Tom Dunne: My sweet George - the surprisingly overlooked Beatle
George Harrison aboard the liner QE2 IN 1971.
You didn’t notice, did you? Amidst The Beatles “lost track”, the red and blue reissues, their first number one since the moon landings, Britney’s tell-all memoir, and Pete Doherty making clear to Louis Theroux that “just say no” was the best advice he never took, you didn’t notice the new biography.
You didn’t notice that the one Beatle who spent the 1960s saying, “no-one listens to me”, and the ’80s saying “I was a Beatle too, ya know” has had the Phillip Norman treatment. It slipped out almost unnoticed. What does George need to do to get attention?
Norman – a man who on the basis of Shout, a million seller in 1981, will be forever known simply as The Beatles Biographer – has at last set his steely gaze on the youngest one: George Harrison, the Reluctant Beatle, is in shops now.
Norman is famed for exhaustive biographies. John Lennon, The Life - during which he forever framed Paul as “the great manipulator” - clocked in at 800 pages. Paul McCartney, the Biography, a long form apology for the “manipulator comment”, ran to 800 pages. George gets just 587 pages. The lesser one, no matter which way you read it.
And yet where is George? Who is George? The subtitle could also have been, the bitter one, the angry one, the gardening one, the Zen one, the philandering one, the chanting one, the one who was bad with money, the film producer one, or, incredibly, in solo career terms, the most successful one.
He was, to put things mildly, a man of many contradictions. In his mystic phase, when he was exploring meditation – it made him grumpy - an air hostess offered him a drink, to which he replied “F**k off, I’m chanting”.
In a world where one wag joked that on their days off the Beatles were all busy “judging Miss World competitions” he slept with Ringo’s wife Maureen, in the home he shared with Pattie Boyd. Why, oh why?
And yet, in her interviews for this book, Pattie – whose divorce from George was shocking, she flew to NYC immediately after the break and by the time she landed he had cancelled her credit card – has nothing but good things to say about him, a lovely, friendly, funny, gentle man.
Again: who is George? The 'reluctant' sobriquet is a good one. Paul had to plead for him to be a Beatle as John was reluctant to let the “kid” in. He was only 17 when they first went to Hamburg. He was the one who railed most vocally against the stupidity, and indeed danger, of the Beatlemania US tours. At times, most times, he just didn’t seem to want to be there.
So where did he want to be? Incredibly, post-early solo career, he honestly hoped that one day he would be remembered as a famous gardener. Phew! Throw “obtuse” onto that list.
Luckily, the upshot of his being constantly knocked back in his songwriting efforts by Paul, John and George Martin meant that when the Beatles split, he was the one with the pile of songs ready to go. And what songs they were.
The hits ‘Here Comes the Sun’, ‘Something’, ‘My Sweet Lord’ and ‘What is Love’ set up his triple debut All Things Must Pass (1970) and the live album Concert for Bangladesh (1971) for huge, since unmatched, critical, and commercial success.
In the early ’70s, as fans reeled from the shock of the demise of the Beatles, George stepped up. It seemed like a logical progression from Beatles tunes. It was grown up, mature, spiritual, both inward and outward-looking. It sold millions. George, the right-place right-time Beatle.
What followed, commercially and artistically, was not good. Eventually, even Apple sued him. Not that he was without more success: The Travelling Wilburys were great, and his determination to see Life of Brian completed saw him help launch Handmade Films, one of the success stories of the 1980s.
Except if you were George. George ended up guaranteeing those films. When they bombed, and eventually they had to, he was personally, solely, on the hook for almost £36 million.
It is, it must be said, another cautionary music tale. Is there any other type? Getting out alive is not a given, but with your sense of humour still intact, is unimaginable.
I haven’t mentioned Allen Klein, but you have to ask: “what did George do wrong in a past life to deserve being managed by him?”
