Gone Troppo

Background

By 1980, Harrison had been finding the current musical climate alienating. His commercial appeal had dwindled, with 1981's Somewhere in England failing to go gold (despite featuring the John Lennon tribute hit, "All Those Years Ago"). With one album left on his current recording contract, Harrison decided to get it over with and recorded Gone Troppo (an Australian slang expression meaning "gone mad or crazy due to tropical heat", and also a reference to the Italian term 'non troppo', used in tempo markings and meaning 'not too much'), and released it without participating in any promotion.

Release

Gone Troppo was issued on Dark Horse Records in November 1982. The album's artwork was credited to "Legs" Larry Smith, formerly of Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. The album peaked at number 108 in the United States and failed to chart at all in the United Kingdom.

"Wake Up My Love" and "That's the Way It Goes" were included on Harrison's Best of Dark Horse 1976–1989 album, and the title track also appeared on the compact disc version of that 1989 compilation. No tracks from Gone Troppo were included on the 2009 career-spanning collection Let It Roll. "That's the Way It Goes" was covered by Joe Brown and other musicians at the Concert for George in November 2002.

In 2004, Gone Troppo was remastered and reissued, both separately from and as part of the deluxe box set The Dark Horse Years 1976–1992. The reissue added a demo version of "Mystical One" as its sole bonus track.

Critical reception

Among contemporary reviews, Billboard said of Gone Troppo: "Harrison's sunny lyricism shines brightest when least encumbered by self-consciousness, and here that equation yields a breezy, deceptively eclectic charmer." People magazine's reviewer wrote: "Because of his forays into the mystical, Harrison's penchant for whimsy often gets overlooked. But here the zany side gets no short shrift." The reviewer admired "lovelies" such as "Wake Up My Love" and "Dream Away", and described Gone Troppo as a "vinyl postcard" offering "flashes of brilliance".

Less impressed, Steve Pond of Rolling Stone said that, of late, Harrison had "made a much better movie financier than musician", and he found the album "So offhand and breezy as to be utterly insubstantial", with "Wake Up My Love" the only song of note. Writing for Musician, Roy Trakin considered that, in the wake of John Lennon's assassination two years before, Harrison's "tortured honesty … dooms this record's attempt to heal those psychic wounds with calm, offhanded music". Trakin admired some of the guitar playing on the album but concluded: "It's too bad the public won't forget George Harrison was a Beatle. His musical output will undoubtedly suffer by comparison until we do."

Reviewing more recently for AllMusic, critic William Ruhlmann writes of Gone Troppo: "Clearly, Harrison could no longer treat his musical career as a part-time stepchild to his interests in car racing and movie producing if he wanted to maintain it. As it turned out, he didn't; this was his last album for five years." Writing in the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Mac Randall opined: "The dynamic, synth-driven 'Wake Up My Love' opens Gone Troppo and the spooky 'Circles' (yet another lost Beatles song) closes it, but there ain't much in between."

John Harris of Mojo likens Gone Troppo to Harrison's final album for EMI/Capitol, Extra Texture (1975), and dismisses it as "Another contract-finisher, this time with Warner Brothers, recorded super-quick, and issued with barely any promotion." Music Box editor John Metzger also holds it in low regard, writing: "Gone Troppo was undoubtedly the worst of George Harrison's solo albums … A few tunes, such as That's the Way It Goes and Unknown Delight, might have worked better if given different arrangements, but as a whole, Gone Troppo was a largely forgettable and sometimes embarrassing affair that appealed only to complete-ists and fanatics."

More impressed, Dave Thompson wrote in Goldmine magazine of its standing as the release that preceded Harrison's temporary retirement from music: "to accuse the album itself of hastening that demise is grossly unfair." While conceding that it was "not a vital Harrison album by any means", Thompson considered it to be "no worse than much of [Paul] McCartney's period output" and opined that "Dream Away" and "Circles" "stand alongside any number of Harrison's minor classics".

Kit Aiken of Uncut describes Gone Troppo as "a return to form of sorts" for Harrison after Somewhere in England, and a collection of "amiable, light-hearted music made by a bunch of mates with nothing to prove". In another favourable 2004 assessment, Rolling Stone's reviewer wrote: "Gone Troppo might just be Harrison's most underrated album … [It] captures Harrison at his most relaxed and playful …"

Track listing

All songs written and composed by George Harrison, except where noted.

1. "Wake Up My Love" – 3:34
2. "That's the Way It Goes" – 3:34
3. "I Really Love You" (Leroy Swearingen) – 2:54
4. "Greece" – 3:58
5. "Gone Troppo" – 4:25

6. "Mystical One" – 3:42
7. "Unknown Delight" – 4:16
8. "Baby Don't Run Away" – 4:01
9. "Dream Away" – 4:29
10. "Circles" – 3:46

Gone Troppo was remastered and reissued in 2004 with the bonus track:

11. "Mystical One" [demo version] – 6:02

Personnel