<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Being one of The Beatles was not the be all\/end all for George Harrison.\u00a0 Saying the name of the Fab Four usually sends people down Lennon and McCartney Lane, memory-wise.\u00a0 Even Ringo managed to garner more attention than poor George.\u00a0 Paul was always \u2018the cute one\u2019, John the \u2018serious one\u2019, and Ringo, the \u2018fun one\u2019.\u00a0 George?\u00a0 He was tagged the \u2018quiet Beatle\u2019 but much of that had to come from one simple fact:\u00a0 with the other three around, it had to be hard just to get a word in edgewise.\u00a0 Upon further examination, it should be noted that Beatle George (and the real George) had a lot more depth to him than he is given credit for in the Beatle world.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0George Harrison had a magnificent ability to remember details about, well, everything.\u00a0 He had long thought about gathering what he called, \u2018bits of paper with my song lyrics on it scattered about\u2019 and assembling them into a book of some sort.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t end up being just a \u2018book of lyrics\u2019 or even a conventional \u2018autobiography\u2019.\u00a0 In the <\/span>Foreword <\/span><\/i>to <\/span>I Me Mine, (<\/span><\/i>1980 Ganga Publishing, re-released in paperback form by First Chronicle Books, LLC in 2007), Harrison described how the book came to pass:\u00a0 \u201cTwo drunkards cornered me in a hotel room near Heathrow Airport in July 1977 and showed me that if I did find the lyrics, they could be bound into a nice book.\u00a0 In excruciating detail, just for you, at a price outside everyday experience, we offer the small change of a short lifetime.\u00a0 It was to be called <\/span>The Big Leather Job <\/span><\/i>[in reference to an old leather bound book of a restored ship\u2019s log the two drunkards had shown him as an example of how it could be done] but became known as <\/span>I Me Mine <\/span><\/i>for it could also be seen\u00a0 as a \u2018little ego detour\u2019.\u00a0 I have suffered for this book; now it\u2019s your turn.\u00a0 <\/span>George Harrison – Somewhere in England.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I Me Mine<\/span><\/i> evolved to include three parts.\u00a0 Part III gathered together the promised lyrics in handwritten form on any form of paper he had handy;\u00a0 envelopes, hotel stationery, and son on.\u00a0 The lyrics also appear in a typed format and anecdotes, some more detailed than others, accompany each song.\u00a0 A couple of his earliest works that were discarded before he started saving them were hand printed anew for the sake of the book (which he admitted to in the books <\/span>Outward <\/span><\/i>section).\u00a0 Part II contains 48 photos captioned by George and Derek Taylor (whom we will hear more about in a bit).\u00a0 Some are serious, others less so like the one for Plate XXIII which shows George playing his sitar.\u00a0 The caption, which reads, \u201cThe author enjoying a cheese sandwich with some friends in Eastbourne, 1967,\u201d is not a misprint – it is just another example of Harrison\u2019s rather unique sense of humor.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Part I is not a normal biographical telling of George\u2019s life.\u00a0 He says his piece, but there are generous commentaries provided by Derek Taylor.\u00a0 Taylor got to know George when the former worked as a columnist for the <\/span>Daily Express.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>In 1963, he was dispatched to meet George and ghost write a weekly column \u2018by George Harrison\u2019 for the <\/span>Express<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 Taylor says George was singled out for this honor because, in his mind, Lennon and McCartney were busy with their songwriting and Ringo was too new to the band.\u00a0 This left George.\u00a0 Taylor gave his boss several reasons for the choice:\u00a0 \u201cGeorge seemed to be a decent chap and when I had met him at press conferences and backstage he had been approachable, transparently sincere, and expressive.\u201d\u00a0 When Taylor and his editor, John Buchanan, approached the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein wanted to know why a weekly article would be written by Derek, and not George himself.\u00a0 Buchanan told him, \u201cBecause Derek knows what the readers want.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Epstein agreed it would give George an extra interest in the band, but they still needed to agree on a fee.\u00a0 He was insulted at the first offer of 50 pounds per week.\u00a0 Buchanan\u00a0 assured Brian that George would not have to do much and 50 pounds was more than Taylor made in a week.