As a songwriter myself, countless times you have a melody in your head, and subconsciously you don’t realize it’s a song from the past.

My Sweet Lord will go down in history as a song that brought peace and comfort to many people.

My sweet lord, doolang doolang doolang!

Every song inspires another song. That's how music is made.

I can't imagine him consciously ripping off a song.

“It’s something I had to treat positively or negatively so I had to treat it this way.” Positively that says a lot about George. Always philosophical with the goal of trying to make the world more enlightened

I still have a crush on him.

Throughout their time together Lennon and McCartny and George wrote thousands of songs. In the early years they had no way of recording their efforts and relied on their memories next morning. When Paul wrote Yesterday he was convinced that it was something he had heard before. It's quite conceivable that George felt something similar when he wrote My Sweet Lord only in this case it was something he had probably heard before. Still one of my favourites though.

George was an honest man. He would have credited this song to the original composers with new words by him, if this would have been the case.

I don't think George intentionally plagarised 'He's so Fine' but the song melody, chords, structure are really too close.

"This Song" on his 33 1/3 album fantastically covers the trial.

You can use KZfaq to listen to "My Sweet Lord" and "He's So Fine" side-by side. Do it.

I like both songs, George's better, as I've been listening to that one all my life and it's always resonated. The more I listened the more similar they sounded. They are VERY similar, but hey! Classical musicians would compose variations on bits and pieces of other composer's work all the time. It's nothing new. It's all creative.

I've always thought that a lawsuit based on 3 similar notes is absurd. There's a 3minor, a 6#minor, a 4#minor, 3-7th; very different from the Chiffon's. In bluegrass, if you took everybody to court who used the same 3 chords, we'd all be in jail.

My Sweet Lord is a soaring, ethereal, comforting work of majesty. 'He's So Fine' is an OK, run of the mill pop song.

George is such a great talker. If that makes sense, I Just really enjoy him in conversation.

Honestly I find it an easy song to write. In the sense that it's so instinctive, that the chords ask for the progression and the melody. Anyone could have written something very similar. But knowing as much about the Beatles as we do, we should also know that George is a true songwriter and would never aim for plagiarism. He wouldn't need to either. I find it terrible that this happened.

Quotable quote: "When My Sweet Lord was released, Lennon wondered why his former Beatle bandmate had “copied” He’s So Fine. “He’s smarter than that. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off,” he said later." Well John - i seem to recall Mr McCartney warning you about Come Together (Chuck Berry's Can't Catch Me???). Also - the Beatles toured with the Chiffons - they opened for the Beatles at the Washington Coliseum. Since it was one of their biggest hits, it is entirely likely that the Chiffons performed He's So Fine on that tour. I honestly don't believe George consciously plagarised - but He's So Fine would have definitely been in his lexicon of modern music. The giveaway is the Doo-Lang-doo-lang-doo-lang bit being so close the Hare Krisna, krisna krisna, hallelujah, rama rama bit. Through it all, when i think of the Beatles sound I always think of "If I Needed Someone" - a George song. The Beatles would not have been the Beatles without George and his attention to the latest gear, particularly that Rickenbacker 12 string. So whatever bright Music might make of it - he's still one of the great rock era composers and always one of my music heroes. :-)

BUT HIS HAIR THOUGH 😍😍😍❤❤❤

He was my favorite Beatle.

My sweet George, mi Beatle favorito por siempre

I thank God this song happened, thank you George.

To me, it's actually the differences, not the similarities, that make "My Sweet Lord" the better song: the guitar solo intro, the better swing to the rhythm, the better melody over the second half of the chord sequence (after the "three notes" were done), and the use of the diminished chord toward the end of the sequence.

If anyone has ever spent 5 minutes writing a song, you know how easy it is to unconsciously plagiarize another song. There's KZfaq musicians who make videos all the time on the times they accidentally ripped off other music. I think it gets blown out of proportion because in this case, its a Beatle that wrote a similar song.

We gotta start suing painters for painting a bowl of fruit. Surely some company owns the rights to painting a bowl of fruit.

There are only so many chords out there. This was a bullshit lawsuit brought about by Bright Tunes Music Corporation, not the actual composer of "He's so Fine" or any of the singers in "The Chiffons." The composer, Ronald Mack, died in 1963 at age 23 of Hodgkin's Lymphoma so he unfortunately had no say. They say that much of the $587k in damages went to Mack's family, but it's undisclosed so nobody knows & probably the corporation and lawyers got a lot of that. I honestly believe that the only person who would really be entitled to receive anything would be Ronald Mack himself, but the poor guy died. If he had been alive, he probably also would have said it was a bullshit lawsuit.

