1987 · Behind the Songs
Twenty years after Beatlemania, George Harrison looked back at the madness — with Ringo on drums, Jeff Lynne producing, and a video full of in-jokes.
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By 1987, the Beatles had been over for seventeen years, and George Harrison had spent most of that time trying not to be defined by them. He’d had hits and misses, a bruising plagiarism lawsuit, a record label, a long hiatus, and a slow drift toward gardening and Formula 1. Then Jeff Lynne — the Electric Light Orchestra mastermind, a fellow Brummie with a fan’s love of the Beatles — coaxed him back into the studio for “Cloud Nine.” The result was a full-scale comeback, and its most delightful track was “When We Was Fab”: Harrison, finally and unapologetically, singing about being a Beatle. And clearly loving every minute of it.
The song is a marvel of tone. “When We Was Fab” is nostalgic without being maudlin, affectionate without being sappy, and funny in the way only Harrison could be funny — dry, self-aware, and just a little bit mischievous. The lyric looks back at Beatlemania, the screaming crowds, the absurdity, the sheer fabness of it all, with the wisdom of distance. It’s not a lament for lost youth; it’s a grin at the memory of it. Harrison, who had often seemed ambivalent about his Beatles past, sounds here like a man who’s made peace with it and decided to enjoy the highlight reel.
The recording is a masterclass in Beatles pastiche that never feels like parody. Lynne, producing, layers the track with period-perfect touches: backward guitars, a Ringo Starr drum part — yes, that Ringo, on drums — strings that nod to the psychedelic era, and a general air of studio mischief. Harrison’s vocal is warm and amused. The whole thing swings with the confidence of musicians who know exactly what they’re evoking and love it too much to be cynical about it. It’s the rare nostalgia song that doesn’t make you sad; it makes you want to join in, which is a much harder trick.
The single was a hit, reaching number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1988, and it charted well in Britain too. But its real triumph was the video, directed by Godley & Creme, which is a treasure trove of Beatles in-jokes: Harrison in a walrus suit, a sitar, a green apple, and cameo appearances by Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, and others. It’s a five-minute party for Beatles fans, and Harrison — famously private, famously dry — is clearly having the time of his life. For a man who’d spent years dodging the Beatles’ shadow, it played like a joyful surrender, and fans loved him for it.
“Cloud Nine” as an album was Harrison’s commercial rebirth. It went platinum, spun off the chart-topping “Got My Mind Set on You,” and set the stage for the Traveling Wilburys. But “When We Was Fab” is its emotional center. It’s the moment Harrison stops running from his past and turns to face it, smiling. The song acknowledges what every Beatles fan knows: that those years were extraordinary, unrepeatable, and — for the people who lived them — complicated. Harrison doesn’t simplify it. He just says: we was fab. And he’s right.
The fab and the complicated
What’s remarkable about “When We Was Fab” is what it refuses to do. It doesn’t mythologize. It doesn’t pretend Beatlemania was all fun — the lyric hints at the madness, the fishbowl, the sheer weirdness of being screamed at by thousands of strangers. But it also doesn’t wallow or complain. Harrison had earned the right to be ambivalent; instead, he chose to be grateful. That’s a very grown-up kind of nostalgia — not “take me back,” but “wasn’t that something?” It’s the difference between a man trapped in his past and a man who’s made friends with it, and you can hear which one Harrison had become.
The song also works as a quiet rebuttal to the old story that Harrison resented the Beatles. He didn’t, not really — he resented being limited by them, being seen only as the quiet one, the third songwriter. “When We Was Fab” reclaims the story on his own terms. He’s not the sideman here; he’s the narrator, the survivor, the one telling the tale. And the tale he tells is fond. For fans who’d watched him wrestle with his legacy for nearly two decades, hearing him laugh about it — with Ringo keeping the beat — was a relief and a genuine joy.
Still fab
Today “When We Was Fab” plays like a time capsule that knows it’s a time capsule — a song about the sixties, made in the eighties, that still sounds like fun decades later. It’s Harrison’s most generous song: generous to his bandmates, to his fans, to his younger self. He could have written a bitter song about Beatlemania, and no one would have blamed him. He wrote a loving one instead. And in doing so, he reminded everyone — including, perhaps, himself — just how fab it really was, and how lucky they all were to have lived it.
We was fab. We still are, every time the song plays. Harrison knew that the past isn’t a place you go back to; it’s a song you sing when you’re ready, with a smile. He was ready. And we were lucky to hear it.
The song was written by Harrison with Lynne, and the partnership suited them both: Lynne’s studio craft gave Harrison’s nostalgia its period-perfect frame, while Harrison’s wit kept the homage from turning into imitation. Recording took place at FPSHOT, Harrison’s home studio at Friar Park, during the Cloud Nine sessions, his first album in five years, following 1982’s Gone Troppo.
The song has kept its place in Harrison’s story ever since, appearing on later retrospectives including 2009’s Let It Roll: Songs by George Harrison. Decades on, it remains the definitive musical statement of a man who finally stopped running from his past, and discovered, to his own evident delight, that the past was worth celebrating.