\u00a0 They eventually settled on 100 pounds per week after Brian reminded them both that Taylor\u2019s weekly wage wasn\u2019t the issue because, after all, \u201cHe isn\u2019t a Beatle.\u201d\u00a0 Thus George Harrison became a weekly columnist for the <\/span>Daily Express<\/span><\/i> with Taylor promising to run the articles by him before they went to print.\u00a0 In the very first piece, Taylor summed up a dialog between Harrison and his father.\u00a0 Derek wrote that George would be busy touring and not around much.\u00a0 To illustrate the point, he invented the following quote attributed to the father:\u00a0 \u201cNever you mind about that, son, you just go ahead and play your guitar and I\u2019ll carry on driving the big green jobs.\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a big deal as this was a standard reporting practice in the British press – if you need to make something up to sell the story, so be it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Derek brought the typed pages to Harrison to read, there was a great silence when he got to the above mentioned quote.\u00a0 Taylor said, \u201cThere was a horrible silence.\u00a0 George looked quite as much amused as amazed, but there was still a terrible hole in the air.\u00a0 \u2018What are big green jobs?\u201d he asked.\u00a0 \u2018Buses,\u2019 I said, \u2018Liverpool Corporation buses, big green jobs, er, well, you know, big green jobs, double-deckers.\u2019\u00a0 They polled everybody in the room and came to the conclusion that nobody had ever called them \u2018big green jobs\u2019.\u00a0 There was a feeling of insane hysterics, \u2018Big green jobs,\u2019 George repeated, shaking his head.\u00a0 \u2018I\u2019d better keep on reading this.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 In the end, George declared Taylor\u2019s ghost-written article \u2018wasn\u2019t all bad\u2019 and from then on, they would collaborate more and more.\u00a0 Derek Taylor became one of George\u2019s closest confidants from then until Harrison\u2019s death.\u00a0 It only made sense for Taylor\u2019s voice to act as the moderator in George\u2019s book.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As a writer for the <\/span>Daily Express, <\/span><\/i>Derek Taylor would interview Epstein often.\u00a0 Taylor ended up ghost-writing Brian\u2019s 1964 autobiography <\/span>A Cellarful of Noise.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>He soon became Epstein\u2019s personal assistant, and in his new position, Derek was still writing George\u2019s weekly column but his salary had now risen to 150 pounds per week.\u00a0 He also assumed the duties as the Beatles\u2019 press officer.\u00a0 As he explained it, \u201cJoan and our four children followed Brian and the Beatles on the trail to metropolis.\u00a0 All of our provincial lives were over.\u00a0 We had no choice and maybe, anyway, it was time to go crackers.\u00a0 It was 1964 and it was a very hard and sometimes unhappy year.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Going back to Harrison\u2019s childhood, it sounded much like other British rock stars who grew up in post-WWII England.\u00a0 Times were tough and people did what they had to do in order to survive.\u00a0 The Harrison\u2019s first home was at 12 Arnold Grove – a typical row house on a cul-du-sac, one step from the street put you in the small front room.\u00a0 There were stairs leading up to the two bedrooms on the second level and an outhouse in the back.\u00a0 In winter, the house was cold and it took several stones warmed by the meager fire to get the bed sheets tolerable.\u00a0 This was the Harrison abode for the 25 years they were on the housing list for better accommodations.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0George has fond memories of growing up there, at least until he moved on up from junior school to the big grammar school.\u00a0 Looking back, George said, \u201cThat is when the darkness began and my frustrations seemed to start.\u00a0 You would punch people out just to get it our of your system.\u00a0 The whole idea of it was so serious.\u00a0 The backwards teachers, you can\u2019t smile and you are not allowed to do this or that.\u00a0 Be here, stand there, shut up, sit down, and always you need those exams.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t like school, I think it was awful\u2019\u00a0 the worst time of your life.\u201d\u00a0 Reading this passage suddenly made Roger Water\u2019s Pink Floyd masterpiece <\/span>The Wall <\/span><\/i>a little clearer for me:\u00a0 \u2018<\/span>We don\u2019t need no education\u2019.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Math and testing seemed to particularly stick in young George\u2019s craw:\u00a0 \u201cAlgebra?\u00a0 I have no idea what it means or where it came from.