Harrison's solo career peaked with All Things Must Pass and The Concert for Bangladesh. During the next few years he released more recordings, including Living in the Material World, which featured the popular song "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth).” In 1974, he undertook an extensive concert tour that included Ravi Shankar and other Indian musicians as a supporting act. But Dark Horse, a recording released to coincide with the tour, failed to match the popularity of his previous works.

Harrison's personal life was proving equally troubling. In 1977, his marriage ended in divorce after his wife formed a relationship with his close friend Clapton, whom she would later marry. In the early 1980s, after his second marriage, to Olivia Arias, and the birth of their son, Dhani, Harrison realized only a measure of success with "All Those Years Ago," which recalled the Beatles heyday in light of Lennon's assassination in 1980 by a deranged fan, and Gone Troppo, the album featuring that song, proved relatively unsuccessful with the record-buying public.

After an extended leave from recording, during which he found success as a film producer, Harrison reappeared as one of the Traveling Wilburys, a band that also included Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Electric Light Orchestra leader Jeff Lynn. The group's debut recording, The Traveling Wilburys, Volume 1, found favor with record reviewers, and it was followed, after Orbison's death, with a second release. Around this time, Harrison also made a rare concert appearance at an event honoring Dylan.

In 1987, Harrison continued his return to musical activity with Cloud 9, which marked another successful venture. The record featured a hit single, Harrison's reworking of the 1950s tune "Got My Mind Set on You," and it included "When We Was Fab," another tune recalling Beatlemania. Steve Simels, writing in Stereo Review, proclaimed Cloud 9 "a very nice record."