As every fan of the White Album knows, the Beatles wrote a whole mess of top-notch songs during their 1968 retreat with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh. George Harrison’s “Sour Milk Sea” was one of them. This rough but lovely version of the song comes from the much-bootlegged “Esher tapes,” a collection of demos for the White Album recorded at Harrison’s house after the band returned from India. It sounds like all the Fabs are playing on this run-through: 
 

 
“Sour Milk Sea” didn’t make it onto the White Album: Harrison gave the song to Jackie Lomax, the former lead singer of the Merseybeat band the Undertakers, who was one of Apple’s first signings. According to rock historian Richie Unterberger, this was the only time Harrison gave away one of his songs (i.e., without releasing his own version) during the Beatles’ career. On the Harrison-produced single—Lomax’s solo debut—released in the summer of ‘68, the band consists of George, Paul, and Ringo with Eric Clapton and pianist Nicky Hopkins (who played with both the Beatles and the Stones) sitting in. Not bad for a first single. And check out the pipes on Jackie! The boy could sing.
 

 
The song was included on Lomax’s Apple LP Is this what you want?, also produced by Harrison, whose I, Me, Mine devotes a couple pages to “Sour Milk Sea”:

Wrote Sour Milk Sea in Rishikesh, India. I never actually recorded the song—it was done by Jackie Lomax on his album Is This What You Want. Anyway, it’s based on Vishvasara Tantra, from Tantric art (‘what is here is elsewhere, what is not here is nowhere’): it’s a picture, and the picture is called Sour Milk Sea—Kalladadi Samudra in Sanskrit—‘the origin and growth of Jambudvita, the central continent, surrounded by fish symbols, according to the geological theory of the evolution of organic life on earth. The appearance of fishes marks the second stage.’

Well, that’s the origin of the song title—but it’s really about meditation[...] I used Sour Milk Sea as this idea of—if you’re in the shit, don’t go around moaning about it: do something about it.