I’ve recently watched a few more episodes — only watching one at a time, to make them last — of the Beatles documentary series (on Disney+) which has gotten me falling under their spell all over again. So when I saw Jim’s prompt for this week, I went looking for one of their songs.

“Any Road” is the final single by George Harrison and is the opening track to his posthumous album Brainwashed. Harrison began writing the song in 1988, during the making of a video for his 1987 album Cloud Nine. It is the last released record of new material credited to George Harrison.

I love the philosophy expressed in Any Road. To me, it feels like he’s urging each of us to get out there and take action. I love to use rationalizations to keep me in my head and not out there, doing. I see the song as a mantra of empowerment. Also, knowing where George was in his life, facing the end of it, gives the lyrics special significance. If you can face your own death with that kind of attitude, it says something.

Brainwashed is George’s twelfth and final studio album. It was released posthumously on 11/19/02, almost a year after his death at age 58, and 15 years after his previous studio album, Cloud Nine. Recordings began over a decade before Harrison’s death but were repeatedly delayed. The album’s overdubs were completed by his son, Dhani, session drummer, Jim Keltner, and longtime friend and collaborator, Jeff Lynne.

Brainwashed reached the top 30 in the UK and the top 20 in the US, and received mostly favorable reviews. The album includes the singles “Stuck Inside a Cloud” and “Any Road”. The B-side of Any Road, the instrumental “Marwa Blues” went on to receive the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance, while “Any Road” was nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

Harrison began recording the tracks that eventually were issued on Brainwashed as early as 1988 and continued to do so in a sporadic manner over the next decade and a half, but mainly from July 1999 to October 2001. Progress was delayed by business problems with Harrison’s former manager, Denis O’Brien, as well as his work with the Traveling Wilburys and Ravi Shankar, and by his work on The Beatles Anthology. In an interview in 1999, Harrison announced the title of his next album to be Portrait of a Leg End, and played songs entitled “Valentine”, “Pisces Fish” and “Brainwashed. During the promotion for the 2001 re-release of All Things Must Pass, Harrison joked that the name of the album would be Your Planet Is Doomed – Volume One. After recuperating from being attacked in his home on 12/30/99 by a man with paranoid schizophrenia, Harrison focused on finishing the album, simultaneously sharing his ideas for all its details (from the sound of the finished songs to the album’s artwork) with his son Dhani – information that ultimately proved very valuable, as Dhani helped to complete the album after his father’s death.

Harrison successfully battled throat cancer in 1997; in 2001 he underwent surgery to remove a cancerous growth from one of his lungs, and radiotherapy for lung cancer which had metastasized to his brain. Once he realized it was an irreversible situation, he worked further on the album’s songs – in conjunction with Dhani and his old collaborator, Jeff Lynne – for as long as possible. Harrison’s final work on the album was carried out at a recording studio in Switzerland shortly before his trip to the United States for cancer treatment. On 11/29/01, Harrison died before he could finish the project, but with a guide to completing it in the hands of his son and Lynne.

After a few months away from the project, both Lynne and Dhani returned to working on Harrison’s final songs and added the appropriate instruments, as per his specifications, to the recordings. The project was so close to completion that the two used the exact timetable and session bookings that Harrison himself had originally planned.

Lynne reflected on Brainwashed in 2020: “His life was in those final songs, the things he got up to each day, like riding down the River Thames. Lots of very personal stuff. Some of them are really good. We gradually just filled them in. It was just about mixing them and making them sound like George would like them. You just had to go with your gut feeling.”

Personnel:
Jeff Lynne — bass, piano, backing vocals
Jim Keltner — drums
Dhani Harrison — electric guitar, backing vocals
George Harrison — vocals, slide guitar, acoustic guitar, ukelele banjo (banjolele)

Any Road

Oh I've been traveling on a boat and a plane
In a car on a bike with a bus and a train
Traveling there and traveling here
Everywhere in every gear

But oh Lord we pay the price with a
Spin of a wheel with the roll of a dice
Ah yeah you pay your fare
And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

And I've been traveling through the dirt and the grime
From the past to the future through the space and the time
Traveling deep beneath the waves
In watery grottoes and mountainous caves

But oh Lord we've got to fight
With the thoughts in the head with the dark and the light
No use to stop and stare
And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

You may not know where you came from
May not know who you are
May not even wondered how
You got this far

I've been traveling on a wing and a prayer
By the skin of my teeth by the breadth of a hair
Traveling where the four winds blow
With the sun on my face, in the ice and the snow

But oooeee it's a game
Sometimes you're cool, sometimes you're lame
Ah yea it's somewhere
And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

But oh Lord we pay the price
With the spin of a wheel, with the roll of a dice
Ah yea, you pay your fare
And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there

I keep traveling around the bend
There was no beginning, there is no end
It wasn't born and never dies
There are no edges, there is no sides
Oh yea, you just don't win
It's so far out, the way out is in
Bow to God and call him Sir
But if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there 

Songwriter:  George Harrison

Jim Adams is the host of Song Lyric Sunday. This week, Jim wants a song that carries a message of empowerment.