Gone Troppo

Gone Troppo
Studio album by George Harrison
Released 5 November 1982 (UK)
8 November 1982 (US)
Recorded 5 May–27 August 1982
Except "Dream Away": recording begun 7 December 1980
Studio FPSHOT, Oxfordshire
Genre
Length 39:07
Label Dark Horse
Producer
George Harrison chronology
Somewhere in England
(1981)		 Gone Troppo
(1982)		 Cloud Nine
(1987)
Singles from Gone Troppo
  1. "Wake Up My Love"
    Released: 8 November 1982
  2. "I Really Love You"
    Released: 9 February 1983 (US)
  3. "Dream Away"
    Released: February 1983 (Japan only)

Gone Troppo is the tenth studio album by George Harrison, recorded and released in 1982. It would prove to be Harrison's last studio album for five years, during which he largely took an extended hiatus from his recording career, with only the occasional soundtrack recording surfacing.

Background

By 1980, Harrison had been finding the current musical climate alienating. His commercial appeal had dwindled, with 1981's Somewhere in England failing to go gold (despite featuring the John Lennon tribute hit, "All Those Years Ago"). With one album left on his current recording contract, Harrison decided to get it over with and recorded Gone Troppo (an Australian slang expression meaning "gone mad/crazy" and also a reference to the Italian term 'non troppo', used in tempo markings and meaning 'not too much'), and released it without participating in any promotion.

Release

Gone Troppo was issued on Dark Horse Records in November 1982. The album's artwork was credited to "Legs" Larry Smith, formerly of Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. The album peaked at number 108 in the United States and failed to chart at all in the United Kingdom.

"Wake Up My Love" and "That's the Way It Goes" were included on Harrison's Best of Dark Horse 1976–1989 album, and the title track also appeared on the compact disc version of that 1989 compilation. No tracks from Gone Troppo were included on the 2009 career-spanning collection Let It Roll. "That's the Way It Goes" was covered by Joe Brown and other musicians at the Concert for George in November 2002.

In 2004, Gone Troppo was remastered and reissued, both separately from and as part of the deluxe box set The Dark Horse Years 1976–1992. The reissue added a demo version of "Mystical One" as its sole bonus track.

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
Billboard(favourable)[2]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music[3]
Goldmine(favourable)[4]
Mojo[5]
The Music Box[6]
People(favourable)[7]
Rolling Stone (1983)[8]
Rolling Stone (2004)[9]
Uncut[10]

Among contemporary reviews, Billboard said of Gone Troppo: "Harrison's sunny lyricism shines brightest when least encumbered by self-consciousness, and here that equation yields a breezy, deceptively eclectic charmer."[2] People magazine's reviewer wrote: "Because of his forays into the mystical, Harrison's penchant for whimsy often gets overlooked. But here the zany side gets no short shrift." The reviewer admired "lovelies" such as "Wake Up My Love" and "Dream Away", and described Gone Troppo as a "vinyl postcard" offering "flashes of brilliance".[7]

Less impressed, Steve Pond of Rolling Stone said that, of late, Harrison had "made a much better movie financier than musician", and he found the album "So offhand and breezy as to be utterly insubstantial", with "Wake Up My Love" the only song of note.[8] Writing for Musician, Roy Trakin considered that, in the wake of John Lennon's assassination two years before, Harrison's "tortured honesty … dooms this record's attempt to heal those psychic wounds with calm, offhanded music". Trakin admired some of the guitar playing on the album but concluded: "It's too bad the public won't forget George Harrison was a Beatle. His musical output will undoubtedly suffer by comparison until we do."[11]

Reviewing more recently for AllMusic, critic William Ruhlmann writes of Gone Troppo: "Clearly, Harrison could no longer treat his musical career as a part-time stepchild to his interests in car racing and movie producing if he wanted to maintain it. As it turned out, he didn't; this was his last album for five years."[12] Writing in the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Mac Randall opined: "The dynamic, synth-driven 'Wake Up My Love' opens Gone Troppo and the spooky 'Circles' (yet another lost Beatles song) closes it, but there ain't much in between."[13]

