The luckiest sideman and the best second-tier talent in rock history, George Harrison recorded a number of crap albums, a fact that should surprise no one. My mom owned 1975’s Extra Texture (Read All About It) — if there’s a joke in the title, call my agent — and 1976’s Thirty Three & 1/3, for reasons she can’t remember. But when I discovered the Beatles in high school I gave them more time than I did a couple of the girls I dated and — woof. Without listening to any Poco albums, I will aver that these sides are the dullest song sequences by a second tier talent and lucky sideman in boomer pop.
Here are the hard truths: (a) Harrisongs had a rich melodic range, almost the equal of McCartney and Lennon’s; (b) he often couldn’t sing those songs; (c) he had Al Green’s passion for a god but often failed, vocally or temperamentally, to convey transcendence; (d) his passion for Monty Python revealed he was an ironist anyway (e) he was too beholden to the studio hack establishment when at least bete noire Paul McCartney would often play those instruments himself; (e) his career and material often bored him.
Yet get this: unlike McCartney or Lennon, his ego rarely quashed anyone else’s, which made him an ideal collaborator; if you count his work with Ringo, Jackie Lomax, Ravi Shankar, and Badfinger, among others, he was a terrific producer, the only one among the Beatles who might have had a profitable sideline. It’s as impossible to imagine McCartney or Lennon cooperating in the Traveling Wilburys as it is to imagine Ringo as lead singer of Roxy Music. Jeff Lynne got the credit because he worked subsequently with Tom Petty and Roy Orbison, but Harrison’s studio savvy with the arrangement of horns and backing vocals and offhand wit (“Handle With Care” was mostly his song) bear a more robust aural stamp.
Yet I love the idea of George Harrison. Fleetwood Mac boasted three songwriters of equal rank; no one but the dullest devotee of punk rock values would claim Lindsey Buckingham was “better” than Christine McVie or Stevie Nicks (an argument I heard often in the early 2000s when Tusk was the shit). Harrison was not, let’s be clear, at the Lennon-McCartney level. But my memory of watching Anthology was appreciating George squeezing lemon over McCartney’s kumbaya and Ringo’s go-along; I can imagine his anti-nostalgia even getting on John Lennon’s nerves should Lennon have lived (in the clip I hyperlinked, the only person who’s never heard of the Beatles will be forgiven for thinking George wasn’t the band leader). Preoccupied with his own mental if not spiritual health, Harrison never took himself as seriously as his fans did him.
This fact and his handful of good to great songs speak for themselves when his voice couldn’t. Take my #2, as buoyant and graceful as anything by McCartney’s and better — more thoroughly — written than what McCartney released in 1979. And I can’t imagine his colleagues writing “Someplace Else” or “Cheer Down,” co-produced by Lynne, proof that Harrison thrived with help. When I assert he can’t sing I remember that I prefer his “If Not For You” over good buddy Dylan’s.
1. What Is Life
2. Blow Away
3. If Not For You
4. Cloud Nine
5. Your Love is Forever
6. Beautiful Girl
7. Fish on the Sand
8. Poor Little Girl
9. Someplace Else
10. Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long
11. Run of the Mill
12. This Song
13. Apple Scruffs
14. All Things Must Pass
15. Cheer Down
16. Pure Smokey
17. That’s The Way It Goes
18. Crackerbox Palace
19. Handle With Care
20. Dark Horse
21. Let It Roll
22. Living in the Material World
23. Any Road
24. You
25. Love Comes to Everyone
Humanizing The Vacuum 
The idea of Ringo singing with Roxy Music is actually kind of intriguing.
“In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” of course.