"The Answer's at the End" is a song by English rock musician George Harrison, released in 1975 on his final album for Apple Records, Extra Texture (Read All About It). Part of the song lyrics came from a wall inscription at Harrison's nineteenth-century home, Friar Park, a legacy of the property's original owner, Sir Frank Crisp. This aphorism, beginning "Scan not a friend with a microscopic glass", had resonated with Harrison since he bought Friar Park in 1970, and it was a quote he often used when discussing his difficult relationship with his former Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney.
Harrison's adaptation of the verse for "The Answer's at the End" coincided with a period of personal upheaval, following the severe criticism afforded his 1974 North American tour by several influential reviewers. In its plea for tolerance and a musical arrangement that includes orchestral strings, the song recalls Harrison's 1970 hit ballad "Isn't It a Pity". The arrangement also bears the influence of Nina Simone's 1972 cover version of "Isn't It a Pity", specifically in a pair of codas performed by Harrison in the soul style.
Harrison recorded "The Answer's at the End" in Los Angeles, where he was overseeing projects relating to his Dark Horse record label during much of 1975. The backing musicians on the recording include members of the Dark Horse Records band Attitudes, among them David Foster and Jim Keltner. As with much of Extra Texture, the song has received a varied response from music critics and Harrison's biographers. On release, Rolling Stone dismissed the track as "padded subterfuge" and overlong, while Melody Maker described it as "majestic" and one of Harrison's "most potent tracks ever, highly emotional and introspective".
Background and inspiration
In March 1970, George Harrison and his first wife, Pattie Boyd, moved into their Victorian Gothic residence at Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.The Editors of Rolling Stone, p. 42.Boyd, p. 146. The 120-room house was built in the 1890sO'Dell, pp. 135, 137. on the site of a thirteenth-century friary by Frank Crisp, a City of London solicitor and microscopist. Harrison was immediately taken with Crisp's penchant for whimsy,Harrison, p. 68. the legacies of which included interior features such as doorknobs and light switches shaped as monks' faces (which meant "tweaking" a nose in order to turn each light on),Clayson, pp. 300, 301. and a carving of a monk's head that showed him smiling on one side and frowning on the other.Greene, p. 166. A keen horticulturalist and an authority on medieval gardening,Anita McConnell, "Crisp, Sir Frank, first baronet (1843–1919)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online, January 2007 (subscription required; retrieved 26 February 2013). Crisp established 10 acres of formal gardens,O'Dell, p. 136. which similarly reflected his eccentric tastes.Boyd, pp. 144, 145.
From midway through the twentieth century until 1969, ownership of Friar Park resided with the Roman Catholic Church.Harrison, p. 67.Clayson, p. 301. As a result, paint masked some of Crisp's inscriptions inside the house,Greene, p. 168. but outside, signs reading "Don't keep off the grass", "Herons will be prosecuted" and "Eton boys are a Harrowing sight" remained intact.O'Dell, p. 137. Harrison also discovered inscriptions with a more profound meaning, which he described to his Hare Krishna friend Shyamasundar Das as "like songs really, about the devil, about friendship, life".Greene, p. 165. One example was "Shadows we are and shadows we depart", written on a stone sundial;Clayson, p. 302. another began: "Scan not a friend with a microscopic glass / You know his faults, now let his foibles pass ..."Greene, p. 171. This four-line verse was written above an entrance-way in a garden wall,Boyd, p. 144. and it was an aphorism that Harrison soon took to quoting in interviews.Badman, p. 6. On 28 April 1970, just over two weeks after the Beatles' break-up, he used the words during an interview for New York's WPLQ Radio,Badman, pp. 6–7. as Village Voice reporter Howard Smith repeatedly pushed for details on the animosity between Paul McCartney and the other three Beatles.Howard Smith, "Scenes", The Village Voice, 7 May 1970; Tony Ortega, "George Harrison Post-Beatles: 'It's very selfish if the Beatles don't record together'", villagevoice.com, 21 September 2010 (retrieved 6 May 2021). In October 1974 – towards the end of what Harrison termed a "bad domestic year", following his split with BoydHarrison, p. 69. – he used the same quote in an interview with BBC Radio's Alan Freeman,Badman, pp. 138–39. when again discussing the current relationship among the four ex-Beatles."That's Entertainment", Contra Band Music, 10 October 2012 (retrieved 23 December 2013)."Interview with George Harrison", Rock Around the World, program 61, 5 October 1975.
Harrison wrote his first Friar Park-inspired composition, "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)", within two months of moving in.Madinger & Easter, p. 431. As with the "Crispisms" that surfaced in the lyrics to his 1974 single "Ding Dong, Ding Dong",Badman, p. 144. a number of years elapsed before he incorporated the "Scan not a friend" inscription into a song.Harrison, p. 300. In 1975, it provided the central theme to "The Answer's at the End",Rodriguez, p. 385. a composition that, theologian Dale Allison has written, "expresses the personal doubts and religious uncertainty George experienced in the mid-1970s".Allison, pp. 135–36. This temporary uncertainty contrasted with his previous devotion to a Hindu-aligned spiritual path.Allison, pp. 7–8. It was also a period marked by Harrison's excessive use of alcohol and cocaineGreene, pp. 219, 220.Mat Snow, "George Harrison: Quiet Storm", Mojo, November 2014, pp. 72–73. – a symptom of his despondency following his troubled 1974 North American tour with Ravi Shankar, and the generally unfavourable reception afforded his Dark Horse album.Rodriguez, p. 384.Tillery, pp. 116, 117.
