Brainwashed

About

Brainwashed is the twelfth and final studio album by English rock musician George Harrison. It was released posthumously on 18 November 2002, 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. Harrison began recording the tracks that eventually were issued on Brainwashed as early as 1988 (with "Any Road" being written during the making of a video for "This Is Love" from the album Cloud Nine) and continued to do so in a sporadic manner over the next decade and a half. 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 Pa, 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 30 December 1999 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 lung, and radiotherapy for lung cancer which had metastasised to his brain. Once he realised 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 29 November 2001, 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 instrument, as per his specification, to the recording. The project was so close to completion that the two used the exact timetable and session bookings that Harrison himself had originally planned. .

via Last.fm

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