The Answer's at the End

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 120-room house was built in the 1890s on the site of a thirteenth-century friary by Frank Crisp, a City of London solicitor and microscopist. 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), and a carving of a monk's head that showed him smiling on one side and frowning on the other. A keen horticulturalist and an authority on medieval gardening, Crisp established 10 acres of formal gardens, which similarly reflected his eccentric tastes. From midway through the twentieth century until 1969, ownership of Friar Park resided with the Roman Catholic Church. As a result, paint masked some of Crisp's inscriptions inside the house, but outside, signs reading "Don't keep off the grass", "Herons will be prosecuted" and "Eton boys are a Harrowing sight" remained intact. 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". One example was "Shadows we are and shadows we depart", written on a stone sundial; another began: "Scan not a friend with a microscopic glass / You know his faults, now let his foibles pass ..." This four-line verse was written above an entrance-way in a garden wall, and it was an aphorism that Harrison soon took to quoting in interviews. 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, as Village Voice reporter Howard Smith repeatedly pushed for details on the animosity between Paul McCartney and the other three Beatles. In October 1974 – towards the end of what Harrison termed a "bad domestic year", following his split with Boyd – he used the same quote in an interview with BBC Radio's Alan Freeman, when again discussing the current relationship among the four ex-Beatles. Harrison wrote his first Friar Park-inspired composition, "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)", within two months of moving in. As with the "Crispisms" that surfaced in the lyrics to his 1974 single "Ding Dong, Ding Dong", a number of years elapsed before he incorporated the "Scan not a friend" inscription into a song. In 1975, it provided the central theme to "The Answer's at the End", a composition that, theologian Dale Allison has written, "expresses the personal doubts and religious uncertainty George experienced in the mid-1970s". This temporary uncertainty contrasted with his previous devotion to a Hindu-aligned spiritual path. It was also a period marked by Harrison's excessive use of alcohol and cocaine – 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. ==Composition==

The song begins in the key of D, before changing key to F for the choruses. In its musical mood, authors Robert Rodriguez and Elliot Huntley liken the released recording to "Isn't It a Pity", 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). 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: In another passage from I, Me, Mine, read out by his son Dhani in the 2011 documentary 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 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. Harrison sings, "The speech of flowers excels the flowers of speech / But what's often in your heart is the hardest thing to reach" 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." the middle section of "The Answer's at the End" reflects the influence of Nina Simone's 1972 cover of that earlier song. According to his recollection in I, Me, Mine, Harrison added this section, or coda, when recording "The Answer's at the End". In the final half-verse, following a brief instrumental passage, 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. On the released recording, the song fades out during a repeat of the "isn't it a pity how ..." coda. 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". ==Recording==

Harrison taped the basic track for "The Answer's at the End" at A&M Studios in Los Angeles on 22 April 1975. 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. This event marked the first social meeting between the two former bandmates since December 1970 and, according to McCartney biographer Howard Sounes, was evidence of a "Beatles rapprochement", five years after their break-up. Authors Nicholas Schaffner and Rodriguez have commented on the rushed and expedient nature of the sessions for Extra Texture, an album that saw out Harrison's commitments to EMI-affiliated Apple Records and allowed him to sign with his own, A&M-distributed label, Dark Horse Records. since he was in Los Angeles overseeing projects by his various Dark Horse acts when studio time became available, following the cancellation of sessions for Splinter's second album. Another of these acts was Attitudes, a band put together by his friend, session drummer Jim Keltner. "The timing was perfect", Leng writes of Harrison's approach to making Extra Texture, "as this latest signing to Dark Horse provided a ready-made backup band, close at hand." Although Attitudes guitarist Danny Kortchmar did not play on the album, "The Answer's at the End" was one of two songs that featured all three of the other band members: Keltner, pianist/musical arranger David Foster and bassist/lead singer Paul Stallworth. Another guest musician on the recording was keyboard player Gary Wright, starting with the session for "Isn't It a Pity". A&M engineer Norman Kinney, who had carried out the mix down for The Concert for Bangladesh recordings four years before, added the song's percussion, As for all the songs on the album, overdubs on the basic track were carried out between 31 May and 6 June. A string arrangement, written and conducted by Foster, was recorded at A&M on 6 June. the song also contains multiple guitar parts, Credited to Harrison, these parts comprise 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitar arpeggios over the choruses, and a brief solo. – a vocal affectation that reflected his immersion in the soul genre. Following the first coda, the full band returns for the short instrumental break, after which Harrison repeats the choruses, with his singing increasing in emotion. ==Release and reception==

