# Wonderwall Music
**Wonderwall Music** is the debut solo album by [George Harrison](https://www.edgepedia.org/george-harrison), released on 1 November 1968 as the soundtrack to the film *Wonderwall*, directed by Joe Massot. It was the first solo record by a member of the Beatles and the first album released on the Beatles' Apple label, and it mixes Western rock instrumentals with compositions in an Indian classical style.[1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music) • [2](https://www.georgeharrison.com/releases/wonderwall-music/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 1 November 1968 (UK), three weeks before the Beatles' White Album; 2 December 1968 in the US[1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music) • [3](https://www.allmusic.com/album/wonderwall-music-mw0000676515) |
| Firsts | First solo album by a Beatle and first LP on Apple Records[2](https://www.georgeharrison.com/releases/wonderwall-music/) |
| Purpose | Soundtrack to Joe Massot's debut feature film *Wonderwall*, starring Jack MacGowran and Jane Birkin[2](https://www.georgeharrison.com/releases/wonderwall-music/) • [4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) |
| Recording | England and India, November 1967 to February 1968; Indian sessions 9–14 January 1968 at EMI Bombay[5](https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-harrison/albums/wonderwall-music/) |
| Style | Predominantly instrumental; Indian classical pieces alongside Western rock, honky-tonk piano, and Mellotron textures[2](https://www.georgeharrison.com/releases/wonderwall-music/) • [1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music) |
| Guest players | Eric Clapton (as "Eddie Clayton") on "Ski-ing", Ringo Starr (as "Richie Snares"), and Peter Tork of the Monkees on banjo[5](https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-harrison/albums/wonderwall-music/) • [4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) |
| Legacy | Its title supplied the name of Oasis's 1995 hit "Wonderwall"[6](https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-oasis-wonderwall) |
## Origins
After the Beatles stopped touring in August 1966, Harrison spent six weeks in India studying with the sitarist [Ravi Shankar](https://www.edgepedia.org/ravi-shankar), an immersion that deepened his commitment to Indian music.[1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music) In late 1967, while the Beatles were finishing their television film *Magical Mystery Tour*, the independent director Joe Massot asked Harrison to score his film *Wonderwall*, about a lonely professor who spies on his neighbors through a hole in the wall. Harrison initially said he did not write music for films; Massot promised him a completely free hand, and Harrison accepted.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/)
Harrison later described his intent plainly: "I decided to do it as a mini-anthology of Indian music, because I wanted to help turn the public on to Indian music."[2](https://www.georgeharrison.com/releases/wonderwall-music/) He used instruments then unfamiliar to Western listeners, including shehnai, santoor, sarod, surbahar, and tabla tarang.[1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music)
## Recording
**London sessions.** Harrison began by watching a rough cut at Twickenham Studios and compiling about an hour of timed music cues. The first recordings were made at [Abbey Road](https://www.edgepedia.org/abbey-road) on 22 and 23 November 1967, with the Remo Four, a Liverpool quartet from [Brian Epstein](https://www.edgepedia.org/brian-epstein)'s NEMS stable, providing the backing for the Western-style pieces.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) • [1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music) Tony Ashton of the Remo Four handled most of the keyboards, including a [Mellotron](https://www.edgepedia.org/mellotron), then a fairly new instrument, heard throughout the album.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) On 21 December, Harrison recorded the sarod master Aashish Khan and tabla player Mahapurush Misra at De Lane Lea Studios in London.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/)
**Bombay sessions.** Harrison flew to India on 7 January 1968 and recorded at the EMI/HMV studio in Bombay from 9 to 14 January, working each day from 11 am to 8 or 10 pm with local musicians assembled by the label's A&R head.[5](https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-harrison/albums/wonderwall-music/) • [4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) The studio had only a mono tape machine, so Bhaskar Menon, then chairman of EMI India and later head of Capitol in the US, had a two-track machine brought by train from Calcutta.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) Harrison communicated with musicians who mostly spoke no English by humming tunes and demonstrating on guitar, and he took nightly notes on the instruments he had heard that day.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) The original $600 budget for the project had risen to $15,000 by this point, the cost covered by Harrison himself.[1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music)
During the Bombay sessions Harrison also recorded several ragas for possible Beatles use; one became "The Inner Light", which, after a vocal overdub at Abbey Road, was issued in March 1968 as the B-side to "Lady Madonna".[1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music) Final overdubbing in England was completed by 15 February 1968.[7](https://www.udiscovermusic.com/behind-the-albums/george-harrison-wonderwall-music/)
