This was written by Rudy Clark and originally recorded by James Ray in 1962. Harrison bought a copy of the single in the summer of 1963 when visiting his sister Louise in Illinois. Many years later when he was writing his Cloud Nine album, he remembered the song and decided to cover it.
Cloud Nine was Harrison's comeback album. He hadn't had a hit since 1981 with "
All Those Years Ago," and his previous US #1 was "
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)" in 1973. Until the Beach Boys released "
Kokomo," Harrison had the record for longest span between #1 hits. "Got My Mind Set On You," however, was his last single to chart.
Harrison's previous album was Gone Troppo, which was released in 1982 and flopped. Proving that he could whip up a hit when he wanted to, he released this very simplistic cover song and it was a huge commercial success. A lot of Harrison's work was well off the mainstream, using unusual instruments and based on Indian music. "Got My Mind Set On You" proved that he could release a song requiring very little thought and send it up the charts. Predictably, many of Harrison's ardent followers can't stand this song.
When Harrison conceived the Cloud Nine album, he looked for a producer who could carry some of the load and not be intimidated by working with a former Beatle. He sought out Jeff Lynne of ELO for the role even though he had never met him - he connected with Lynne by having their mutual friend, Dave Edmunds, get him the message. It ended up being a great fit. Lynne brought his distinctive production sheen to the tracks and helped out writing some of the songs. Lynne's influence can be heard in the backing vocals of the "Got My Mind Set On You" chorus. Along with Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, and Tom Petty, Harrison and Lynne formed The Traveling Wilburys in 1988.
The quirky video shows Harrison surrounded by household objects that move on their own. It helped market the song at a time when MTV was still playing a lot of videos and VH1 had recently gone on the air.
When released as a single, this was backed with "Lay His Head," which did not appear on the album.
Weird Al Yankovic did a parody called "This Song's Just 6 Words Long."
This was the last song by a solo Beatle to hit #1 in the US. Harrison was also the first Beatle to hit #1- "
My Sweet Lord."
The follow-up single,
When We Was Fab, was also a hit abetted by a whimsical music video. Harrison did some soundtrack work, but didn't release any more studio albums in his lifetime.
Jim Keltner, a session musician who worked on many former Beatle solo releases, played drums on this track. He and the other musicians laid it down at Harrison's home studio, Friar Park, in Henley-on-Thames, England.
"We were all sitting in a room together up in Friar Park," he recalled to Uncut magazine. "It was a really nice day; I was out on the patio a lot. I had brought from home my E-mu SP-1200, a drum sampling machine. You could sample any sound and then make up a little groove with it. I was having fun with it. George loved the idea of it too - but you know, we're making a serious record. So, I hadn't done anything with it."
"We were working on something else or about to start another song," Keltner continued. "I was standing back in the control room with him at my machine, and I started playing this little loop. The night before, I had sampled the drum sound that I had going at that time at Friar Park. I'm just messing about playing this groove between the bass drum and the snare drum with my fingers."
"Gary Wright, who's in the back of the room, starts to play these chord patterns on the keys and singing 'I've got my mind set on you,'" he added. "Everybody kind of perked up and George started singing the song, because George was big on knowing the lyrics to all kinds of songs. They all started joining in."
"Jeff said, 'OK, Jim, put that down,' so I made a program of it, they put it on tape, then they all went to town," Keltner concluded. "It was just a little dirty, but that's how that song got started."
