I listened to George Harrison’s Cloud Nine this morning, and I noticed a lot of references to other things.
A lot of this was in “When We Was Fab,” in which case I think the references were conscious and deliberate, but I found some in “Just for Today” and “Devil’s Radio” too.
"Back when income tax was all we had" in "When We Was Fab" is a very subtle reference to Harrison’s "Taxman" from the Beatles’ Revolver album. I think it’s a reference in theme only - there isn’t any similarity of phrase or melody in it.
At the end of some of the verses is a “woo” that sounds a lot like the “woo”s in “I Am the Walrus” from Magical Mystery Tour.
Harrison sings, “But it’s all over now, baby blue,” which is a line from Dylan’s “It’s All over Now Baby Blue.” Dylan was a big influence for the Beatles and for Harrison in his solo career. Cloud Nine came out in 1987, and the next year saw the release of the Traveling Wilburys’ first album - a band that Harrison and Dylan were in together (also Jeff Lynne, who co-produced both albums with Harrison). I can’t help but feel that the “baby blue” part of that phrase is also a reference to the Badfinger song. It was on their Straight Up album, which Harrison produced part of before the Concert for Bangladesh. Although, according to the Wikipedia page for “Baby Blue,” it wasn’t one of the songs that Harrison produced. Still, Badfinger was one of the bands on the Apple label, so there is a connection between them and the Beatles.
Another line is “and you really got a hold on me” - a reference to the song (actually titled “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”) by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles that the Beatles covered on With the Beatles.
The end of the song includes some Indian instruments and doesn’t sound too dissimilar from Harrison’s “Within You, Without You” from Sgt. Pepper, although I don’t know whether that’s because of melodic similarities or just instrumental ones.
Since the whole song is reminiscent of the Beatles’ career, I think all of the references in it are on purpose, not coincidental or subconscious. On some of the other tracks, however, I’m not so certain.
The melody of “Devil’s Radio” (mostly just “I heard it in the night”) is really similar to the melody of the Seachers’ “Everything But a Heartbeat” (“She may possess the best dress”), which - as far as I can tell - was released in 1981. What’s interesting is that Harrison (in the Beatles) and the Searchers were both part of the really early English beat movement, and here they have similar melodies even after twenty years.
Finally, the guitar solo in “Just for Today” sounds like the melodies of two other songs (although there’s also the possibility that I’ve just been listening to too much music and the similarities are unwarranted). The first part sounds a bit like the melody of “Unchained Melody” - the “whoa, my love” part - which was most famously recorded by the Righteous Brothers. However, there are also versions by Chet Atkins and Gene Vincent, who were both influential to the beat movement in England. Part of the solo also sounds a bit like Roy Orbison’s “You Got It,” specifically the melody for “One look from you / I drift away.” ”You Got It” was from Orbison’s Mystery Girl album, which wasn’t released until 1989 - two years after Cloud Nine - but the song was co-written and produced by Jeff Lynne, the co-producer of Cloud Nine. (Roy Orbison was also in the Traveling Wilburys with Lynne and Harrison.)
I don’t know if any of these other connections were conscious echoings or not, but it’s still interesting to see what sort of influences were floating around in Harrison’s head when he was recording this album.
EDIT: I forgot some things about “Devil’s Radio.” The guitar part that bridges the first two verses sounds a lot like the guitar part interspersed between the verses of the Beatles’ “It Won’t Be Long.” Also, the rapidly-speaking voices near the end are like the “Anybody got a bit of money” parts from the early version of “Taxman” found on Anthology 2. Also, the introductory vocal parts (I think it’s “gossip”) are virtually the same as the “oh yeah”s at the beginning of the Beatles’ “I’ll Get You.”