## Music and musicians
The album contrasts two bodies of material. The Indian selections feature drone-like backing from instruments such as sitar, surbahar, and harmonium, over which a lead instrument carries the theme; the opening track "Microbes" is built on the shehnai playing of Sharad Kumar and Hanuman Jadev.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) The Western pieces range widely: the honky-tonk "Drilling A Home", a Western-style "Cowboy Music", the Mellotron-led "Greasy Legs", and the acid rock "Ski-ing", on which [Eric Clapton](https://www.edgepedia.org/eric-clapton) plays guitar under the alias Eddie Clayton and [Ringo Starr](https://www.edgepedia.org/ringo-starr) drums as "Richie Snares".[5](https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-harrison/albums/wonderwall-music/) • [4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) [Peter Tork](https://www.edgepedia.org/peter-tork) of the Monkees played banjo on one cue, using Paul McCartney's five-string banjo, which McCartney could not play conventionally because a folk five-string cannot be restrung in reverse for a left-hander.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/) • [1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music)
The Guardian's retrospective described the record as encompassing "tambura drones, Vedic chants, skiffle, ragtime, clip-clopping country, wah-wah squalls, woozy Mellotron, experimental sonic collage" and, on "Ski-ing", about 100 seconds of Eric Clapton at his most explosive.[1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music)
## Release and reception
Wonderwall Music was released on 1 November 1968 in the UK and 2 December in the US, before the film itself, which premiered at Cannes and then quickly faded into near obscurity.[1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music) • [3](https://www.allmusic.com/album/wonderwall-music-mw0000676515) The cover, designed by Bob Gill, shows a brick wall dividing the sleeve, with a man in a bowler hat on one side and an Indian miniature scene on the other; Harrison asked that a single brick be removed, reflecting the professor's peek through the wall.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/)
Contemporary response was modest but positive where it appeared. *Record World* called the mix of Indian and Western music "moody and pretty", and *Films and Filming* gave a glowing review in which Gordon Gow wrote that "the Harrison music replaces dialogue, waxing almost vocal like a cinema organist from the silent days."[8](https://rockalia.com/en/component/muscol/G/148-george-harrison/3493-wonderwall-music?Itemid=151) Reviewing Harrison's 1969 album *Electronic Sound*, Ed Ward of *Rolling Stone* wrote that Wonderwall Music "clearly shows" Harrison to be a "consummate musician".[8](https://rockalia.com/en/component/muscol/G/148-george-harrison/3493-wonderwall-music?Itemid=151) Harrison's participation was not widely celebrated at the time, and his 1970 triple album *All Things Must Pass* is widely regarded as his first "proper" solo record.[1](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music)
## Later history
The album was reissued in 2014 within *The Apple Years 1968–75* box set, which gathered Harrison's first six solo Apple albums remastered from the original analog masters.[9](https://www.georgeharrison.com/releases/the-apple-years-1968-75-boxset/) The remaster added three bonus tracks: "In The First Place" by the Remo Four, an alternate take of "The Inner Light", and the previously unreleased raga "Almost Shankara".[2](https://www.georgeharrison.com/releases/wonderwall-music/) "In The First Place" had surfaced in 1998, when Massot prepared a new director's cut of the film and asked Harrison for additional session material.[4](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/)
The album's cultural afterlife exceeds its commercial footprint. [Noel Gallagher](https://www.edgepedia.org/noel-gallagher) took the title of Oasis's 1995 single "Wonderwall" from the film and this soundtrack, and the song reached number two in the UK and number eight in the US.[6](https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-oasis-wonderwall) Writers have also read the album as an early world music crossover, decades before the world music scene of the 1980s.[10](https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/george-harrison-album-guide)
## References
1. [Graeme Thomson, "Macca's banjo, Mellotron and a Monkee: the story of George Harrison's Wonderwall Music", The Guardian, 23 March 2017](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/23/maccas-banjo-mellotron-and-a-monkee-the-story-of-george-harrisons-wonderwall-music)
2. [Wonderwall Music, George Harrison official site](https://www.georgeharrison.com/releases/wonderwall-music/)
3. [Wonderwall Music review by Richard S. Ginell, AllMusic](https://www.allmusic.com/album/wonderwall-music-mw0000676515)
4. [Matt Hurwitz, "Wonderwall Music", George Harrison official site, 18 February 2020](https://www.georgeharrison.com/features/wonderwall-music/)
5. [Wonderwall Music, The Beatles Bible](https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-harrison/albums/wonderwall-music/)
6. ["Classic Tracks: Oasis 'Wonderwall'", Sound On Sound](https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-oasis-wonderwall)
7. ["George Harrison: 'Wonderwall Music' – Behind The Albums", uDiscover Music](https://www.udiscovermusic.com/behind-the-albums/george-harrison-wonderwall-music/)
8. [Wonderwall Music (1968), critical reception, Rockalia](https://rockalia.com/en/component/muscol/G/148-george-harrison/3493-wonderwall-music?Itemid=151)
9. [The Apple Years 1968–75 Box Set, George Harrison official site](https://www.georgeharrison.com/releases/the-apple-years-1968-75-boxset/)
10. ["A really useful guide to the music of George Harrison in 24 albums", Louder](https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/george-harrison-album-guide)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Music › Musical works and recordings › Albums and recorded releases › Soundtrack albums (film, TV, games, and screen media) › Live-action film soundtracks › Film score albums*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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