“I loved the way ‘Crackerbox Palace’ sounded. I loved the whole idea of it. So I wrote the song and turned it from that shack [the great comic, Lord Buckley, had lived in an L.A. shack that Harrison visited dubbed the Crackerbox Palace – Ed] into a phrase for the physical world. ‘I was so young when I was born/my eyes could not yet see/And by the time of my first dawn/somebody holding me…they said/We welcome you to Crackerbox Palace/we’ve been expecting you.’ I wrote those lyrics because, again, the world is very serious and at times a very sad place. But at the same time it’s such a joke. It’s all a Crackerbox Palace.”George Harrison (1024)

“Yeah, well after I split up from Patti [Boyd, Harrison’s first wife – Ed], I went on a bit of a bender to make up for all the years I’d been married. If your listen to ‘Simply Shady’, on Dark Horse, it’s all in there — my whole life at that time was a bit like Mrs. Dale’s Diary [a now defunct British radio soap opera – Ed].”George Harrison (1025)

“Well, I wasn’t ready to join Alcoholics Anonymous or anything [after splitting from Patti – Ed] — I don’t think I was that far gone — but I could put back a bottle of brandy occasionally, plus all the other naughty things that fly around. I just went on a binge, went on the road… all that sort of thing, until it got to the point where i had no voice and almost nobody at times. Then I met Olivia and it all worked out fine. There’s a song on the new album, ‘Dark Sweet Lady’: “You came and helped me through/When I’d let go/You came from out the blue/Never have known what I’d done without you.” That sums it up.”George Harrison (1025)

“That was the first new tune I wrote. I was in the garden and it was pouring down with rain, and I suddenly became aware that I was feeling depressed, being affected by the weather. And it’s important to remember that while everything else around you changes, the soul within remains the same; you have to constantly remember that and fight for the right to be happy.”George Harrison (1025)

“And I like ‘Faster’ because I fulfilled the thing the Formula One motor-racing people kept asking me — to write a song about racing — and I did it in a way I’m happy about because it wasn’t just corny. It’s easy to write about V-8 engines and vroom vroom — that would have been bullshit. But I’m happy with the lyrics because it can be seen to be about one driver specifically or any of them, and if it didn’t have the motor-racing noises, it could be about the Fab Four really — the jealousies and things like that.”George Harrison (1025)

“Actually, I wrote that in 1968. It was after we got back from Rishikesh in the Himalayas on the Maharishi trip, and it was for the White Album. We recorded it but we didn’t get it down right or something. Then I forgot all about it until a year ago, when I found this old demo I’d made in the Sixties. The lyrics are a bit passe — all about upsetting “Apple carts” and stuff — but it’s a bit about what was happening at the time. “Not guilty for getting in your way/While you’re trying to steal the day” — which was me trying to get a space. “Not guilty/For looking like a freak/Making friends with every Sikh/For leading your astray/On the road to Mandalay” — which is the Maharishi and going to the Himalayas and all that was said about that. I like the tune a lot; it would make a great tune for Peggy Lee or someone.”George Harrison (1025)

“It’s just an observation of how society and myself were or are. We take each other for granted — and forget to give back. That was really all it was about.”George Harrison (1149)

“Jeep was actually Eric’s [Clapton – Ed] dog – a funny kind of orangy-brown dog with pink eyes. I think he might have kicked it – I’m sure he has by now – but I know it was his dog.”George Harrison (1149)