber effect on "Not Guilty" marked the last time the Beatles used backwards audio on one of their recordings.
[64] MacDonald cites "Not Guilty" as an example of how Harrison's contributions to the White Album were "stymied" by the divisive atmosphere that characterised the sessions, which included a lack of collaboration between the band members.
[39] When announcing the release on 26 October, the NME listed "Not Guilty" among the possible tracks;[71] Mal Evans, the Beatles' longtime aide, then wrote in the band's official fan magazine that it would not appear on the double album.
[83][84] After Harrison and McCartney filed affidavits criticising the "quality of the work", one of EMI's in-house cassettes of the Sessions recordings found its way to bootleggers, resulting in the Ultra Rare Trax bootlegs.
[50] Author and critic Richie Unterberger describes the Anthology 3 version of "Not Guilty" as a "bastardization" due to the editing out of a mid-song guitar solo and other features from the 1968 stereo mix.
[98] The sessions took place between April and October 1978,[99][100][nb 8] and coincided with a period of domestic contentment for Harrison,[102] during which he married his partner Olivia Arias and become a father for the first time, to son Dhani.
[103][104] In addition, Harrison had enjoyed participating in the Rutles' recent spoof of the Beatles' history, All You Need Is Cash, a film project that allowed him to debunk the myths that surrounded his former band.
[105][106][nb 9] Harrison allowed his spiritual preoccupations to be satirised in the film as, following the Rutles' break-up, his character, Stig O'Hara, withdraws from the limelight to become a female flight attendant with Air India.
[111][nb 10] Harrison recorded "Not Guilty" at his home studio, FPSHOT, in Henley, Oxfordshire,[95][96] with Neil Larsen, Stevie Winwood, Willie Weeks and Andy Newmark among the backing musicians.
"[62] Leng describes the musical mood on the track as "a loose version of the Rickie Lee Jones or Paul Simon jazz-pop sound, dominated by phased electric piano and breathy vocals".
"[22][nb 11] Peter Doggett writes that, in the context of its release, eleven years after the events of 1968, the song "gently satirised the global obsession with the past, and specifically the era that the Beatles allegedly epitomised".
[129] Doggett adds that although Harrison distanced himself from Beatles nostalgia in his promotional activities, he shared the public's interest in what Lennon might be doing during the latter's fourth year as a house-husband and stay-at-home father.
[130] In his Rolling Stone interview at this time, Harrison commented that he had not seen Lennon in the last two years and, after the recent changes in his own life, he understood his former bandmate's decision to remain out of the limelight.
[133][134] Harry George of the NME welcomed the inclusion of "Not Guilty", saying "No Beatle who could take part in All You Need Is Cash can be all bad", and assumed that the reference to upsetting the "Apple cart" was a line from the Rutles.
[nb 13] He described the song as a "tense soft-shoe shuffle", highlighting Larsen's electric piano, Weeks's "serpentine bass", and Harrison lyrics that offered "wit and composure" rather than "the whining defensiveness of yore".
He named "Not Guilty" among the album's three most enjoyable songs, along with "Love Comes to Everyone" and "Blow Away", saying: "The chords roll and tumble, the melodies are good to chant, and the lyrics are simple but tell their story.
