{"id":563296,"date":"2025-11-11T09:38:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T09:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/563296\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T09:38:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T09:38:15","slug":"true-story-of-george-harrison-hit-got-my-mind-set-on-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/563296\/","title":{"rendered":"True story of George Harrison hit ‘Got My Mind Set On You’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"George<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover)<\/p>\n

Tue 11 November 2025 7:55, UK <\/p>\n

After The Beatles broke up in 1970, the four quarters set off on solo careers of varying levels of success. John Lennon continued to make music with his wife in the Plastic Ono Band, Paul McCartney continued with Wings, and Ringo Starr embarked on a solo career oft-adorned with all-star collaboration. Meanwhile, George Harrison<\/a> set about bringing his prolific creativity to the world for the first time, unshackled from the dominion of Lennon and McCartney. <\/p>\n

Throughout the 1970s, Harrison remained culturally relevant with a series of highly acclaimed releases highlighted by 1970\u2019s triple album All Things Must Pass and 1973\u2019s follow-up, Living in the Material World. <\/p>\n

By the late-1980s, Harrison had hit a notable creative drought. He hadn\u2019t had a high-charting hit since 1981\u2019s \u2018All Those Years Ago\u2019, and his previous US number one was 1973\u2019s \u2018Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an effort to change the tide, Harrison began working on a new album, to be titled Cloud 9. Working with ELO\u2019s Jeff Lynne as producer, the former Beatle started a new chapter in his career, which yielded a number one single with \u2018Got My Mind Set On You\u2019 and ignited a new friendship precursory to the formation of Traveling Wilburys. <\/a><\/p>\n

The US and UK number one to end Harrison\u2019s drought was an upbeat cover of James Ray\u2019s 1962 original. The late Beatle first discovered Ray\u2019s \u2018I\u2019ve Got My Mind Set On You\u2019 in 1963 when visiting his sister Louise at her home in Benton, Illinois. With the insistence of his ever-encouraging sister<\/a>, Harrison sat in with a popular local group, The Four Vests, for an hour or so at a local club.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"George<\/a>George Harrison in the 1980s. (Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to New York and St Louis in 1963, to look around, and to the countryside in Illinois, where my sister was living at the time,\u201d Harrison recalled in The Beatles Anthology. \u201cI went to record stores. I bought Booker T and the MGs\u2019 first album, Green Onions, and I bought some Bobby Bland, all kinds of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

While digging crates, Harrison also found Ray\u2019s eponymous debut album, which included \u2018I\u2019ve Got My Mind Set on You\u2019. At the time, Harrison was already aware of Ray\u2019s work; his debut hit single, \u2018If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody\u2019, was a common feature of early Beatles sets.<\/p>\n

Ray, just five feet tall, was commonly known as Little Jimmy Ray during his early musical exploits of the late \u201950s. In 1959, he recorded \u2018Make Her Mine\u2019 under this moniker, which peaked at number 41 on the Billboard chart. With little further success, Ray disappeared from the music scene, and by 1961, he was homeless, living on a Washington DC rooftop. <\/p>\n

While busking on the pavements, Ray was re-discovered by Rudy Clark, a mailman with dreams of becoming a songwriter. Clark would later write or co-write classics like \u2018Everybody Plays the Fool\u2019, \u2018Good Lovin\u201d, and \u2018It\u2019s In His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song)\u2019. After getting signed by Caprice Records, Ray recorded Clark\u2019s \u2018If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody\u2019, a huge hit on Billboard\u2019s R&B chart that reached number 22 on the Hot 100 in 1962.<\/p>\n

Spurred by this success, Ray set about recording Clark\u2019s \u2018I\u2019ve Got My Mind Set on You\u2019 and a scattering of other hopeful tracks for his debut album. Sadly, these subsequent efforts slipped under the radar of the charts, and in 1963 (the exact date is unknown), Ray was found dead after a drug overdose. <\/p>\n

Ray\u2019s original recording of \u2018I\u2019ve Got My Mind Set on You\u2019 is notably mournful in tone, reflective of his desperate condition in the early \u201960s. Remembering the single, Harrison decided to honour Ray\u2019s memory some 25 years later with a ramped-up pace and the omission of some of the song\u2019s more negative lyrics:\u00a0\u201cEverywhere I go, you know \/ Bad luck follows me \/ Every time I\u2019ve fallen in love \/ You know I\u2019m left in misery\u201d.<\/p>\n

The track became a hit for Harrison with the help of expert musicians like ji Keltner and Jeff Lynne, who sat behind the mixing desk at Harrison\u2019s home studio of Friar Park. \u201cWe were all sitting in a room together up in Friar Park,\u201d Keltner told\u00a0Uncut\u00a0magazine. \u201cIt was a really nice day; I was out on the patio a lot. I had brought from home my E-mu SP-1200, a drum sampling machine. You could sample any sound and then make up a little groove with it. I was having fun with it. George loved the idea of it too \u2013 but you know, we\u2019re making a serious record. So, I hadn\u2019t done anything with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, the beat became a programme which the session musicians would riff over, \u201cGary Wright, who\u2019s in the back of the room, starts to play these chord patterns on the keys and singing \u2018I\u2019ve got my mind set on you,’\u201d he added. \u201cEverybody kind of perked up and George started singing the song, because George was big on knowing the lyrics to all kinds of songs. They all started joining in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJeff said, \u2018OK, Jim, put that down,\u2019 so I made a program of it, they put it on tape, then they all went to town,\u201d Keltner concluded. \u201cIt was just a little ditty, but that\u2019s how that song got started.\u201d The track would become a mammoth pop hit, and few know of its sad circumstances. <\/p>\n

Today, Ray is remembered mostly for his hand in Harrison\u2019s 1988 comeback classic. Listen to both Ray\u2019s hauntingly foreshadowing original and Harrison\u2019s number one reimagination below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover) Tue 11 November 2025 7:55, UK After The Beatles broke up in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,26608,179389,8345,269,11693,4162,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-563296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-george-harrison","10":"tag-james-ray","11":"tag-john-lennon","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-paul-mccartney","14":"tag-the-beatles","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115530400117937372","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}