"The Answer's at the End" was released on 22 September 1975. It was sequenced as the second track on Extra Texture (Read All About It), between "You" and "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)". Some music critics immediately derided the song for its funereal tempo, which was all the more obvious after the upbeat "You". Dave Marsh of Rolling Stone referred to "The Answer's at the End" as "padded subterfuge" which could "easily" have been cut down to two minutes from its length of 5:32. In the NME, Neil Spencer said that, following "You", "hopes of Hari's revival are comprehensively dashed by five-and-a-half minutes of the inordinately dreary 'The Answer's at the End'". Spencer described it as "one of Hari's Homespun Homilies full of crusty chunks of potted wisdom". In his favourable review for Melody Maker, Ray Coleman wrote that Extra Texture represented "a re-statement of the fundamentals we should all cherish" and that "The Answer's at the End" was Harrison "at his most expressive, vocally", as well as "by far the most majestic track on the album". Coleman also said it was "One of George's most potent tracks ever, highly emotional and introspective" and predicted that its universal theme would encourage several cover recordings. ==Retrospective assessment==

Writing 21 years after its release, Alan Clayson dismissed the song as "archaic parlour poetry" on an album full of "long, dull melodies". Simon Leng admires the "warm sonic scenes" of "The Answer's at the End" and recognises it as an "interesting" composition, one that "ponders the nature of relationships" in a similar way to Bob Dylan's 1975 album Blood on the Tracks. Leng pairs the song with another Extra Texture track, "Grey Cloudy Lies", however, as "two slabs of introspection" that suffer from being "part calls for tolerance and part expression of downright despair". While similarly noting the bleakness of the subject matter, Ian Inglis opines: "The lack of optimism in his words is matched by a largely inconspicuous melody and an inconsistent production in which alternate piano, strings, and guitar interludes fail to provide a coherent musical context." Music journalist Rip Rense cites "The Answer's at the End" as an example of how "even the rather hasty" Extra Texture offers "some of the most affecting moments in [Harrison's] career". With reference to the song's second verse, Rense adds: "and how many songwriters have ever sung a line as wonderful as 'The speech of flowers excels the flowers of speech?'" Authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter recognise the song as a "highlight" of the album, Huntley praises the track's "epic sweep" and writes of the Simone-inspired coda: "This is one of my favourite moments of the entire Harrison back-catalogue, especially when the ensemble returns to see the song through to its conclusion ..." Along with "You" and "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)", Ginell rates the song "among the best" from Harrison's solo career. In December 2001, Billboard editor-in-chief Timothy White, a longstanding friend of the former Beatle, White's piece went on to win an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music journalism. Reviewing the 2014 Apple Years reissue of Extra Texture, for The Second Disc, Joe Marchese highlights "the touching 'The Answer's at the End'" among the "top-drawer material" found on the album. In his review for Paste magazine, Robert Ham views the song as a "[moment] when Harrison's focus returns" on Extra Texture and one of the album's ballads that "cut deep". ==Personnel==

• George Harrison – vocals, 12-string acoustic guitar, electric guitars, slide guitar, backing vocals • David Foster – piano, string arrangement • Gary Wright – organ • Paul Stallworth – bass • Jim Keltner – drums • Norm Kinney – tambourine, shaker ==Notes==