The music world lost a giant of a talent when George Harrison passed away at the age of 58 in 2001. Even then, Harrison wasn’t finished bestowing his musical grace upon us, thanks to the release of the posthumous Brainwashed album a year later.
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For the most part, the album steers clear of details about the health problems that Harrison was enduring. “Stuck Inside A Cloud”, however, stands out as a brave and touching evocation of a man in physical, mental, and emotional distress.
“Cloud” Cover
George Harrison scrambled to put together his final album once he received a terminal diagnosis. Luckily, the record was in progress well before that time. Harrison had been compiling material for a while in preparation for a return to his solo career.
It became clear that he might not live to see the album completed. So, Harrison entrusted some musical confidants with a blueprint to finish whatever was still in progress. They included his son Dhani, longtime collaborator and former ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne, and session drummer Jim Keltner. Keltner had worked with Harrison all the way back to All Things Must Pass.
Because the song seems to refer to Harrison’s health issues, you might assume that “Stuck Inside A Cloud” came from the final months of his life. Keltner reported in an interview with Modern Drummer that the song was one Harrison had been kicking around for a while. And it floored Keltner every time he played it.
“The other one that makes me cry every time I hear it, and probably always will, is ‘Stuck Inside A Cloud’,” said Keltner. “That’s one of his older ones that he used to play for me all the time. It had a magical, misty, very English sort of quality to it. We would be sitting in the studio late at night before shutting everything down. And I’d say, ‘Hey, George, play [‘Cloud’] for me,’ and he would put it on and sing along with it. It didn’t have drums on it for many years, just these cheesy little keyboard samples from his E2 sampler. But for some reason it just takes me right to Friar Park every time I hear it.”
Behind the Lyrics to “Stuck Inside A Cloud”
In “Stuck Inside A Cloud”, George Harrison paints a moving portrait of a man who can’t seem to get out from the malaise that’s enveloped him through no fault of his own.
“Never slept so little, never smoked so much. / Lost my concentration, I could even lose my touch.”
He feels like he can snap out of it if he can just reconnect with his true love.
“The only thing that matters to me is to touch your lotus feet.”
In the third verse, Harrison seems to refer directly to his health predicament.
“Never been so crazy but I’ve never felt so sure / I wish I had the answer to give, don’t even have the cure.”
As he remains walled up inside this cloud, he tries to reach out to no avail. The depression is all-enveloping. And, in the song’s final moments, we find out what’s truly at the root of it.
“I’m talking to myself and I’m crying as we part/Knowing as you leave me, I also lose my heart.”
Without context, “Stuck Inside A Cloud” could just read as a man stuck in a funk after a relationship comes apart. Knowing George Harrison’s situation when it was created, it seems more like an honest account of a man worried about going off into the unknown when his earthly connections to the ones he loves are still so strong.
Photo by Lester Cohen/Getty Images
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