George Harrison's third studio album since the Beatles' break-up came at the end of "a bad domestic year", as he describes it in his 1980 autobiography. From the middle of 1973, with his marriage to Pattie Boyd all but over, Harrison had immersed himself in his work, particularly on developing the acts he would eventually sign to his new record label, Dark Horse Records − Ravi Shankar and a hitherto unknown group called Splinter. Business issues related to the Beatles' company Apple Corps were also coming to a head during 1973–74, as Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr launched legal proceedings against Allen Klein, their former manager and ally against Paul McCartney (who had served the original lawsuit in December 1970 seeking to dissolve the band's partnership). The simultaneous winding down of Apple Corps' subsidiaries left a number of music and film projects in jeopardy, which resulted in Harrison having to make regular trips to Los Angeles in order to find a distributor for the "Shankar Family & Friends" album, most of which was recorded in California in April 1973, and Splinter's debut, "The Place I Love". Another venture that was affected was the movie "Little Malcolm", an Apple Films project for which Harrison was executive producer and working to seal a distribution deal in Europe.