Wonderwall Music

rdf:langString Wonderwall Music

rdf:langString Wonderwall Music

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rdf:langString the cover image is divided in two by a red brick wall with a single brick removed. On the left, a man in a business suit stands in a drab, empty space. On the right, naked women frolic in a pond in a colorful landscape.

rdf:langString yes

rdf:langString sapcor1_a.jpg

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rdf:langString experimental

rdf:langString world

rdf:langString raga rock

rdf:langString Indian classical

rdf:langString George told me he'd like me to play on something, or we'd write something as we went along ... You know, it was very experimental, and it was good fun.

rdf:langString It was fantastic really. The studio is on top of the offices ... [and] if you listen closely to some of the Indian tracks on the LP you can hear taxis going by ... I mixed everything as we did it there, and that was nice enough because you get spoiled working on eight and sixteen tracks.

rdf:langString I was getting so into Indian music by then that I decided to use the assignment as an excuse for a musical anthology to help spread the word.

rdf:langString [As] a whole, it's a fascinating if musically slender mishmash of sounds from East and West, everything casually juxtaposed or superimposed without a care in the world ... As this and Harrison's second experimental release, Electronic Sound, undoubtedly proved, pigeonholing this Beatle was a dangerous thing.

rdf:langString Well I remember that wall, that brick ... Bob Gill and I never quite recovered our compatibility but the brick did have to go. Were we right? Yes.

rdf:langString November 1967 – February 1968

rdf:langString Musician

rdf:langString Billboard

rdf:langString Mojo

rdf:langString OndaRock

rdf:langString The Rolling Stone Album Guide

rdf:langString Uncut

rdf:langString "Vital Reissue"

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rdf:langString – George Harrison to Musician magazine, November 1987

rdf:langString – Derek Taylor, recalling difficulties with artist Bob Gill over Harrison's alteration to his cover design

rdf:langString – Eric Clapton, discussing his involvement on the track "Ski-ing"

rdf:langString – Harrison in 1992, recalling the primitive recording facilities at HMV Studios in Bombay

rdf:langString – AllMusic critic Richard Ginell

rdf:langString *EMI and De Lane Lea, London *HMV, Bombay

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rdf:langString soundtrack

rdf:langString Wonderwall Music is the debut solo album by English musician George Harrison and the soundtrack to the 1968 film Wonderwall, directed by Joe Massot. Released in November 1968, it was the first solo album by a member of the Beatles, and the first album issued on the band's Apple record label. The songs are all instrumental pieces, except for occasional non-English language vocals, and mostly comprise short musical vignettes. Following his Indian-styled compositions for the Beatles since 1966, he used the film score to further promote Indian classical music by introducing rock audiences to instruments that were relatively little-known in the West – including shehnai, sarod, tar shehnai and santoor. The Indian pieces are contrasted by Western musical selections, in the psychedelic rock, experimental, country and ragtime styles. Harrison recorded the album between November 1967 and February 1968, with sessions taking place in London and Bombay. One of his collaborators on the project was classical pianist and orchestral arranger John Barham, while other contributors include Indian classical musicians Aashish Khan, Shivkumar Sharma, Shankar Ghosh and Mahapurush Misra. The Western music features contributions from Tony Ashton and his band the Remo Four, as well as guest appearances by Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr. Harrison recorded many other pieces that appeared in Wonderwall but not on the soundtrack album, and the Beatles' 1968 B-side "The Inner Light" also originated from his time in Bombay. Although the Wonderwall project marked the end of Harrison's direct involvement with Indian music as a musician and songwriter, it inspired his later collaborations with Ravi Shankar, including the 1974 Music Festival from India. The album cover consists of a painting by American artist Bob Gill in which, as in Massot's film, two contrasting worlds are separated by a wall, with only a small gap allowing visual access between them. Harrison omitted his name from the list of performing musicians, leading to an assumption that he had merely produced and arranged the music. The 2014 reissue of Wonderwall Music recognises his contributions on keyboards and guitar. The album was first remastered for CD release in 1992, for which former Apple executive Derek Taylor supplied a liner-note essay. While viewed as a curiosity by some rock music critics, Wonderwall Music is recognised for its inventiveness in fusing Western and Eastern sounds, and as being a precursor to the 1980s world music trend. The album's title inspired that of Oasis' 1995 hit song "Wonderwall". Harrison's full soundtrack for the film was made available on DVD in early 2014, as part of the two-disc Wonderwall Collector's Edition. In September that year, the album was reissued in remastered form as part of Harrison's Apple Years 1968–75 box set, with the addition of three bonus tracks.