Producer apoligises for Harrison album

The producer of George Harrison’s posthumous album has apologised for going against the late Beatle’s wishes and making it “posher” than he wanted.

Jeff Lynne admitted he had made the album Brainwashed far more glossy than the raw sound Harrison actually asked for.

He said he put the extra polish on the songs – to be released later this month - to “do them justice”.

Lynne, a close friend and musical collaborator of the late guitarist, worked with Harrison’s son Dhani for six months to shape the album from “rough” tapes.

Harrison laid down the tracks in the two years leading up to his death, nearly 12 months ago. The posthumous release is his first album of new material for a decade and a half, the last being Cloud Nine in 1987.

Daily Telegraph critic Neil McCormick was critical today of Lynne’s influence, saying Harrison would have benefited from ”something edgier” than the ex-ELO man’s “professionally lush but overly soft musical bedrock”.

Lynne himself said: “I’d been talking to George for the past couple or three years about finishing these songs.

“He said ‘I’d like you to finish them for me’. We talked about it, and he said that he didn’t want the album to be posh. What he wanted, really, was kind of like demos.

“But these songs deserved more than that, because they were great, as far as I was concerned.

“I thought if I left them as rough as he would have liked they wouldn’t come over as well. I wanted to make them as good as they could be, and I think we struck a balance.

“So, sorry George, I made them a bit posher than you might have wanted. But I felt I was only doing them justice.”

Dhani said his father had laid out his vision for the album and they had tried to avoid interfering with the sound, “trying not to leave any fingerprints of us or any trace of Jeff or me”.

“It was almost as if my dad had the whole thing mapped out and we were like lab rats trying to find the way through the maze that hadn’t quite been finished yet,” Dhani said.

Dhani played guitar on the album and harmonised with his father, adding many of his parts after his father’s death from cancer. He said it was a “surreal” experience.

“I kept turning around, looking for my dad, ‘er, is that all right?’- and there’s no-one there to tell you.”

He said the album embodies his father’s spirit: “You couldn’t cram more of my dad’s real, true self into one album.”

The album, unveiled to critics in the UK last night, features Harrison playing his beloved ukulele on the old standard The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea. Jools Holland, Joe Brown and session man Herbie Flowers – who famously added the legendary bass-line to Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side – also feature.

“That was was the one that reeked of my dad,” said Dhani.

“That was what he was like all the time around the house, just playing the ukulele and singing. He’d play everything on the uke, anything and everything.

Lynne, who was in the Traveling Wilburys with Harrison and did production work on the Beatles Anthology, said the album was “a celebration of George’s life”.

Brainwashed is released on November 18, the same day as Robbie Williams’s new album Escapology.