George Harrison passed away in 2001 before his induction at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. So, his former Traveling Wilburys colleagues Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne led an all-star group, including Steve Winwood and Prince, for a rousing performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
Come listen for Tom Petty’s haunting vocals, but stay for Prince’s amazing guitar solo at the end. Seriously, do not stop before Prince takes over.
The rest of the Beatles initially were not very impressed with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” when Harrison first played it for them in 1968. But the song became one of their classics, with Eric Clapton playing on the original Beatle version.
On February 8, 1990, Del Shannon died after shooting himself in the head with a .22 caliber rifle. Shannon, who had long struggled with depression, left no suicide note for his wife and children. But he left us some great music.
The singer, whose birth name was Charles Westover, is best-known for his 1961 hit “Little Runaway.” Here he is singing the song in 1973 on The Midnight Special TV show.
Shannon had some other hits with songs like “Hats Off To Larry,” “Little Town Flirt,” and “Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow The Sun).” Below is “Hats Off To Larry.”
But by the time the 1970s and the 1980s arrived, Shannon’s music career was not going well. He spent much of the 1970s battling alcoholism.
Other musicians such as the Beatles and Tom Petty admired Shannon’s music. And despite the lack of another big hit, Shannon continued to work.
He finally became sober in 1978. He even scored a top 40 song in the early 1980s with a cover of “Sea of Love,” which appeared on the Petty-produced album Drop Down and Get Me (1981).
Below, Shannon performs “Sea of Love” on the TV show Solid Gold in January 1982.
Around the time of his death in 1990, Shannon was on the verge of a comeback. He was preparing to release a new album called Rock On.
Also, it is rumored that Shannon was being considered to replace the late Roy Orbison in The Traveling Wilburys. Listening to his voice from that time, one can easily imagine him fitting into that group. But it was not to be.
The posthumous album Rock On was released on October 1, 1991 and received good reviews. Jeff Lynne (of ELO) and Mike Campbell (of Tom Petty’s The Heartbreakers) worked on the production of the album, so your enjoyment may depend on how much you like Lynne’s production sound at the time.
But it is worth checking out Rock On, which reveals that Del Shannon still had great talent to share with the world. Below is “Lost in a Memory,” which like most of the songs on the album was written by Del Shannon. I love it.
I recently watched the new two-part Martin Scorsese documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Overall, the documentary is interesting and informative, but often it seemed like the film was giving us hints about the man more than a story. But we can never fully understand a person, so really all we have are hints.
The film used a lot of George Harrison’s music. Scorsese seems to have a real fondness for “All Things Must Pass,” which is an excellent title song from what is generally considered Harrison’s best post-Beatles work. But for the last part of Harrison’s career, the film gave us a short glimpse of his Traveling Wilbury’s work while completely overlooking his last solo hit, “Got My Mind Set on You.”
“Got My Mind Set on You,” which appeared on Harrison’s album Cloud Nine (1988) after its release as a single, was Harrison’s last number one single in the U.S. The song, however, was not a Harrison original. It was written by Rudy Clark and was recorded by James Ray twenty-five years earlier in 1962. I love Ray’s version too.
Maybe Living in the Material World did not use “Got My Mind Set on You” because there was a rights issue. Or maybe Scorsese saw the song as one of Harrison’s lesser works and sees it the same way “Weird Al” Yankovic does.
Still, I recall in 1987-1988 that the song was a huge hit constantly playing on the radio. Along with the CD and the Beatle-esque “When We Was Fab,” the radio-friendly song was a nice return from Harrison, who had not released an album for more than a decade. The album also led to Harrison recruiting a few friends to record a B-side to one of the songs on Cloud Nine, “This is Love.” And those friends — Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison — ended up forming The Traveling Wilburys. While Harrison’s recording of “Got My Mind Set On You” may not be Harrison’s best recording, that is no insult considering the quality of his catalog. And it is an excellent catchy pop song.
{Note: Harrison made another video for “Got My Mind Set on You” too, intercutting his performance with scenes from a fair arcade.}
