Search - Splinter :: Harder To Live

CD reissue. It has been said that legendary Beatles guitarist George Harrsion, despite not being into the idea when Apple Records was first mooted, became so enamoured of being a record company executive that he and Ringo actually wanted to buy Apple Records rather than have it stagger off into insolvency. As history shows, this didn't happen but, in 1974, he launched his own label Dark Horse Records. The most commercially successful act on the label was a duo called Splinter, whose debut album and single were both international hits. This, the second album, provides an interesting footnote to Beatles history. In preparing for Harder to Live, Harrison arranged for them to record at A&M Studios in Los Angeles during the late spring and early summer of 1975. The band were unable to use the studio time, however, due to Purvis suffering from hay fever, apparently brought on by the LA smog. Since Harrison was in town working with fellow Dark Horse acts such as Keltner's band Attitudes, he instead used the pre-booked studio time to record his own album, Extra Texture. This would be Harrisons last Apple album. Sending the two-piece out to Los Angeles to record was a particularly peculiar move, because, to my ears the music that these two very special musicians produced is imbued with the DNA of their hometown of South Shields in the north-east of England. One can smell the fog and taste the salty sea air of this strange old sea port, and the idea of trying to spray paint a Los Angeles gloss onto them is like trying to add sunglasses to the Mona Lisa. Again, this is an extraordinary record, and one which I seriously hope is going to make more friends now than it did when it first came out in 1975!