One Of My Favourite Mcharrison Stories ♥

John was a nail-biter too: a study

'It was just one of his little things... and I was very pleased to see that, 'cause I'd forgotten that...' - Paul McCartney, June 2023

The Beatles interviewed for East at Six Ten, ahead of their concert at the Regal Cinema in Cambridge, 26th November 1963

" we sort of conned my way out of hospital so i didn't have to be there for my 15th birthday. we went down to romford, where my stepdad's family lived. his dad was great, and he knew london like the back of his hand. we went walking all over london and saw the sights, the british museum and the searchlight tattoo.

it was a great day out, but it was a bit long for someone who'd just come out of hospital. "

- ringo starr, PHOTOGRAPH (2013)

George by Klaus

I copied and pasted another article about this, fearing the lost of information, since most blogs like these lead to dead links in a few years or so

When Paul met George [article]

George Harrison did not recall his time at Liverpool Institute High School with affection. “That’s when the darkness came in. Be here, stand there, shut up, sit down. You could punch people just to get it out of your system. It was the worst time of my life.”

The ‘punch people’ reference confirms that George was not a model pupil. Paul also refers to George ‘head-butting’ an older boy a perceived slight.

Harrison & McCartney had both passed their 11+ exams, a year apart. This enabled them both to attend selective school in the city centre. The Liverpool Institute High School was a prestigious, academic school — and Harrison hated it from the start.

The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys offered a course in music. To George Harrison’s disappointment, this did not cover either guitars or rock and roll. He did not partake — a statement that could have been applied generally to his secondary education. Most classroom time he spent drawing his favourite guitars.

The school for its part was not impressed by Harrison’s disruptive behaviour. And while over at Quarrybank, John Lennon’s similar unruliness was accompanied by signs of artistic talent, George had no obvious redeeming features.

As Aunt Mimi would disapprovingly observe he presented as ‘very dose’ — in short a lower class loudmouth from Speke, then a notoriously tough area. His loathing of the Liverpool Institute was palpable and the contempt was mutual. His teachers wrote George off as someone destined for factory work, at best.

This was not its perception of Paul McCartney, who while not an academic star, showed promise. Paul (usually) did his homework and (largely) kept himself off the naughty step. He was even enthusiastic about English, though his may be overplayed in his later reflections.

Like George, Paul had no interest in studying music at school. He, too, saw no connection between the rock and roll they listened to and the dusty scores studied in music class.

In playground the age difference between Paul and George was a practical and psychological barrier to socialising. Kids hung out with kids in their year group. Other fraternising was largely reduced to brief nods when you passed your brother/cousin/next door neighbour.

Outside the school’s premises the social rules were looser. Though they lived in different areas, both boys took the same bus into town. This is where their paths would cross, as George would later explain:

he … had the same uniform and was going the same way as I was so I started hanging out with him.”

George later joked that Paul had struck him as odd

he sitting by himself & laughing! I thought we had a real nut on our hands!

Nonetheless, the two boys quickly found they shared musical tastes. Paul was then learning the trumpet his father had bought him for his birthday but not enjoying it. He swapped it for a guitar, which instantly took to.

Soon they were swapping notes, in every sense. They studied chord charts together and carefully observed other musicians trying more advanced sequences. Once they even travelled across the city to meet a man who knew a magical new chord: B7

Even at this stage, Paul was the senior partner and not just because of age. His stronger musical background and innate gifts allowed him to master an instrument intuitively. By the age of fifteen he was confident enough to approach Lennon as an equal if not superior musician.

Very soon a vacancy came up for a third guitarist Quarrymen. Paul knew just the man — or rather boy, as George was still only fourteen. Lennon hated the idea of ‘a bloody kid’ joining his band but Paul persuaded give George an audition.

This famously occurred on the deserted top-deck of a late-night bus. George played Raunchy — note perfect.

Though he may at this stage have lacked Paul’s musical creativity, George was fiercely committed. The endless practice hours of guitar practice had paid off. He was in.

How George and Paul met Being childhood friends George and Paul knew each other the longest. Meeting when they were 12 and 13. They met on the bus. They would take the same bus route into town, they both went to Liverpool Institute of High School, it wasn't common to have younger or older friends, you would stick to your own year, but on the outside it was different. This is where they’re paths would cross.

George says Paul struck him as odd. When George was getting on the bus, he thought Paul was laughing at him, but then realized Paul wasn’t laughing at anyone around him, he was giggling at his own reflection.

“Q: How did you first meet Paul?

