This George Harrison Song Didn’t Make it Onto the Beatles’ ‘White Album’ So Jackie Lomax Recorded It With the Band Instead

In late May 1968, the Beatles recorded 27 songs, which they originally wrote in India, during sessions at George Harrison‘s home, “Kinfauns,” in Esher, in the county of Surrey, England, many of which ended up on the band’s self-titled double album The White Album, and some of their solo albums—Harrison’s “Not Guilty” and “Circles,” McCartney’s “Junk,” John’s “Child of Nature,” later reworked into “Jealous Guy,” a love song for Yoko Ono.

Within the batch of songs was a bare recording of “Sour Sea Milk,” recorded on Harrison’s Ampex reel-to-reel tape deck that didn’t make it onto The White Album. Written by Harrison, “Sour Sea Milk” was penned during the Beatles’ pilgrimage to Rishikesh, India, and centers around transcendental meditation, which is expressed in some of the lyrics.

If your life’s not right, doesn’t satisfy you
Don’t get the breaks like some of us do
Better work it out, find where you’ve gone wrong
Better do it soon, you don’t have long

Get out of Sour Milk Sea
You don’t belong there
Get back to where you should be
Find out what’s going on there

If you want the most from everything you do
In the shortest time your dreams come true
In no time at all it makes you more aware
Very simple process takes you there

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Jackie Lomax

“It’s a funny thing, but I wrote ‘Sour Milk Sea` in Rikishesh in ten minutes,” Harrison told NME in 1968. “I didn’t have a guitar in India, and John [Lennon] had a guitar, but was always playing it, and there was only about ten minutes or half an hour, say, of an evening when I borrowed his guitar and wrote that song.”

He added, “Even though I was in India, I always imagined the song [‘Sour Sea Milk’] as rock and roll. That was the intention.”

The harder rock track was later recorded by British artist Jackie Lomax between June 24 and 26 at Abbey Road Studios with a little help from members of the Beatles. Produced by Harrison, the track also features Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with Eric Clapton and session pianist Nicky Hopkins.

At the time, Harrison was co-producing Lomax’s debut, Is This What You Want?, under The Beatles’ Apple Records label. The album was predominantly written by Lomax except for Harrison’s contribution.

[RELATED: The Final Song The Beatles Recorded for ‘Abbey Road,’ Written by John Lennon, Became One of George Harrison’s Favorites]

“Hey Jude”

Though “Sour Sea Milk” was originally a Beatles song and even featured members of the band, it didn’t have much movement on the charts for Lomax. When released, there was another Beatles song that had taken over the airwaves.

“It’s easy, ‘Hey Jude’—the first seven-minute single,” said Lomax in an interview before he died in 2013. “Tell me how much it was played. Tell me how much it was saturating the airwaves. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t get a lock on for six months. I couldn’t even get it [‘Sour Sea Milk’] played. Mary Hopkin [with her 1968 hit “Those Were the Days”] was another one that was taking up all the airwaves.”

Lomax continued, “They couldn’t play more than two songs from the same label without Warner Brothers and Capitol all raising a fuss. So, I got put back on the shelf, if you like. Then they started playing me after all that excitement died down, and it was too late.”

The Beatles’ original demo of “Sour Sea Milk” was released on The Beatles: 50th Anniversary Edition reissue of The White Album in 2018.

Photo: Michael Putland/Getty Images