The Answer's at the End
| "The Answer's at the End" | |
|---|---|
| Song by George Harrison | |
| from the album Extra Texture (Read All About It) | |
| Published | Oops/Ganga |
| Released | 22 September 1975 |
| Genre | Rock, soul |
| Length | 5:32 |
| Label | Apple |
| Songwriter(s) | George Harrison |
| Producer(s) | George Harrison |
| Extra Texture (Read All About It) track listing | |
"The Answer's at the End" is a song by English 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 the property in 1970, and it was a quote he often used when discussing his difficult relationship with fellow ex-Beatle Paul McCartney.
Harrison's adaptation of the verse for "The Answer's at the End" coincided with a period of personal upheaval, following the harsh criticism that his 1974 North American tour had received from a number of influential concert reviewers. The song's plea for tolerance recalls Harrison's 1970 hit song "Isn't It a Pity", and in part of its musical arrangement, "The Answer's at the End" bears the influence of Nina Simone's 1972 cover version of that earlier composition.
Like much of the Extra Texture album, the song has traditionally enjoyed a mixed reception from music critics and biographers – being labelled "archaic parlour poetry" and a "bleak assessment of the human condition" on one hand, and a "gorgeously melodic song of forgiveness" on the other. The backing musicians on the recording include members of the band Attitudes, among them David Foster and Jim Keltner, who were signed to Harrison's Dark Horse record label at the time.
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. Harrison was immediately taken with Crisp's penchant for whimsy, 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.
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