All Those Years Ago

Right now the Zoo Crew has got George Harrison’s “All Those Years Ago” rolling across the airwaves at THE ZOO, pulled straight off the 1981 album Somewhere in England, and the Zoo Freaks out there are locking into every note of that jaunty, bittersweet groove. This one started life as something else entirely. George originally knocked it together for Ringo Starr to cut on an album he was working on at the time. The chorus stayed pretty much the same, but the verses were a little more pointed, more of an “you did this and you did that” kind of thing. Ringo came over to Friar Park, laid down the drums, even took a pass at the vocal, then decided the song sat a bit high for his range and that he already had a tune about looking back. So George hung onto the track, drums and all. Then came the news that John had been shot. Straight away George rewrote the words, turned the whole thing into a tribute, and sang it himself. He later told interviewers the lyrics got a little abstract in places because so many thoughts were hitting him from different angles at once. When people asked about the line calling John “the one that they said was so weird,” George explained he meant all the folks who don’t believe in God and still go around causing harm were the same ones pointing fingers at Lennon. He always figured the listener could sort the meaning for themselves.

What makes the record extra special is that Paul McCartney, Linda, and Denny Laine from Wings came over to Friar Park and stacked those warm backing vocals on top. Ray Cooper was already on tambourine, Al Kooper on electric piano, Herbie Flowers on bass, and of course Ringo’s steady drums stayed right where they were. It was the first time the three remaining Beatles had appeared on the same track since the band split, and the last until Free as a Bird years later. Warner Brothers had earlier sent the Somewhere in England album back and told George to come up with something more upbeat and a new cover. Once this track was in the mix, with that rare three-Beatle spark, the label green-lit the whole package. The single hit number two in the States and spent a week at the top of the adult contemporary chart. George once said he had just finished the vocals when the news about John came through, and the timing still feels heavy even now. Olivia Harrison later recalled that George wanted the song to say something about John without turning into a dirge. In later conversations George talked about how dying and living are basically the same road, and that John knew who he was no matter how he left this world.

Before any of that, George was just a kid from Speke who loved guitars and skiffle. He started playing around age fourteen after his mom bought him an inexpensive guitar, and he formed a little group called the Rebels with his brother and a friend. Paul McCartney, who rode the same bus to the Liverpool Institute, kept telling him about this skiffle outfit John Lennon was running called the Quarrymen. George finally caught them and impressed John by playing the instrumental “Raunchy” note for note on the top deck of a bus outside Wilson Hall. John thought he looked too young at first, but the guitar playing won him over. George joined up, and pretty soon the Quarrymen were moving past washboard skiffle toward the rock and roll that would carry them. They cut their first real studio sides at Percy Phillips’ place in Liverpool, covering Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day” and their own “In Spite of All the Danger.” From there it was the Silver Beetles, the long nights in Hamburg, the Decca audition that got turned down with the famous line about guitar groups being on the way out, and eventually the name that stuck. George always said he never felt like a star himself; the other people were the ones who said that. He just wanted to play, and that drive never really left him even after the Beatles years and all the solo records that followed.

If you want to dig deeper into the man and the music, head over to the official site at georgeharrison.com, where you can find the Somewhere in England page with “All Those Years Ago” listed right in the track listing. Keep up with the estate’s posts on Facebook, check the photos and updates on Instagram, and follow along at X. Fans still gather in places like the George Harrison Forever group to share stories, live clips from the Concert for Bangladesh, and memories of the quiet one who wrote some of the most lasting tunes of the whole era. That same spirit is what keeps the records spinning here at the Zoo, connecting the Zoo Freaks to the deep cuts and the full albums that still hit just as hard as they did when they first came out. George started as the youngest one in the band, the one who looked up to John, and he ended up carrying that same thoughtful edge into every solo project, from the spiritual searches to the garden at Friar Park. Hearing “All Those Years Ago” again just reminds you how those early Liverpool days and the later tributes all sit on the same long road. The Zoo Crew will keep the needle in the groove for a while longer, so settle in and let the track play out.