page_title: Art of Dying (song)
section_title: Recording
hierarchical_section_title: Art of Dying (song) / Recording
caption_attribution_description: Trade ad for Derek and the Dominos's single "Bell Bottom Blues".To better adapt it to his respective Wikipedia article, the ad was cropped and cleaned in a graphics editing program. The original can be viewed at the source below.
context_page_description: "Art of Dying" is a song by English rock musician George Harrison that was released on his 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass. Harrison began writing the song in 1966 while still a member of the Beatles and during a period when he had first become enamoured with Hindu-aligned spirituality. The subject matter is reincarnation and the need to avoid rebirth, by limiting actions and thoughts that lead to one's soul returning in another, earthbound life form.
  Harrison recorded "Art of Dying" in London shortly after the Beatles' break-up in April 1970. The song was co-produced by Phil Spector and features a hard rock arrangement. The backing musicians include Eric Clapton and the rest of the latter's short-lived band Derek and the Dominos, as well as Gary Wright, Billy Preston, Bobby Keys and Jim Price. The song has received praise from several music critics; among these, James Hunter of Rolling Stone described it as a "spookily proto-disco" performance by "a rock orchestra recorded with sensitivity and teeth and faraway mikes".
  Since Harrison's death in November 2001, the lyrics have received further recognition as a comment on the nature of human existence.
context_section_description: "Art of Dying" was one of many compositions that Harrison stockpiled during the Beatles' career due to the continued dominance of the band's principal songwriters, Lennon and Paul McCartney. When discussing his plans for making a solo album in an October 1969 interview, Harrison referred to "Art of Dying", saying he had been "working on a song about reincarnation since 1966". On 26 May 1970, a month after the Beatles' break-up, it was one of at least fifteen songs performed by Harrison for producer Phil Spector's benefit at Abbey Road Studios in London, with a view to narrowing down the material under consideration for All Things Must Pass. Harrison performed the song on acoustic guitar, but as with "Isn't It a Pity", "Run of the Mill", "Let It Down" and other selections, its arrangement was transformed significantly as the album sessions progressed. In the case of "Art of Dying", Spector gave the track a heavy production for the official release; authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter describe the production as a "[big] 'kitchen sink' job". A widely bootlegged version known as "Art of Dying (Take 9)", comprising a band performance dominated by acoustic rhythm guitars and piano, with Ringo Starr on drums, sees the song somewhere midway between the solo run-through and the All Things Must Pass arrangement. This take 9, played in the key of B♭ minor, a semitone up from that of the official version of the song, was still in contention for release during the album's mixing phase.
  In a chapter discussing All Things Must Pass in his 2010 autobiography, American musician Bobby Whitlock writes of recording the song: "It was awesome when we were doing 'The Art of Dying,' Eric [Clapton] on that wah-wah and it was all cooking, Derek and the Dominos with George Harrison." The sessions led to the formation of Derek and the Dominos, whose four members – Clapton, Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon – all played on the track. In a 1990 interview, Clapton said, "We made our bones, really, on that album with George", since the four musicians had no formal plans to work as a band beforehand.
  The released version of "Art of Dying" is in the hard rock style. The track begins with what author Elliot Huntley terms Clapton's "firecracking" lead guitar, and is propelled by Gordon's drumming and Radle's urgent bass. Jim Price's horn arrangement provides a countermelody to the various A minor voicings in the song's instrumental passages through to its "galloping" ending. Testifying to the ferocity of the performance, Phil Collins later recalled that his hands were so badly blistered during the run-throughs of the song, he was unable to play his congas with any force once they came to actually record it, hence the apparent absence of congas in the final mix. Another percussion part – maracas – does feature prominently, and may have been played by Mal Evans, Starr, members of Badfinger or Maurice Gibb, all of whom attended the session also, according to Collins.
  Although Harrison acknowledged Collins' contribution on the 2001 reissue of All Things Must Pass, Collins writes in his 2016 autobiography that this credit was merely out of kindness, and that he did not in fact play on the released version of "Art of Dying". In Collins' recollection, the session he attended for the song was an earlier take from May 1970, featuring a different musical arrangement and with Starr, Klaus Voormann and Billy Preston as the other musicians. Before giving Collins the mistaken credit in 2001, Harrison sent him a tape that he said was a recording of the song with his conga playing. Collins recalled in a 2016 interview, "I thought, Oh, my god, this sounds terrible." Collins added that the tape was a practical joke at his expense, since Harrison had asked percussionist Ray Cooper to deliberately play poorly, saying: "Play bad, I'm going to record it and send it to Phil."
caption: Derek and the Dominos' Jim Gordon, Carl Radle, Bobby Whitlock and Eric Clapton, pictured in 1970
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