Fact #158700
When:
Short story:
The quiet Beatle, George Harrison, ascends to the Billboard No1 slot in the USA with his comeback single, Got My Mind Set On You.
Full article:
An album George Harrison had bought on holiday in America 25 years earlier provided him with a No1 comeback hit in January 1988.
The song was Got My Mind Set On You, written by Rudy Clark. Harrison had originally come across Clark’s name when his interest in obscure American music was sparked by time spent rooting around in North End Music Stores, the Liverpool music shop owned by Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, which maintained a policy of stocking at least one copy of every record released in the UK.
One such disc was If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody, written by Clark, which had provided Washington DC soul singer James Ray with a minor American hit in 1962. Having found it in Epstein’s shop, The Beatles frequently performed the tune live in their early years, and in May of 1963 it provided a bittersweet Top Five hit for Mancunian novelty popsters Freddie And The Dreamers.
On 16 September 1963, George Harrison became the first Beatle to set foot on American soil. Well before The Beatles played there, George and his brother Peter took a well-earned break from Beatlemania. Visiting his married sister in Benton, Illinois, George checked out the local shop and bought a copy of James Ray’s then current album which, he remembers “was really terrible, but the best three songs were written by the guy who discovered James Ray, a former mailman named Rudy Clark.” Needless to say, one of those three songs was Got My Mind Set On You.
The song remained lodged in Harrison’s memory until one day, during recording sessions for his Cloud Nine album, “Jim Keltner got this drum pattern going that was a cross between swing and rock. Gary Wright turned round and said ‘Hey, doesn’t that remind you of that song Got My Mind Set On You?’ I was so surprised that anybody else had ever heard that tune!”
As Harrison has pointed out, however, “If you listen to the song now, it’s very different from how I’ve done it. I’ve updated it and changed the chords, because I preferred it the way I heard it in my head. Clark and Ray’s version was coming out of the old jazz/swing era, and it has all these horrible screechy women’s voices singing the backup parts.”
While Got My Mind Set On You was bulleting up the charts, on January 20, Harrison was present for The Beatles’ induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. In his speech, Mick Jagger looked back to his first encounter with The Beatles with the words, “They had long hair, scruffy clothes, but they had a record contract. I was almost sick. I’m really proud to be the one who leads them into the Hall Of Fame.”
The ceremony ended with the now traditional jam session, in which George and Ringo took the stage alongside Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Little Richard and Elton John for a rousing, if somewhat shambolic, assault on The Beatles’ oldie I Saw Her Standing There. “We all know why John can’t be here,” said George at the time, adding, “It’s a shame Paul’s not here, because he was the one who had the speech in his pocket.”
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The song was Got My Mind Set On You, written by Rudy Clark. Harrison had originally come across Clark’s name when his interest in obscure American music was sparked by time spent rooting around in North End Music Stores, the Liverpool music shop owned by Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, which maintained a policy of stocking at least one copy of every record released in the UK.
One such disc was If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody, written by Clark, which had provided Washington DC soul singer James Ray with a minor American hit in 1962. Having found it in Epstein’s shop, The Beatles frequently performed the tune live in their early years, and in May of 1963 it provided a bittersweet Top Five hit for Mancunian novelty popsters Freddie And The Dreamers.
On 16 September 1963, George Harrison became the first Beatle to set foot on American soil. Well before The Beatles played there, George and his brother Peter took a well-earned break from Beatlemania. Visiting his married sister in Benton, Illinois, George checked out the local shop and bought a copy of James Ray’s then current album which, he remembers “was really terrible, but the best three songs were written by the guy who discovered James Ray, a former mailman named Rudy Clark.” Needless to say, one of those three songs was Got My Mind Set On You.
The song remained lodged in Harrison’s memory until one day, during recording sessions for his Cloud Nine album, “Jim Keltner got this drum pattern going that was a cross between swing and rock. Gary Wright turned round and said ‘Hey, doesn’t that remind you of that song Got My Mind Set On You?’ I was so surprised that anybody else had ever heard that tune!”
As Harrison has pointed out, however, “If you listen to the song now, it’s very different from how I’ve done it. I’ve updated it and changed the chords, because I preferred it the way I heard it in my head. Clark and Ray’s version was coming out of the old jazz/swing era, and it has all these horrible screechy women’s voices singing the backup parts.”
While Got My Mind Set On You was bulleting up the charts, on January 20, Harrison was present for The Beatles’ induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. In his speech, Mick Jagger looked back to his first encounter with The Beatles with the words, “They had long hair, scruffy clothes, but they had a record contract. I was almost sick. I’m really proud to be the one who leads them into the Hall Of Fame.”
The ceremony ended with the now traditional jam session, in which George and Ringo took the stage alongside Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Little Richard and Elton John for a rousing, if somewhat shambolic, assault on The Beatles’ oldie I Saw Her Standing There. “We all know why John can’t be here,” said George at the time, adding, “It’s a shame Paul’s not here, because he was the one who had the speech in his pocket.”