Beware of Darkness (song)

Recording

The basic track for "Beware of Darkness" was laid down by George Harrison between May and August 1970. The All Things Must Pass sessions were known for their large ensembles, a hallmark of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, but conflicting memories among the musicians make it hard to pin down exactly who played on every song. According to Simon Leng and Beatles historian Bruce Spizer, the finished recording features Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Dave Mason on guitars, Bobby Whitlock on piano, Gary Wright on organ, Carl Radle on bass, and Ringo Starr on drums. The vibraphone part is credited to either Alan White or John Barham.

Whitlock noted that both Harrison and Clapton played electric guitar, with an acoustic guitar part also present. Spector sent Harrison a letter in mid-August with notes on the initial mixes of the album's songs. Throughout the sessions, members of Badfinger provided rhythm parts on acoustic guitar.

Whitlock recalled that this session marked the first time he ever played piano on a studio recording. Harrison asked him to give the part a gospel feel, which Whitlock achieved by drawing on his upbringing in a churchgoing Southern family. He also remembered that, due to his inexperience, he struck the keys too hard and broke one of the thick bass strings.

He believed the replacement string gave the piano a new resonance that helped the track. John Barham's orchestral arrangements were recorded in the next phase of production, alongside additional contributions from Harrison, including lead vocals, slide guitar, and multi-tracked backing vocals. As with songs like "Isn't It a Pity" and "All Things Must Pass," Barham and Harrison worked together on the string arrangement. Barham stayed at Friar Park, creating the score from melodies Harrison sang or played on piano or guitar.

Author Elliot Huntley describes the released track's musical tension building to a "breaking point" during Harrison's mid-song slide guitar solo. Musicologist Thomas MacFarlane observes that, fitting the lyrics, the sounds seem to emerge from darkness or space. He adds that in this way, "Beware of Darkness" conveys the idea of perpetual distortion as an inevitable part of the human experience.

Release and reception

Apple Records put out All Things Must Pass on November 27, 1970. "Beware of Darkness" kicks off side three of that triple LP. Right after it comes "Apple Scruffs," a song Harrison wrote for the hardcore Beatles fans he called the Apple scruffs. The album came with a poster. It shows Harrison in a dark hallway at Friar Park, standing in front of a window with an iron frame.

Tom Wilkes had come up with a bolder poster design, but Harrison felt uneasy about it. That original design included a painting of a bathing scene with naked women—one of them blonde, meant to represent Pattie Boyd—and a playful Krishna who had stashed the bathers' clothes up in a tree. Spizer explains what the approved poster says: Harrison wears a dark hat, and because the photo is so shadowy, you can barely see anything but his face.

It comes across as a strong image of a serious man. Don Heckman from The New York Times called it a "brooding Harrison" and guessed the album would be "one of the major hits of this – and next – year." In a Rolling Stone review at the time, Ben Gerson said "Beware of Darkness" might be the best song on the album. He pointed out its mysterious music and how the lyrics mix a warning with a sense of affirmation.

Looking back in his 1977 book The Beatles Forever, Nicholas Schaffner noted that while John Lennon used his studio as a soapbox on John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Harrison used his as a pulpit, focusing on Hindu ideas like maya, reincarnation, karma, chanting, and transcendence. Schaffner put "Beware of Darkness" and "All Things Must Pass" together as the album's two most eloquent songs, both musically and lyrically. He said they have mysterious, seductive melodies with faded strings that hang over them like fog in "Blue Jay Way." In a rare interview from the early 1970s, Harrison told Mike Hennessey that "Beware of Darkness" was his favorite among his own songs. He said, "I like the tune, I like the idea and I like the chord changes."

Retrospective assessments and legacy

Critics have long praised "Beware of Darkness" as one of George Harrison's finest achievements. Shortly after Harrison died in November 2001, Dave Thompson wrote in Goldmine that the song, along with "Art of Dying," ranks among the best compositions of Harrison's entire career. Tom Moon, in his book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, calls it the first of three key tracks on the album All Things Must Pass, noting that nearly every song on the record offers a different kind of ecstasy, and that this meditative track follows a hesitant, patient route toward enlightenment.

Michael Frontani, writing in The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles, describes it as Harrison's ultimate warning about maya, the Hindu concept of illusion. Frontani also argues that the attention Harrison and arranger John Barham gave to the orchestral parts on this and other songs may have mattered more to the album's sound than Phil Spector's famous Wall of Sound production. The line "Beware of maya," Frontani adds, became a guiding principle for Harrison's art and personal life over the next thirty years.

Richie Unterberger of AllMusic also considers the song a highlight of All Things Must Pass. Authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter call it a stunning composition that shows how much Harrison's songwriting had matured since 1965. Nick DeRiso of the website Something Else! goes further, calling it the very best song on Harrison's best album, one that perfectly pairs a lyrical meditation on getting through life's tough moments with the sound, mysticism, and energy of one of the early 1970s' greatest groups of session musicians. In Mojo in 2011, John Harris ranked it and "Isn't It a Pity" as simply jaw-dropping ballads.

Other Harrison performances

"Beware of Darkness" was performed by George Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh on 1 August 1971 at Madison Square Garden. Harrison handled lead vocals for the first two verses, then Leon Russell took over for the third. Music writer Simon Leng described this pairing as a "Scouse tremolo" followed by a "mad-dog Southern growl," seeing it as proof of Harrison's willingness to let other artists share the stage. The song appeared in both the afternoon and evening shows, with Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr again among the backing musicians.

Harrison later told interviewer Mike Hennessey in 1972 that the song's unusual chord changes confused some players at first, but they eventually understood it. The evening version was included on the Concert for Bangladesh live album and in the concert film. In a review for The Guardian, Geoffrey Cannon pointed out that the album's cover image of a starving child refugee gave some lyrics a topical edge. He noted Harrison's line "Watch out now, take care, beware of greedy leaders" as a follow-up to earlier calls for unity in Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy" and Billy Preston's "That's the Way God Planned It."

Beware of ABKCO! version

A solo acoustic take of "Beware of Darkness" was recorded at Abbey Road on 27 May 1970. This version appeared on the 1990s bootleg album Beware of ABKCO! At the time, the lyrics were unfinished, which Harrison acknowledges at the start of the track.

The recording was part of a run-through of his song backlog for producer Phil Spector, intended for possible inclusion on All Things Must Pass. The bootleg's title came from a line in this performance where Harrison replaces the word "maya" with "Beware of ABKCO." ABKCO Industries was the company owned by Allen Klein, whom Harrison, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr had authorized to manage Apple. This solo recording was later officially released as a bonus track on the 2001 remaster of All Things Must Pass.

Did You Know?

• The lyrics warn against con men ("soft shoe shufflers"), politicians ("greedy leaders"), pop idols ("falling swingers"), and negative thoughts ("thoughts that linger").