Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Rare Beatles Songs: "Window, Window"

Surfacing first during the Revolver-era in 1966, "Window, Window" was what George Harrison called "a nice song," written in the folk tradition and seemingly in the glow of his marriage to Pattie Boyd ("I once knew a beautiful girl..."). When played for feedback, John Lennon remarked that it sounded too derivative and the song was then passed over in favor of other material. The lyrics clearly needed work; when played for engineer Glyn Johns in 1969, Johns seemed amused at the rhyming scheme (e.g. "girl" rhyming with "curl").

Harrison recounted the song's history during sessions for Let It Be in 1969 at the urging of Mal Evans, who apparently was quite fond of it; however, the song failed to find a home there either. "Window, Window" was last demoed for Phil Spector in the sessions leading up to All Things Must Pass, where Harrison called the song "a bit silly," evidenced by its bizarre second verse, where the protagonist goes out to "the shed" to "check out the paint and the lead."

January 1969 with Glyn Johns and Mal Evans:


May 1970 Demo for Phil Spector:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

1966 was is your source the song was written 1969 and recorded 1970 during the All Things Must PAss/ Dylan Sessions.

Anonymous said...

1966 - this comes from George's intro of the song (paraphrased from memory): "There's a nice song that I wrote three years ago...and I sang it to John..."

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH6-ExUv-2E