Composition
The song begins in the key of D,"George's handwritten lyrics for 'The Answer's at the End'", booklet with Extra Texture (Read All About It) CD (Apple Records, 2014; produced by George Harrison), pp. 10, 16. before changing key to F for the choruses."The Answer's at the End", in George Harrison Extra Texture: Sheet Music for Piano, Vocal & Guitar, Charles Hansen (New York, NY, 1975). In its musical mood, authors Robert Rodriguez and Elliot Huntley liken the released recording to "Isn't It a Pity", which, like "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp", was co-produced by Phil Spector and issued on Harrison's 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass.Spizer, pp. 211, 219.Woffinden, pp. 37–38. Harrison biographer Simon Leng describes "The Answer's at the End" as a ballad set to a "mellow, reflective soul mood", like much of its parent album, Extra Texture (Read All About It).Leng, pp. 180, 186.
According to the way he renders Crisp's inscription in his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, Harrison made a minor alteration to the original text's third line ("Life is one long enigma, true, my friend") for his opening verse:Harrison, pp. 300, 302.
In another passage from I, Me, Mine, read out by his son Dhani in the 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World,Dhani Harrison interview, in George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Harrison explains that these words helped him reach a better understanding of human relationships and others around him.
The theme of tolerance is further reflected in the song's chorus, where Harrison urges: "Don't be so hard on the ones that you love / It's the ones that you love, we think so little of ..." The chorus lyrics echo the message of "Isn't It a Pity", in this case, author Ian Inglis writes, providing a "bleak assessment of the human condition".Inglis, p. 50.
The second verse begins with an example of what Harrison biographer Alan Clayson views as the "restricted code" found in the lyrics on much of Extra Texture.Clayson, p. 349. Harrison sings, "The speech of flowers excels the flowers of speech / But what's often in your heart is the hardest thing to reach" – the second line of which, Allison writes, "is surely [Harrison] talking about his inability to find God, who for him dwells, above all, inside the human being".Allison, p. 8. Allison suggests that, with the singer describing life as first an "enigma" and then a "mystery", the previous certainties of his faith have disappeared; true to the song title, Allison continues, "Only death will reveal ... whether his religious beliefs have been true or false."
As a further reference to the sentiment regarding friendship expressed in "Isn't It a Pity",Leng, pp. 86–87. the middle section of "The Answer's at the End" reflects the influence of Nina Simone's 1972 cover of that earlier song.Huntley, p. 124. According to his recollection in I, Me, Mine, Harrison added this section, or coda, when recording "The Answer's at the End". In the lines "And isn't it a pity how / We hurt the ones we love the most of all ...", Inglis notes the influence of the 1944 pop standard "You Always Hurt the One You Love".Inglis, pp. 50–51.
In the final half-verse, following a brief instrumental passage, Harrison personalises the second line of Crisp's text to "You know my faults, now let my foibles pass".Harrison, p. 302. Rodriguez remarks that the subject of reserving judgement would have resonated with Harrison at this time, given the "shellacking" he had recently received in music publications such as Rolling Stone.Rodriguez, pp. 59, 385. On the released recording, the song fades out during a repeat of the "isn't it a pity how ..." coda.
Among the former Beatle's biographers, interpretations differ over the message of Extra Texture songs such as "The Answer's at the End", with regard to his spirituality. Like Dale Allison, Gary Tillery writes of Extra Texture revealing Harrison's "inner turmoil at having strayed from his faith".Tillery, pp. 116–17. Leng views this composition as "a deliberate tempering of tone rather than a change in fundamental beliefs", however, with the song's choruses "attenuat[ing] the search for universal solutions to a simpler, earthbound observation". Joshua Greene similarly writes that Harrison had "regained strength and relaxed his missionary zeal" during 1975. Greene references "The Answer's at the End" while stating that "a modest appeal for tolerance" had now replaced the singer's earlier "exhortations to chant and warnings about rebirth in the material world".Greene, p. 221.
Recording Harrison taped the basic track for "The Answer's at the End" at A&M Studios in Los Angeles on 22 April 1975.Madinger & Easter, p. 452. During the previous month, Harrison attended a press party held by McCartney and the latter's band, Wings, on board the Queen Mary at Long Beach.Ray Coleman, "Dark Horse", Melody Maker, 6 September 1975, p. 28.Huntley, p. 121. This event marked the first social meeting between the two former bandmates since December 1970Badman, pp. 16, 156. and, according to McCartney biographer Howard Sounes, was evidence of a "Beatles rapprochement", five years after their break-up.Sounes, p. 320.