\u00a0 It seems to have no harmony or rhythm or basic feel because really you can understand people without knowing the same language\u2026but algebra for me had nothing to do with reality.\u201d\u00a0 As for the GCE (General Certificate of Education) tests, Harrison passed art but failed everything else.\u00a0 They planned to hold him back and make him repeat the same classes with a new group coming up, but as he said, \u201cI thought \u2018No thanks, squire, I\u2019m not going to get into learning all these new people and their tricks\u2019 so I went over the railings to the movies and didn\u2019t go back until the last day to pick up my fine.\u201d\u00a0 Even the way music was taught in the schools was too stuffy and formal for him.\u00a0 His parents never knew as he burned his reports and testimonials.\u00a0 His brother\u2019s wife kind of aided and abetted him by passing a few coins his way for the movies or whatever else he did to while away the days he dumped school.\u00a0 Long before LSD became a thing, George dropped out and tuned out of school.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When his brother Harry was away doing his military service, George spent a lot of time chumming about with his sister-in-law Irene who remembered,\u00a0 \u201cWe went out to shows and that sort of thing.\u00a0 It was that rock\u2019n\u2019roll time and all the big acts, Lonnie Donegan and so on, came to the Empire (theater in Liverpool) and I\u2019d get seats, and off we\u2019d go.\u00a0 It was nice to have company, you know?\u00a0 Then Harry and I got married and we had a flat in Liverpool and George came round there quite a bit, sometimes with Paul.\u00a0 He would come around and say \u2018don\u2019t tell my mom\u2019 when she would give him lunch money which he spent at the movies or such.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0George had no clue what to do with his life.\u00a0 His father had pegged him for a trade like being an electrician so he and his brother could have a garage or shop.\u00a0 He tried a few jobs but none of them said, \u201cGeorge, this is what you will do for the rest of your life.\u201d\u00a0 When George first told Harry and Irene he had the chance to join a group with Paul, his brother told him, \u201cHave a go, you know?\u00a0 You\u2019re still young enough to do what you want to do, if you give it a year or two, you haven\u2019t missed out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0George weighed the options:\u00a0 \u201cWell, you know what it was like in Liverpool;\u00a0 if you had a trade you were made.\u00a0 If you wanted to do anything else, you were a bit bonkers.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think our sort of upbringing allowed you to have other ideas.\u201d\u00a0 George resolved to be in the group.\u00a0 His mother told him moving in with John would see him back in two or three weeks (and she was right) because there were no comforts of home in Lennon\u2019s spartan apartment.\u00a0 None-the-less, the Harrisons supported their son\u2019s decision to not simply go into a trade and to do something different.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Harrison first met Paul McCartney riding the bus home from grammar school.\u00a0 Paul was a year ahead but they were both wearing the same school uniform and George started to hang out<\/span><\/p>\n with him.\u00a0 Early on, when he was first playing with the band, he was still having to borrow money from his dad who finally asked, \u201cHadn\u2019t you better get a job or something?\u201d\u00a0 He tried to get into what he termed \u2018the Corporation (Liverpool)\u2019, \u201cbut I didn\u2019t pass the test.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t even good enough to get into the \u2018Corpy\u2019.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t bothering, I wasn\u2019t trying, but after a lot of time, I had to – because it was getting too embarrassing, but it was a long time before I could get a job.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He missed out a chance to be a window dresser at Blacklers [department store] so they sent him to see Mr. Peet in maintenance where he was given menial tasks like cleaning light tubes.\u00a0 George said, \u201cI also learned to play darts and I learned how to drink fourteen pints of beer and three rum and blackcurrants and eat two Wimpy’s hamburgers all in one session.\u00a0 All this I learned and at night we were doing gigs and then we got the gig to play in Scotland.\u00a0 I went and told the boss at Blacklers, \u2018I\u2019m leaving, I\u2019m sorry\u2019.\u00a0 This was great, really nice to say.\u00a0 Still only seventeen and I resign!