Not that it is an ideal comparison, but when George sang the three notes all I heard was the opening "look at me " in "Misty". And, as a side note as a lawyer, perhaps the fact that George's attorney confuses a "song" with a MELODY speaks volumes about why the matter was not settled out of Court.

Thank you for posting.

what a lovely good man was George Harrison.

Regardless of whom your favourite Beatle may be, I think we can all unanimously agree that George had the most fabulous hair.

There is only so many notes on a scale. They are bound to intersect.

It's probably out there somewhere. This is all that was included on the 'Dark Horse' DVD.

At the very least, this had a happy ending. George ended up owning both songs and a whole lot of others.

When I here your song My sweet lord I feel at peace i love your music George 29 11 2001

The way George says "tune" is my favourite thing.

My Sweet Nelson forever!

100% some fan of George wanted to see him play live so they requested for him to appear with his guitar. “So Mr Harrison, how would play here comes the sun for example?” Nice!

Is there more from this interview available? Thanks for posting this.

I think in this day and age, it's pretty pointless to compare two different songs based solely off their melodies and chords. Because if you listen to "He's So Fine" and "My Sweet Lord", they have completely different production styles, overall instrumentation, and genres

"I like both songs"... says it all.

I like George’s “version” better, and of course there are similarities but that’s bound to happen from time to time in music. There are only so many note combinations and melodies, that it’s gonna happen.

My Sweet George ! 🙏🙏🙏

George was playing all the right notes, not necessarily in a different order.

what year is this interview from?

Imagine if styles were copyrighted ! Hey you can't do that ! That's a 12 bar blues ! Hey don't do that, that's rock and roll !

That last line. "It was something I could have treated positively or negatively, so I decided to do it this way..."

he was the most beautiful person, within and without. We love you George !

I suppose this sort of thing happens throughout music history. I believe George unwittingly used the tune from "He's So Fine" but didn't really think about it. As a result, the outcome was that he had to share royalties from that song. The same sort of thing happened to Rod Stewart with "Forever Young," which had been written and recorded by Bob Dylan many years before. Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain" uses some lyrics and the tune from an old Scottish ballad. Going back even further, the tune from "God Save the Queen (or King)" is identical to "America" (My Country 'Tis of Thee).

Basically the tunes were similar but the songs were of different styles, one was a 60s Mowtown and the other was a 70s peace one.

We love you George.

I love Harrison's tunes including My Sweet Lord and as we all know there are only so many cords.... I am so sorry this happened - obviously George was chosen to sue because it was a great song and made a lot of money for the money grubbers. And I don't believe that Harrison consciously plagiarized "He's So Fine" but I wasn't the judge.

it's simply part of the creative process to take bits and pieces from a variety of different media you like and put them together to make something of your own. it's impossible to create a song that's never been heard before without taking concepts from others and giving it your own flair.

He had those Farrah Fawcett curls. 💅

Only so many chords etc that can be played. Fair play to George for not suing Oasis when they ripped him off as well. He knew it was no issue

I think that's why a lot of organic music (eg rock n roll) is not being made any more. Most good creative musicians are afraid of ripping others off.

Hello! Could you tell me where this interview is from and who is the man interviewing George Harrison? Thank you!

Every reggae song starts with a splash on the drums and the same rhythm. They should have ruled that the record that sold the most copies was the definitive. I'm joking. But I hope I've made the point.

This is about nothing more than the greed of lawyers.

Once I woke up and I had this melody in my head…I went to the piano, played it, and wrote it down…..I called it Tomorrow…. And then I realized it had the same notes and changes as Yesterday.

what year is this?

I love the song, "My Sweet Love"!!!!!!

The song is Em and A on the guitar. A very common progression.

When I first heard "My Sweet Lord," I thought to myself, "My goodness, that's 'He's so Fine.'" What I can't figure is that not only didn't George ever consider that, but none of the people around him did either. It's not like "He's so Fine" was some obscure song, it was a huge hit, a number 1 song, only seven years before "My Sweet Lord." Maybe George was busy in 1963 so he wasn't aware that it was being played all over the radio, but I can't believe that there wasn't somebody among his advisors that said, "Hey, wait a minute here..." Was he surrounding himself with Yes men? I tend to think if he had presented this to the other Beatles, one of them would have pointed out that it was "He's so Fine." I'm not a musicologist, but there's a difference between songs that sound kind of similar, which may happen quite a bit, and two songs being as close as these two songs are.

I'm not a songwriter but it seems that you have to be careful when a melody pops into your head as it may actually be a memory as opposed to something you thought up.

The songs have exactly the saem structure!

