George Harrison - Wonderwall Music

If you’ve ever joked about the Oasis song “Wonderwall” with that rhetorical question “What’s a ‘wonderwall’ anyway?”, you’ve proven that you’re not really a Beatles fan. And as every Oasis fan knows how they’re obsessively indebted to the Beatles, a true Beatles fan know that “Wonderwall” stands for Wonderwall Music, as in the very first Beatle solo album from George and is the very first release on the band’s imprint, Apple Records.
To be fair, this is fairly obscure trivia as Wonderwall Music is essentially a film score for Wonderwall the movie, a score in which George doesn’t even play a note. It was released 40 years ago today, a time when Harrison was pretty obsessive about Indian music. To be fair, he did compose the score, and while I’ve never actually seen how the score holds up against the actual movie, it’s about as exciting as you can imagine when listening to a movie score without the actual visuals on top of the notes.
While far from being required listening, Wonderwall Music is an interesting foray into avant-garde instrumental music that provides no hint of Harrison’s pop side or underrated guitar work. Aside from your own soundtrack for a psychedelic induced comedown, there is very little here in terms of repeated listening pleasure or exemplarary musicianship.
It’s a curious side note, most notable for its place in Beatle history and the bands that use Beatle trivia for their own creative expression.