\u201d\u00a0 George may have lacked a formal education and job skills, but that didn\u2019t mean George wasn\u2019t curious about things and unable to seek knowledge.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0George gives Brian Epstein a lot of credit for what happened with the band.\u00a0 His involvement made them all feel that something big was about to happen to them:\u00a0 \u201c[Brian] knew how to get it happening.\u00a0 We felt cocky and certain but when Epstein said, \u2018You\u2019re going to be bigger than Elvis you know,\u2019 we thought, \u2018Well, how big do you have to be?\u00a0 I mean, I doubt that.\u2019 \u00a0 That seemed outrageous yet he did have the right attitude.\u201d Epstein died of an accidental overdose of drugs and alcohol near the end of \u2018The Summer of Love\u2019 (or \u2018the Summer of Acid\u2019 as some choose to call 1967).\u00a0 Harrison remembers having one serious conversation outside of the normal business affairs with Brian just before he died.\u00a0 George felt Epstein was on the cusp of realizing he could rise to another level, perhaps of success or of spiritual awakening (he doesn\u2019t specify).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By the end of 1967\u2019s remarkable summer, the Beatles were no longer touring and they were also on the edge of big changes.\u00a0 How and what they recorded evolved.\u00a0 They met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, youth culture was exploding at events like the Monterey Pop Festival, and everybody was optimistic that \u2018flower-power, love, brotherhood, peace, and music\u2019 would change and possibly save the world.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the Beatles had stopped relying on Brian as a steadying \u2018father figure\u2019 guiding how the band handled their own affairs.\u00a0 His death really marked the beginning of their problems, thus setting the stage for their eventual end.\u00a0 Founding Apple and internal friction in the band became a slippery slope that nobody could foresee or reverse once everything began to slide down hill.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For George, the novelty of being famous had pretty much worn off by 1965 and he told Taylor he did not enjoy being famous the same way again.\u00a0 By 1969, he had married Pattie and they moved into a Gothic house and park in Oxfordshire.\u00a0 This became Harrison\u2019s inner sanctum where he enjoyed gardening.\u00a0 Life there helped him escape being a Beatle.\u00a0 George may not have been getting very many of his songs on the group\u2019s albums, but he was amassing a sizable catalog for future use. When the \u2018Beatles dam\u2019 broke and they were set free, his songs burst forth with such volume, it surprised just about everyone.\u00a0 Indeed, the triple album <\/span>All Things Must Pass<\/span><\/i> (released in 1970) covered so much ground it was proof that George had not been idle in 1968-1970.\u00a0 He had absorbed a lot from working with the likes of Bob Dylan, the Band, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and Billy Preston.\u00a0 He had grown beyond his former role as \u2018the quiet Beatle\u2019.\u00a0 Beatle George found a chameleon-like side of him that allowed him to work with just about anybody he came in contact with from Tom Petty to Jeff Lynne or Roy Orbison.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There are too many facets of George Harrison to do him justice with in this short space.\u00a0 Suffice to say one must consider him to have had three lives, all equally important.\u00a0 When we view the man as a whole, we can see the additive effect of his life\u2019s stages:\u00a0 his childhood, his time as a Beatle, and the rest of his life and musical career in the post-Beatles era.\u00a0 All were equally important, but one gets the feeling it was the last chapters that were the most meaningful and fulfilling for George.\u00a0 With that said, it is hard to say if he could have arrived at phase 3 without the formative experiences of phases 1 and 2.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 George Harrison and his Traveling Wilbury chums performing Handle With Care\u00a0<\/em>from phase 3 of George’s life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Being one of The Beatles was not the be all\/end all for George Harrison.\u00a0 Saying the name of the Fab Four usually sends people down Lennon and McCartney Lane, memory-wise.\u00a0 Even Ringo managed to garner more attention than poor George.\u00a0 Paul was always \u2018the cute one\u2019, John the \u2018serious one\u2019, and Ringo, the \u2018fun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3132"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3135,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions\/3135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}