In 1988 George Harrison was in Hana on the island of Maui in Hawaii with his family where he had a vacation property. At the time, Harrison was also there to shoot a video for the song “This Is Love” from his 1987 album Cloud Nine.
While walking with his son Dhani one day, the two came across a sign near the beach that read: “If the wind blows, you can always adjust your sails, but, if you don’t know where you’re going, then any road will take you there.”
The words would become the base of a new song, “Any Road,” which Harrison started writing shortly after seeing that sign. Harrison held the song close until it had its place and later recorded it on and off between July 1999 and October 2001 for his 12th and final album Brainwashed.
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‘Travellin’ on a wing and a prayer’
Harrison’s lyrics follow the Eastern philosophy he followed for most of his life, of continuing forward no matter how difficult the path, or moving toward a higher state of being as in Hindu.
“The past, the present, and the future is just one cycle,” said Harrison in a video around Brainwashed. “I believe as most Buddhists and Hindus believe that it’s us coming back.”
For I’ve been travellin’ on a boat and a plane
In a car, on a bike, with a bus and a train
Travellin’ there, travellin’ here
Everywhere in every gear
But, oh Lord, we pay the price
With the spin of a wheel, with the roll of the dice
Ah yeah, you pay your fare
And if you don’t know where you’re goin’
Any road will take you there
And I’ve been travellin’ through the dirt and the grime
From the past to the future, through the space and the time
Travellin’ deep beneath the waves
In watery grottoes and mountainous caves
[RELATED: Behind the Meaning of George Harrison’s Final Single, “Any Road”]
‘Brainwashed’
The opening track on Harrison’s final and posthumous album Brainwashed released nearly a year after his death in 2001 at age 58, “Any Road” was Harrison’s final single and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, while his instrumental B-side “Marwa Blues” won for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
Though Harrison never finished Brainwashed before his death, Dhani, along with Jeff Lynne, completed the album for his father. “His life was in those final songs, the things he got up to each day, like riding down the River Thames—lots of very personal stuff,” recalled Lynne in 2020. “We gradually just filled them in. It was just about mixing them and making them sound like George would like them. You just had to go with your gut feeling.”
Harrison added, “It was almost as if my dad had the whole thing mapped out and we were just these lab rats trying to find our way through the maze that hadn’t quite been finished yet. Trying not to leave any footprints of us or any trace of Jeff or me was the most conscious thing that we did, to try and not impose on the album in any way and make, as Jeff calls it, a cradle for the voice and guitar.”
The album was a message of cleansing one’s mind rather than programming it with beliefs. “The thing about ‘Brainwashed’ that not a lot of people got was that the message was ‘Go brainwash yourself with positive things,’” said Harrison in a 2017 interview. “Brainwash yourself with nature, nice healing music, or crystals, rather than brainwash yourself with fear.”
In George Harrison’s final television performance before his death in 2001, he performed an acoustic version of “Any Road” on VH1 in 1997, during an interview with Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar.
Photo: George Harrison, Prince’s Trust, 5 June 1987 Wembley Arena. (Solomon N’Jie/Getty Images)
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