The Dark Horse Years – A Biography
17 February 2004
The Dark Horse label was founded by George Harrison in 1974. Between 1976-1992, George recorded six albums for the label, ‘Thirty Three and 1/3’, ‘George Harrison’, Somewhere in England’, ‘Gone Troppo’, ‘Cloud Nine’ plus his live concert recording of Live in Japan’.
In its first two years, Dark Horse Records released eight albums, including new material by artists as diverse as Ravi Shankar and Jim Keltner and David Foster’s band, Attitudes. 1976 saw Dark Horse move to Warner Brothers in Burbank when Mo Ostin signed George for the remainder of his solo career as well as two albums with the band The Traveling Wilburys.
The Dark Horse Years were a musically prolific period for George that allowed him time and space to fully express himself as a songwriter and musician. During that time George revisited songs written while he was still in The Beatles, he wrote music for HandMade Films, his own film company, collaborated with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne, Eric Clapton, and Ringo Starr. Although many of the albums were critically acclaimed and commercially successful, the reward for George was always the music itself.
