“Wah-Wah” by George Harrison

George Harrison quit the Beatles for a spell in January 1969, amid the sour Get Back sessions, and "Wah-Wah" is the steam coming off him. It takes aim at everything wrong in that room: Paul McCartney bossing the show and knocking his guitar playing, John Lennon checked out and brushing off his songs, Yoko Ono a constant presence. Cut after the split in 1970 as the very first track for his triple album All Things Must Pass, it plays like a declaration of independence.

Phil Spector, co-producing with Harrison, stacks it sky-high with Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Klaus Voormann, Billy Preston, Bobby Keys and Badfinger all in the mix, until Rolling Stone heard horns and guitars swapping places. Harrison himself thought it overproduced and cluttered, but he still picked it to open the Western-music part of the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971, his first song on stage as a solo act.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.