Dark Horse Records: The Story Of George Harrison’s Postbeatles Record Label

Aaron Badgley

★★★

Sonic Bond, £17.99

ISBN 9781789522877, 210 pages The quiet one’s quietly run label explored

It is interesting that George Harrison, straight after all the financial hardship of Apple, would be the Beatle who created the most ambitious of the post-fab imprints; after all, he’d taken the A&R side of Apple the most seriously, working studiously away from the limelight with acts such as Doris Troy, Jackie Lomax, Billy Preston, and Ronnie Spector. When Apple finally hit the buffers in 1974, Harrison launched Dark

Horse – named after Uchchaihshravas, the Hindu seven-headed flying steed. Initially distributed by A&M, Dark Horse had a bespoke stable of acts, all personally selected by Harrison: Ravi Shankar first and foremost, Splinter, Jiva, ex-wings man Henry Mccullough, Attitudes (featuring David Foster), Stairsteps and their lead singer, Keni Burke, solo. Harrison was still signed to Apple, so neither his album of the same name to lead the fanfare, nor its follow-up, Extra Texture, appeared on his own imprint. By the time Harrison did join the label in late 1976, the roster was petering out. Had any of its releases become major successes, the label would have got greater love (and revenue). Son Dhani revived the label in 2004, and its eclectic approach to A&R continues to this day. Aaron Badgley pieces the history together with great detail, proving that Dark Horse was much more than the few paragraphs it is usually allowed in a Harrison biography, and as such, Dark Horse Records… is a fascinating addition to the Beatles bookshelf.

Daryl Easlea