The 75,000,000-selling pop band that picked George Harrison out of a creative rut
After five years without releasing music, George Harrison was prompted to write rock songs after seeing Eurythmics perform on their Revenge tour. His friendship with the band’s Dave Stewart helped shape the sound of *Cloud Nine*, Harrison’s 1987 comeback album.
Harrison had grown weary of the music industry after the muted response to *Gone Troppo* in 1982, and said he was fed up with how things were going. Inspired by the Eurythmics’ live shows, he wrote songs including ‘Devil’s Radio’; Stewart later hosted the Traveling Wilburys at his Los Angeles home while they made their debut album.
- Dave Stewart and the Eurythmics inspired Harrison’s return to songwriting.
- Harrison had gone five years without releasing music.
- Their influence helped shape his comeback album, *Cloud Nine*.
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George Harrison was a singer, songwriter and guitarist who first became famous as a member of the Beatles. After the band split up, he made solo records, but by the early 1980s he had become disillusioned with the music industry and stopped releasing albums.
Eurythmics were a British pop duo, made up of singer Annie Lennox and musician Dave Stewart. Their energetic live performances caught Harrison’s attention, and his friendship with Stewart helped shape the sound of Cloud Nine, the album that brought Harrison back to recording in 1987.
The story also connects to the Traveling Wilburys, a group Harrison later formed with other well-known musicians. Stewart hosted them in Los Angeles as they worked on their first album, showing how the friendship continued beyond Harrison’s solo comeback.