My Sweet Lord music video
A music video for George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” has been made and will premiere on YouTube today.
The Beatles made a lot of music videos, or “promotional films” as they were called at the time. Just check out 1+. But in the early stages of the solo careers it became more of a neglected task. For instance, no music video was made for Paul McCartney’s debut single, “Another Day” but curiously enough a series of still images made a promotional film for “Maybe I’m Amazed“, which was NOT a single at the time.
John and George were also not thinking in terms of music videos at first. “Cold Turkey” got its own, highly experimental film, but it wasn’t distributed in a large scale until it was released to YouTube in May 2021. “Instant Karma” was performed on Top Of The Pops twice, which is the only reason the song is represented on video collections with John Lennon.
Ringo, on the other hand, enjoyed making these little films. He did one for “Sentimental Journey” and two for “It Don’t Come Easy” one in his garden and another filmed on location in Norway.
In 1971 John and Paul got their act together, McCartney made two music videos for the “Ram” album, one for “3 Legs” and one for “Heart Of The Country“. Strangely, no video for the single, “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”. The Lennons made a series of music videos for the “Imagine” and “Fly“-albums, which they put together as a TV Special.
George didn’t get around to producing music videos until 1974, with “Ding Dong Ding Dong“. So there were no music videos made for his huge worldwide hit, “My Sweet Lord”. Until now. When no music video existed, and the artist didn’t want to perform on “Top Of The Pops“, these songs were illustrated by dancers from the troupe “Pan’s People”. So for years, a clip from that show has been filling out the space for “My Sweet Lord” on George Harrison bootleg music video compilations.
Dhani Harrison seems to have been the mastermind behind the new music video, judging by a short preview clip from Facebook and Instagram, as it seems to having been inspired by the “Star Wars“-films of George Lucas – Dhani being a big fan of those. The new music video will debut later today, and will magically appear in the space below this text – we hope.
Meanwhile you can take a look at the now five years old music video for “What Is Life?“
It would hardly qualify as a ‘video’, but wasn’t there an online release of ‘My Sweet Lord’ soon after George’s death with moving images of lotusflowers? Or is that a false memory (after staring at the CD single for too long)? Anyone else remembers that?
I don’t understand the whole story behind the video But the song is GREAT
Frankly, this is boring and uninspired rubbish. The Beatles were ground breaking creative forces, their inheritors, sadly, are just bad managers. There are so many talented and innovative young directors out there! Give them a chance!
Well, the Got My Mind Set On You jumpy guy in the solo made me smile …
What a very odd video! Hardly likely to make it onto any future compilations of solo Beatles videos – Pan’s People were much better…and no less irrelevant than this parade of ‘slebs.
Truly dire video of a wonderful song and record. The video is dull, uninspired, narratively confused and poorly executed crap. Cramming the screen with largely unknown ‘celebs’ is no substitute for making a video that might actually enhance or showcase the song. Pitiful garbage. So poor it’s actually offensive.
It’s hard not to agree with your sentiment. This was a terrible idea. What were they thinking?
I’m glad to see the I wasn’t the only one scratching their head wondering what the f*** this was about
Totally agree with you. Is there a deeper meaning behind it? My goodness, it could have been so good. I was left with two questions- what was the point? and why didn’t Ringo bother to wash his hair before the shoot?
is this video to promote an upcoming release ?
Seems a poor video for such a great song. You only have to look at the video they did for ‘Here Comes The Sun’ to see what could have been achieved. Was this a case of no one willing to say this was a bad idea to whoever came up with a concept. Probabaly cost a small fortune in appearance fees to create yet It’s not a video worth watching twice in my opinion
i think it was a great deal of fun to watch. i think George would have loved it.
Sure he would, he would have commissioned a series!
Very Monty Python like. About everything and nothing at the same time.
The video’s OK – and the music’s great . I don’t see how this video’s inspired by Star Wars. It looks to be inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks TV series. The opening scene with the wood-pannelled interiors, faces in mirrors, FBI agents and the lines,’It’s happening again’ and ‘There’s something out there’ are classic elements from Twin Peaks. The shot of Jeff Lynne waving from the pavement/sidewalk echoes the opening sequence of the fireman’s wave in Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
Merry Christmas Roger!
Star Wars: I guess we were mislead by the appearance of Luke Skywalker in that preview teaser- And Merry Christmas to you too!
It’s very much the kind of video I would expect for a George song like, “Crackerbox Palace” or “This Song”. However, for a song like “My Sweet Lord”, George would have found this inappropriate. This kind of video only works for one of his fun, non-serious songs. Do something like this for, “Ding Dong, Ding Dong”.
Absolute crap, and not worthy of George’s classic song. Loads of celebrity tosspots does not make a good music video. Why wasn’t footage of the great man performing the song at the Bangladesh concerts used and combined with innovative and suitable animation (like the Glass Onion and Here Comes The Sun promos)?. No, not worthy of George or his legacy at all.