The Beatles' 'Blackbird' Needed More Than Half A Century To Hit The Top 40
George Harrison‘s comeback to the top of the music world was one of the great Beatles-related stories of the late 1980s. After years of seeming reluctance toward sustaining a music career, he rallied with the one-two punch of a hit solo record and the formation of the Traveling Wilburys.
“Cloud 9,” the opening title track (although the LP was spelled Cloud Nine) to his mega-successful 1987 album, could be interpreted as someone reaching out to a lover. But in reality, Harrison was addressing everyone in the audience who found inspiration in his music over the years.
If you didn’t know any better, you would have been forgiven for thinking his official name was “The Reclusive George Harrison” since that was how much of the world referred to him circa 1985 or so. At that time, the former Beatle didn’t seem to harbor all that much interest in trying to make his way back to pop stardom.
Ever since the first flush of activity in the early ’70s that came following The Beatles’ breakup, including a couple of very successful albums and even a tour, Harrison had largely shied away from the spotlight as much as possible. While he still sporadically made records, he didn’t do much at all to promote them. And then there was a five-year gap between Gone Troppo in 1982 and Cloud Nine in 1987.
Little did the outside world know, however, that Harrison was girding his loins for a return to the public eye, enlisting ELO’s Jeff Lynne to produce Cloud Nine. While his taste for promoting his music came and went, he never lost his love of making it. In fact, as quoted in the Timothy White book George Harrison: Reconsidered, the act of creating art for public consumption was at the heart of the lyric for “Cloud 9”:
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
