Macca’s banjo, Mellotron and a Monkee: the story of George Harrison’s Wonderwall Music

Almost 50 years ago, the Beatle stepped aside from the planet’s biggest band to create the soundtrack to Joe Massot’s movie Wonderwall. With the help of India’s finest musicians, he invented the idea of the world music crossover

Let’s call it the Riddle of the Dark Horse: what do you get if you cross a Monkee, two Beatles, the man they called God, Paul McCartney’s banjo, India’s musical elite and a film about a mad professor spying on a Biba girl called Penny Lane?

The answer is Wonderwall Music. Released on 1 November 1968, three weeks before the White Album, George Harrison’s heartfelt, happily eccentric film soundtrack was the first solo record by a Beatle, the first album on the Apple label and a world music crossover before such a notion even existed. That it later lent its name to a Britpop anthem is easily the least interesting thing about it.