βI hadnβt written a tune in a while, and βBlow Awayβ [released on Georgeβs 1979 eponymous album]β¦ I was just sitting in the garden with the pouring rain, it was freezing cold, so I wrote that song. Like any given day will have the morning, and then youβll have the day, and then the nighttime, and in the Indian philosophy they call this triguna, it means the three basic elements: creation, preservation, and destruction. But theyβre all part and parcel of each other. You know, you have the nighttime which is like this negative kind of darkβ¦ but itβs β you need that in order to have the freshness again of the new morning. So the song was like that: it started out where everything wasβ¦ the house was leaking, and the pouring rain, itβs miserable and Iβm just about the lose it when I just remember, βNo, wait a minute, all Iβve got to do is cheer up a little.β In the second verse, the sun comes out, by the last verse everythingβs cool again.β - George Harrison, In The Studio With Redbeard (1992)
βA lot of people donβt realize that βBlow Awayβ used the rebuilding of Friar Park, the broken-down nunnery that he restored as his family home, as a metaphor for how he had to rebuild his life after the Beatles broke up and his marriage to Patti[e] ended. The song has a brilliant lyric and musical structure. George also brought both a very confident spiritual dimension and a knowledge of world music to pop music that it had never had previously. Things like that take guts and an inner will.β - Russ Titelman, Billboard (June 22, 1996)
βItβs important to remember that while everything else around you changes, the soul within remains the same; you have to constantly remember that and fight for the right to be happy.β - George Harrison, Rolling Stone (April 19, 1979)