John Harris of Mojo likens Gone Troppo to Harrison's final album for EMI/Capitol, Extra Texture (1975), and dismisses it as "Another contract-finisher, this time with Warner Brothers, recorded super-quick, and issued with barely any promotion."[5] Music Box editor John Metzger also holds it in low regard, writing: "Gone Troppo was undoubtedly the worst of George Harrison's solo albums … A few tunes, such as That's the Way It Goes and Unknown Delight, might have worked better if given different arrangements, but as a whole, Gone Troppo was a largely forgettable and sometimes embarrassing affair that appealed only to complete-ists and fanatics."[6]

More impressed, Dave Thompson wrote in Goldmine magazine of its standing as the release that preceded Harrison's temporary retirement from music: "to accuse the album itself of hastening that demise is grossly unfair." While conceding that it was "not a vital Harrison album by any means", Thompson considered it to be "no worse than much of [Paul] McCartney's period output" and opined that "Dream Away" and "Circles" "stand alongside any number of Harrison's minor classics".[4]

Kit Aiken of Uncut describes Gone Troppo as "a return to form of sorts" for Harrison after Somewhere in England, and a collection of "amiable, light-hearted music made by a bunch of mates with nothing to prove".[10] In another favourable 2004 assessment, Rolling Stone's reviewer wrote: "Gone Troppo might just be Harrison's most underrated album … [It] captures Harrison at his most relaxed and playful …"[9]

Track listing

All songs written and composed by George Harrison, except where noted.

Side one
  1. "Wake Up My Love" – 3:34
  2. "That's the Way It Goes" – 3:34
  3. "I Really Love You" (Leroy Swearingen) – 2:54
  4. "Greece" – 3:58
  5. "Gone Troppo" – 4:25
Side two
  1. "Mystical One" – 3:42
  2. "Unknown Delight" – 4:16
  3. "Baby Don't Run Away" – 4:01
  4. "Dream Away" – 4:29
  5. "Circles" – 3:46
Bonus track

Gone Troppo was remastered and reissued in 2004 with the bonus track:

  1. "Mystical One" [demo version] – 6:02

Personnel

Chart positions

Chart Position
Canadian RPM Albums Chart[14] 98
Norwegian VG-lista Albums Chart[15] 31
US Billboard 200[16] 108

References

  1. ↑ Ruhlmann, William. "Gone Troppo – George Harrison: Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 10 March 2013.
  2. 1 2 "Top Album Picks", Billboard, 20 November 1982, p. 64 (retrieved 15 July 2015).
  3. ↑ Colin Larkin, The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4th edn), Volume 4, Oxford University Press (New York, NY, 2006; ISBN 0-19-531373-9), p. 158.
  4. 1 2 Dave Thompson, "The Music of George Harrison: An album-by-album guide", Goldmine, 25 January 2002, p. 53.
  5. 1 2 John Harris, "Beware of Darkness", Mojo, November 2011, p. 83.
  6. 1 2 John Metzger, "George Harrison The Dark Horse Years (Part Four: Gone Troppo)", The Music Box, vol. 11 (5), May 2004 (retrieved 14 August 2014).
  7. 1 2 "Picks and Pans Review: Gone Troppo". People. 24 January 1983. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
  8. 1 2 Pond, Steve (17 February 1983). "Gone Troppo | Album Reviews". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 10 March 2013.
  9. 1 2 "George Harrison – Gone Troppo CD Album" > "Product Description", CD Universe/Muze (retrieved 21 December 2014).
  10. 1 2 Kit Aiken, "All Those Years Ago: George Harrison The Dark Horse Years 1976–1992", Uncut, April 2004, p. 118.
  11. ↑ Roy Trakin, "George Harrison: Gone Troppo", Musician, January 1983; available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).
  12. ↑ Ruhlmann, William. "Gone Troppo – George Harrison: Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 10 March 2013.
  13. ↑ Nathan Brackett & Christian Hoard (eds), The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th edn), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY, 2004; ISBN 0-7432-0169-8), p. 368.
  14. ↑ "Top Albums/CDs - Volume 37, No. 17" (PHP). RPM. 11 December 1982. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
  15. ↑ "norwegiancharts.com George Harrison - Gone Troppo" (ASP). Retrieved 18 December 2013.
  16. ↑ "allmusic ((( Gone Troppo > Charts & Awards > Billboard Albums )))". allmusic.com. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
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