"We talked about it, and he said that he [Harrison] didn't want the album to be posh. What he wanted, really, was kind of like demos," Jeff Lynne spoke of Brainwashed, "I thought if I left them as rough as he would have liked, they wouldn't come over as well. I wanted to make them as good as they could be, and I think we struck a balance. So, sorry George, I made them a bit posher than you might have wanted. But I felt I was only doing them justice."

A bit posher.  Brainwashed, George Harrison's last, as of yet, release, stands along side the best albums in his catalogue.  Strong, soulful and focused, this album offers all the musical marks that we've come to expect from Harrison but lacks most of the production standards that we love.  Where are the sweeping organs, funky bass lines intricate guitar work, pitch perfect vocal arrangements and stirring pianos of albums past?  To call this album posh is a gross overstatement.

All this is not to say that Brainwashed isn't a fantastic album.  Upon its release, Brainwashed received the most consecutive plays of any album in my collection (a record that would be challenged this year by Brian Wilson's Smile album) and yet it was missing something.  Depth. 

The album opens with George demanding "plenty of those guitars" but, with the exception of his solos, we rarely hear anything more than strumming.  Often in his career, Harrison's orchestrations on guitar were the shining moment of the song.  The Dark Horse album, often panned by critics for its poor vocal quality and lackluster songs, has some of Harrison's strongest guitar work.  Songs like So Sad are dripping with orchestration so intricate that I often wonder how one comes up with such ideas.  He asks a question on electric, answers it on acoustic and tells them both to shut up on slide with such ease and grace that one would assume it was all the same musical thought on the same instrument.  It's marvelous, but where is it on Brainwashed?  Am I not hearing it through the strumming of acoustic guitars and ukuleles?  Simply, it's not on Brainwashed.  You can look for it, but it is not there in the same capacity that it is on his other releases.

When listening to other Jeff Lynne productions, it is easy to understand why he thinks this album is too posh.  Lynne is a plug and play type of guy who fills his songs by strumming acoustic guitars, chunking out chords on the piano and playing the root of the chords in the bass over and over.  There's nothing wrong with this approach, in fact it had become a pop music standard long before Lynne was making records, but it is beneath Harrison's musical ability.  Having constantly spoiled himself by having the best the business had to offer in his studio, Harrison had developed his writing style with the intentions of the best backing him up.  All respect to Lynne, and that is sincere, he is not on the same level of bass player as Klaus Voorman.  Voorman would create a counter melody that could shift through Harrison's key changes and funky time shifts so effortlessly that you were unaware of how complicated the song was.  Lynne, on the other hand, plays the root of the chord over and over on top of the same rhythm to the point that you stop listening for bass.  With all this in mind, it is no wonder that Lynne finds this album to be a bit posh.  Maybe he hadn't heard 33 & 1/3.

33& 1/3, an album that will most likely be referenced a thousand times on this site, is the perfect example of Harrison surrounding himself with the best.  Listen closely to the bass line on Beautiful Girl.  Do you notice a hesitant bass player and dime store drummer playing on that track?  Probably not.  What you probably hear is a seamless integration of drum and bass as they travel through measures of 7/8, 3/8 and 2/4.  Even when those 7/8 measures shift from a 4+3 to a 3+4 (see George's Signature Sound) beat pattern, the listener is never aware of the complexity.  This Song features organ and piano work to die for.  See Yourself features such intricate drum and bass work that, until recently, I could never figure out exactly what the time signature was (as of right now, I believe it to be 3/8 for six measures and 4/4 for a measure but I may change my mind tomorrow) and True Love is brimming to the top with slide orchestrations.  33 & 1/3 is a posh album.

Rising Sun, a stand out track on Brainwashed, is the most produced track with some string orchestration.  As much as I love this song, I would also love to hear some classic Harrison harmonizing.  I want to hear vocal lines that weave in and out of the melody instead of simply singing the melody a third above.  On Pisces Fish I want to hear some piano and maybe a little Billy Preston organ.  On Marwa Blue, I want to hear intricate undertones on guitar that help provide variety to a beautiful song that suffers only from repetition.  Am I disappointed that I don't hear those things?  Of course not.  I believe this is the album that George would have wanted us to hear.  I don't think that his idea of a demo sound was simply him singing and strumming a uke.  After all, he brought in Jim Keltner to do the drum work before he passed so, technically, George's demos were already to posh to be called demos.  I think Harrison's intent was to make an album where the songs stood on their own without the help of eight or nine musicians and 64 tracks of tape.  I think Harrison's intent was to make an album that felt personal, as if he were connecting with the listener and saying, it was fun playing for you but now it's time to go.  If my assumption on Harrison's intent is correct, then Lynne did the perfect job.  I do not hear much of Lynne's signature sound (over-effected snare drum, flangers, and heavy strings) on this album.  What I do hear is Lynne providing a skeleton bass line underneath a basic drum beat.  I hear Lynne providing support chords and blocked vocal harmony.  A demo, to me, is a recording of basic tracks designed to give the musicians an idea of where the song is going and what it should sound like.  By that definition, Brainwashed is indeed a demo.  It is not a finished product with bells and whistles but it is a finished album and it reaches out to Harrison's fans by giving us hope that someday, we'll hear the album completed. 

Jeff, by your standards this album may be as posh as they come but by George's standards, you did it just right.

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