George Harrison: Devil's Radio (Live)

Just watched the 2-part 6-hr George Harrison "Living in the Material World" doc (2011, directed by Scorsese) over the weekend.

 
To me, as a Beatles fan since 1980, George has never been very interesting, and this film kind of affirmed my previous beliefs. He had his heyday of creativity from around '68 thru '70---and that was about it.

 

Yeah-yeah-yeah, his much-touted-by-the-rock-press "spirituality"----but he didn't live it. His own wife said, in a VERY nice and kind way, that he often fooled around on her. 

 

(Speaking of GOSSIP, the theme of "Devil's Radio": An anecdotal story: In the early '90s, my two best friends in Austin had a visit from a Swedish girl whom they'd met during a trip to Europe a few years earlier. She was now a stewardess---very, very pretty [yes, just like Brigitte Bardot and Patti Boyd] and with a very calm and attractive demeanor. And she said that she had been on a flight with both George Harrison and Eric Clapton and that they had invited her over to one of their homes (can't remember whose)! She went... and since I was just a guest during the telling of this story, I was too polite to ask her if she had slept with either of them! But... p.s. We were all in our early '20s and didn't care anything about George Harrison or Eric Clapton, so she wasn't trying to impress us... Given her very-good-looks and her very-good-personality, I believe her.)

 

And his own friends/colleagues commented often throughout the doc that he was an angry person.

 

Guess what: If you're a truly spiritual person, then you're centered and calm and non-angry and you don't fool around on your wife. I have actually known a few honestly nice people like this. But if you're just a regular guy, then stop pretending to be otherwise---but I guess that was George's schtick and he was schticking to it!

Watching the doc, though, did remind me of how great the 1970 "All Things Must Pass" album is---it's truly great! "Beware of Darkness," et al. And then I went and listened to latter-day George---1987's "Devil's Radio" is probably the last good/interesting thing he ever did (Eric Clapton on guitar).

NOTE: When I first heard this song on the radio in the '80s, there wasn't any "online" or a place you could go to read the lyrics. I thought he was singing "God's in" or "Godsend"---I had no idea whatsoever what this song was about, but I liked the groove/energy then and like it even more now that I've read the lyrics. (And yeah, I think he was sleeping with the blonde back-up singer.)

Gossip, gossip
Gossip, gossip

I heard it in the night
Words that thoughtless speak
Like vultures swooping down below
On the devil's radio

I hear it through the day
Airwaves gettin' filled
With gossip broadcast to and fro
On the devil's radio

Oh yeah, gossip
Gossip, oh yeah

He's in the clubs and bars
And never turns it down
Talking about what he don't know
On the devil's radio

He's in your TV set
Won't give it a rest
That soul betraying so and so
The devil's radio

Gossip, gossip
Gossip, gossip
(Oh yeah) gossip, (gossip) oh yeah
(Gossip) oh yeah, (oh yeah) gossip

It's white and black like industrial waste
Pollution of the highest degree
You wonder why I don't hang out much
I wonder how you can't see

He's in the films and songs
And on all your magazines
It's everywhere that you may go
The devil's radio

Oh yeah, gossip
Gossip, oh yeah

Runs thick and fast, no one really sees
Quite what bad it can do
As it shapes you into something cold
Like an Eskimo igloo

It's all across our lives
Like a weed it's spread
'till nothing else has space to grow
The devil's radio

Can creep up in the dark
Make us hide behind shades
And buzzing like a dynamo
The devil's radio

(Gossip) oh yeah, (gossip) oh yeah
(Gossip) gossip, (gossip) gossip
Oh yeah, gossip I heard you on the secret wireless
Gossip, oh yeah You know the devil's radio, child
Gossip, gossip
Gossip, gossip