It started as George showing Billy Preston how easy it was to built a song based on another one, and he created My Sweet Lord based off He's So Fine on the spot. The problem was he decided or was encouraged to officially release it.

Can anyone tell me the other song? Exactly

Billy Preston might have helped George a little in the Scorsese documentary you should see it

WHY DID IT COME TO THIS,COURt 😩GEORGE WAS/IS AN PHENOMENAL CHARACTER

Christmas Eve by reflections we are supposed to see truth in each other's eyes. Merry Christmas

One of the benefits of being in the Beatles is that you had two musicologists in the band- John and Paul. They often call out each other's plagiarism and altered a song to the point they could usually get away with. it.

Studio Musicians played on all the tracks on Rubber Soul.

I heard a sax instrumental on an LA jazz station one day and I thought "that's My Sweet Lord", then I thought "no, that's He's so Fine" They sounded identical and I never knew which song they were covering...I guess both of them because they are so alike PS I love both versions

He had to go to court to testify that the sixties were a blur? Nobody who was there remembers them.

My sweet lord is one of the best songs in history

Chord = accord of notes in a scale. Improvising chords on a melody. Rhythm and timing ..........are the words interchangeable? I think George got the raw end of the deal.

spot a tune.

"A good artiste borrows, a greatt artiste STEALS!..."

As a songwriter for many decades. it is always a danger that the melody coming out of you is something you are subconsciously remembering from somewhere else. It doesn't have to be intentional. Eric Clapton said he accidentally stole part of "Let it Grow" from "Stairway to heaven." It happens to every songwriter. I often have to ask my wife, 'Is this mine or did I steal it?" I don't think George did it on purpose but he lifted that melody from 'he's So Fine."

To me the Beatles' "I Feel Fine" is very much like Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" with the main difference that the Beatles song is guitar dominated

On the same note, nobody seems to talk about how "The Seeds of Love" by Tears for Fears sounds very similar to "Free as a Bird" by John Lennon

Peter Frampton said it best: "There's only so many notes". For some contrast though listen to Roberta Kelly's disco cover of "My Sweet Lord".

And yet Kid Rock ripped off "Werewolves of London" and "Sweet Home Alabama" on his "hit""All Summer Long" without a lawsuit.

How many notes?

So what was the final verdict?

After reading a lot of the other comments, as a songwriter, I really do not believe George would have intentionally ripped off someone else's song. When Paul woke up with the tune of Yesterday, he ran that past a lot of friends to see if it was original or someone else's tune. His father had so many tunes he would play. As it turned out, Yesterday is like a tune his father used to play. The Beatles in their early days listened to classical music to get a line here or there that sounded unique. They'd change it up a bit, add to it, and come up with a song. John made the comment about how he and everyone else that wrote songs in that era would "borrow" from one another. If George was really fond of the melody in He's So Fine, he could have changed up the melody enough to not be sued for copyright infringement. There are countless songs with the same chord progression and vibe. A gifted songwriter can take a given progression & vibe as a basis, and then go off in a different direction with the melody. George was definitely gifted. He did not have to intentionally use the same melody thinking no one would notice.

Our witness to the truth during the lights shows

I think they were saying that My Sweet Lord 'sounded' like He's So Fine. Harrison may have subconsiously wrote his song with the melody from the other song. Did he ever say so. I suppose he wouldn't, but was there any suggestion of it. The songs sound so different, it's a wonder there was a lawsuit.

I am soooooo bad.

It's actually very common to unintentionally write a song or.melody u heard from something else, without realizing that the origins were not your conscience but actually your.memory. It happens all the time for creatives, I accidentally wrote a mcfly melody recently from when I listened to them when I was 7

He's So Fine doesn't hold a candle to MSL.

We always lose the best... its so true the good die young....

Excellent knitwear.

My Sweet George

George into his own after the breakup

"My Sweet Lord" was a tune that's nothing Bright about it!

Judges get it wrong every day.

it is weird that james taylor was recording something in the way she moves for apple records at abbey road when george "came up" with the idea for something ...

should never have been sued

Ronnie Mack wrote He's So Fine for The Chiffons. The Chiffons re-recorded "He's So Fine" with members of the Tokens and with Carole King on piano, and it was released by Laurie Records in late 1962, reaching number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B chart in March 1963. Sadly songwriter Ronnie Mack died of Hodgkins Lymphoma in November 1963. He was only 23. Bright Tunes Music, the company which owned the rights to "He's So Fine", won a notable lawsuit against George Harrison, starting in 1971, for subconscious plagiarism of Mack's tune in writing "My Sweet Lord". Much of the eventual settlement of $587,000 damages was paid to Mack's surviving family.