Last Updated on 27 January 2026 by Massimo M.
All Things Must Pass is the first album released by George Harrison after the breakup of the Beatles.
All Things Must Pass is the first album released by George Harrison after the breakup of the Beatles.
It was released on November 30, 1970 on Apple Records and was the first triple studio album released by a solo artist (the first triple rock album had been released six months earlier, Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More).
In a clear delay compared to the fiftieth anniversary of the release of All Things Must Pass, on August 6, 2021, an expanded edition of the album will be released containing 70 tracks distributed on eight LPs or five CDs if you prefer.
Of these seventy tracks forty-two will be unreleased tracks, including studio sessions, outtakes, improvisations and demos. In support of the box there will also be a book with archival notes, comments, analysis of the passages, photographs. On the same date, an ultra-deluxe version will be released that in addition to the “standard” content will have a wooden box that contains another book, a wooden bookmark built using an oak tree fallen in the park of George’s residence, Friar Park, and replicas at one sixth of the life-size of the figures of the original album cover (Harrison and the garden gnomes). The originally released vinyl consisted of two LPs of rock songs and in addition a third LP of instrumental jam sessions.
On April 10, 1970, Paul McCartney’s announcement of his late and somewhat obvious departure since it had been since November 1969 that the group had stopped behaving as such, was the impulse that George Harrison needed. Everything ends, you know, sooner or later and so did the biggest musical group in history. Solo albums, evidently prepared for a long time, appeared immediately, and each of these records was as if it represented a point of view on why the Beatles had separated. Paul McCartney and John Lennon continued their war at a distance while Ringo Starr took refuge in his comfort zone made of the sound of his origins.
George Harrison instead took Lucy, his old 1957 Les Paul Standard that Clapton had given him, the acoustic Epiphone Casino and the Gibson SG, gathered some friends in the studio (Clapton, Whitlock, Radle and Gordon who would form Derek and the Dominos) and in a couple of weeks began the work that went on for five months for the production of All thing must pass. During an interview given in 1971 Harrison clarified very well what the real situation had become within the band and why he had already prepared much of the material for All thing must pass :
“I had a lot of songs to work on and that I really wanted to do, but I only got my share of one or two songs per album anyway,” referring to the increasingly problematic recording sessions of the latest albums, from The White Album through the tormented Let It Be and Abbey Road, when each of the band’s three main songwriters had become so attached to their own vision that they saw the others in the room as obstacles.
Perhaps also because of this situation of effective isolation immediately that for this work Harrison brought to the studio an endless series of collaborators. The following is a list of musicians who actually collaborated on the creation of the album: Eric Clapton — electric and acoustic guitar, backing vocals Ringo Starr, Jim Gordon, Alan White, Phil Collins, Ginger Baker — drums, percussion, conga Gary Wright, Bobby Whitlock, Gary Brooker, Billy Preston, Tony Ashton — piano, Hammond organ, electric piano Klaus Voormann, Carl Radle — dave Mason electric bass, Peter Frampton — guitar Pete Drake — steel guitar Bobby Keys — tenor saxophone Jim Price — trumpet and trombone Pete Ham, Tom Evans, Joey Molland — acoustic guitar Mike Gibbins — percussion Eddie Klein — backing vocals John Barham — orchestral and backing vocal arrangement, vibraphone Dhani Harrison — backing vocals in I Live for You and My Sweet Lord (2001 version) Ray Cooper — tambourine in My Sweet Lord (2001 version) Sam Brown — additional vocals on My Sweet Lord (2001 version) Per Harrison’s production turned to Phil Spector who first heard Harrison’s new compositions in the early 1970s.
This first group of songs included Isn’t It a Pity, Hear Me Lord, Let It Down, All Things Must Pass and Art of Dying, all of which would end up on the album. Initially about two months were planned as processing time but, in the end, All Things Must Pass was released after five months. The great delay was due to multiple factors such as the health condition of Harrison’s mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer, as the ex-Beatle often visited her in Liverpool and Spector’s erratic behavior. George Harrison himself later recounted that It took Spector about “18 drinks” before he was ready to work, a situation that often forced him to take care of the production himself.
When the album was finally released it reached number one in the United States and also in Great Britain, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, the second in Italy, the fourth in Japan and the tenth in Germany and is unanimously considered by critics the best work of George Harrison soloist.
Having won 6 platinum records it is the album of an ex-Beatle to have sold more with good peace than former colleagues McCartney and Lennon.
Tracks from the original triple All thing must pass
LP 1 Side A
I’d Have You Anytime – 2:56 (George Harrison, Bob Dylan)
My Sweet Lord – 4:38 Wah-Wah – 5:35
Isn’t It a Pity (Version 1) – 7:08
B-Side
What Is Life – 4:22
If Not for You – 3:29 (Bob Dylan)
Behind That Locked Door – 3:05
Let It Down – 4:57
Run of the Mill – 2:49
LP 2 Side A
Beware of Darkness – 3:48
Apple Scruffs – 3:04
Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll) – 3:46
Awaiting On You All – 2:45
All Things Must Pass – 3:44
Side B
I Dig Love – 3:37
Art of Dying – 4:45
Isn’t It a Pity (Version 2) – 5:46
Hear Me Lord
LP 3 – “Apple Jam” Side A
Out of the Blue – 11:14 (Jim Gordon, Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock, Eric Clapton, Gary Wright, George Harrison, Jim Price, Bobby Keys, Al Aronowitz)
It’s Johnny’s Birthday – 0:49 (based on Congratulations (Bill Martin, Phil Coulter); Mal Evans, George Harrison, Eddie Klein)
Plug Me In – 3:18 (Jim Gordon, Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock, Eric Clapton, Dave Mason, George Harrison)
Side B
I Remember Jeep – 8:07 (Ginger Baker, Klaus Voormann, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton, George Harrison)
Thanks for the Pepperoni – 5:31 (Jim Gordon, Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock, Eric Clapton, Dave Mason, George Harrison)
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