A: On a bus coming home from school. He was sitting by himself and laughing! thought we had a real nut on our hands!”

Nothing I Love More than Old Beatles Sites

Live long, my angels.

Wait what happened on December 14th 1974 ?

tl;dr is during John’s “Lost Weekend” on that date George showed up to see John before playing some of his last dates for his infamous Dark Horse tour and blew up at him; the next night after the show, George felt really bad and was forgiven

excerpt from May Pang’s 1983 book Loving John about December 14-15, 1974:

some additional info for anyone interested:

in Chris O’Dell’s book Miss O’Dell she talks about how after the show on December 15th, George and John talked backstage about old times

a few days later a radio interview aired on December 21st, 1974 around 9:30am of John and George where they seem to be intoxicated and/or extremely tired, as the interview was done at 5am x x

the night before this interview was broadcast and presumably taped, George played his last show of the Dark Horse tour at Madison Square Garden and partied with John, May, and assumingely Olivia as well; so it would make sense for them to be tired in that interview x

hope this was informative and useful !!!!

“Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Elton John at a Worcester match to watch Ian Botham. Photo: Graham Morris” - The Times, 2018

“[George is] 44 now, his stubble-beard shows flecks of gray, and after George Harrison laughs — which he does often — the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes don’t completely uncrinkle. ‘I think, in one way, it’s good getting old,’ says Harrison. ‘When you do things when you’re young, you just don’t think about it. You’re crazy, like the Beatles. We were crazy, but if you went on being like that, you’d be put away. So there’s a time to mellow out.’ He is mellow enough, nowadays, to view the past with a pleasant nostalgia and the future with bemused curiosity. 'You know, we’re all going to be 60 now,’ he says of the next major chronological hurdle facing his friends. 'In another 20 years, I’m going to be 64’ — a thought that sets him to singing, just under his breath, the chorus to the Beatles hit When I’m Sixty-Four. […] [E]asing into middle age, he savors 'hanging out with some of my friends, just having dinner and a bottle of wine.’ And for a wild time, there’s always… cricket?! 'Eric and Elton, they’re really into it,’ says Harrison. 'Now, I’ve hated cricket all my life. But they’ve got me going to the matches in this nice little English town, drinking beer, laughing. All the guys on the album are getting even nicer now, the older they get. I think we’ve all had similar times and experiences, and because of that, in each other’s company, we can just make fun and have a real laugh.’ All things considered, he says, 'you can’t ask for much more than that, really.’” - People, 19 Oct 1987 (x)

When my uncle told Lennon that I was born near Frankfurt, the son of a Jewish-American father and a German-Protestant mother, John quipped that I was lucky to belong to both the Chosen People and the Master Race. He then began peppering me with German phrases he remembered from his early days in the red-light district of Hamburg with the Beatles, for instance: “Um zweiundzwanzig Uhr müssen alle Jugendliche den Saal verlassen” – At 10:00 p.m. all minors must leave the premises – and “Ficken, lecken, blasen!” – fuck, suck, blow.

John Lennon: Living on Borrowed Time, Frederic Seaman (1991)

Paul McCartney discusses the design for Sgt Pepper with Mike Read in an interview for BBC Radio 1 (broadcast 1989)

PAUL: See I always hark back, when I'm making a record, in my mind, to me - in Liverpool I used to get on the bus, Saturday morning, go down to this big department store called Lewis's, go in the record department, get my record, that was a big favourite I'd been saving up for, get on the bus, upstairs on the bus, and unwrap it. And then I had a half hour to look at it. I couldn't play it, but I could look at it, and read the sleeve note and look at the pictures and everything. So I knew that other people would be doing that kind of thing so we designed Pepper with that in mind, you know, the person who's just been to his version of Lewis's, he's got that half hour to go home. So we'll give him masses, he could look at this one for months, you know, because after all its only cardboard and it really doesn't cost more to put a complicated picture on than it does just to put a picture of an orange, or something. READ: Of course Brian Epstein's idea was it being brown paper bags. PAUL: Well Brian was very keen on the album, we'd played it [for] him once it was all finished out at George's house. He was very sort of flamboyant [Brian impression] 'Oh! It's wonderful.' He really loved it, you know, he did this big, theatrical [Brian impression] 'Oh it's a wonderful album!' And we said 'Well we're still thinking about the cover, you know, we can't quite decide how to do the cover.' He said [Brian impression] 'Put a brown paper bag on it, it doesn't matter. It's so wonderful.'