Oh George. 🥹❤️

George Harrison - 1987 (taken shortly before Dent-Robinson interview)

[…] A tubby studio worker interrupts for the inevitable autograph. He asks with a reverence unusual for those ‘in the business’. Harrison’s reaction is both genuine and remarkable. He listens carefully as the man unfolds a long-winded and nervous story of how, as a lad, he had seen the Beatles in concert in Plymouth and Exeter. Harrison smiles slowly. He signs. “God bless you!” says the stranger to him. “No, God bless you,” replies Harrison, softly, earnestly but with humour – adding with a gentle smile, “God is within you, you know? Remember that.” Then, with a wink at me, Harrison takes back the scrap of paper and says, “Hold on, we can do better than this.” And he adds the signatures of Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr to his own. “I used to be the one who had to do this all the time in the Fabs,” he remarks, the Fabs being an abbreviated form of the ‘Fab Four’ tag used by Beatles aficionados. Then, after adding the regulation starry flourish under Ringo’s signature which marks it out as ‘genuine’, Harrison says, “We will see that one in Sothebys next year, won’t we, mate?” The studio worker responds fervently, “No way, you can count on that, no way at all!” He then leaves, looking down at the piece of paper before shaking his head and muttering, “My missus will never believe this.”

A senior studio manager standing nearby remarked to me at this point, “George still makes groupies out of all of them, you know. Don’t ever say that Beatle power is dead.” George’s reaction to this comment is one of seriousness. “I’ve gone through stages of thinking it crazy or sick, but of course I realise now it isn’t. I have thought this kind of adulation is real and unreal, good, bad. In all honesty, I just don’t know. What I can say though is that it has less to do with us as individuals than with the time, the era that ‘Beatles’ is shorthand for. People really are kind of worshipping their own past - and there’s nothing wrong with that so long as they don’t get it out of perspective. But you’re not going to get me to say that we were or weren’t gods; it’s more than twenty years since John Lennon got tripped up over that and he was badly misunderstood. We’re all much wiser now – those of us who are left.”

[…] “I hope [grown-up Beatles fans] also have a space somewhere in their hearts for us. Take that big guy just now who asked for the autograph. He looked like a huge, rough, tough truck driver but he was really very gentle. You know that does please me and perhaps it is idealistic, but I would like to think that the Beatles fans have mostly grown up that way. That somehow they did gain from the Beatles experience, as indeed we did, and that ultimately they all appreciate that love is always better than war. Okay, it sounds a very sixties sentiment, but as far as I am concerned there really is still a lot in it, and I have seen nothing in any of the cultural changes since which convinces me that message, although perhaps it was rather naively expressed by us all back then, is not actually a better message than most.”

- Interview with Nick Dent-Robinson (1987)

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old soul how many times had he been here before I hope he’s back and living a beautiful life

"We were among the first men to come out openly"

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john lennon the beatles while my guitar gently weeps paul mccartney beatles mclennon oh paul if you ask me a question I’m going to answer honestly it’s your responsibility whether or not you broadcast it the way John protected Paul after the LSD admission this has that vibe stand by your man

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penguininahottub

8 months ago

This just goes back to where they came from. Liverpool is a tough town. I wouldn't particularly want to run into Paul McCartney in a dark alley, if he didn't like me.

Michael Lindsay Hogg

This always feels significant when I read or hear it. Thoughts are stirred, but can’t be captured.

Anyway.

It was at Stoky Wood* (badge - black and yellow, with a picture of a Spitfire flying over the River Mersey) that Paul and I saw our first film. We were seated on long wooden benches watching Crime Buster Dick Barton**, a great radio hero of ours, when it became too much for Paul. In the flickering half light I watched with great amusement as Big Brother stumbled over me and his pals to exit screen left, scared out of his tiny mind. He wasn't scared when it came to smaller things such as bullies, however, and many's the time he came to my rescue in the school play yard. 'Big Brother have a use after all,' I thought.

*Stockton Wood Primary School, Speke, Liverpool **Dick Barton: Special Agent, was released in May 1948 Btw, Paul's 'I have another memory, of hiding from someone, then hitting them over the head with an iron bar' is the story about Stoky Wood too (Paul was at Stockton Wood Primary School from September 1947 until July 1951)

My memories of brother and I are of two independent little chaps, but Uncle and Auntie,s remembrances are of 'two right little swine', always up to mischief, or with their backs to the wall saying, 'We won't… WE WON'T!' I'm sure they're just a might confused. I do remember a few instances, however, which might give their memories some validity. Like the memory of Paul and me in 72 Western speeding up the growth of next door's apples by throwing stones at the apple tree, and then vigorously denying it. The stones on the other side let us down! Memories of being boss of my own gang in the later Stockton Wood years and charging against the 'enemy' across the school yard in full war cry (obviously why the headmistress Miss Margaret A. Thomas, who used to make the school toys herself, advised the world that one day I would be a 'Leader of men').*** And the came an older bully unto the yard who hit little girls and maketh them cry, and it behove me to teach unto him a lesson: Seeing that I was far too young and weedy to challenge him personally, I chose a friend to talk for me…(no, not Paul)…a housebrick! Being, as I've said, a holy lad it wasn't too difficult to levitate the brick up into the air…over the Bully's thick head…and cut (snip!) the invisible strings. After this bloody, awful incident, he didn't bully little girls, or anyone else for that matter, ever more.

(Mike McCartney, 1981, Thank U Very Much. Mike McCartney's Family Album)

***'I remember the headmistress saying how good the two boys were with younger children,' says Jim, 'always sticking up for them. She said Michael was going to be a leader of men. I think this was because he was always arguing. Paul did things much quieter. He had much more nous. Mike stuck his neck out. Paul always avoided trouble.'

(The Beatles: The Authorised Biography by Hunter Davies, 2010, Updated Edition)

Also:

They were four tough kids from Liverpool who’d learned their craft playing in hotel-cum-brothels in Hamburg. I mean, they were tough. They grew up in Liverpool, which was a tough city. It’s like growing up in Detroit or somewhere. Somewhere, that toughness always comes out. <…> This just goes back to where they came from. Liverpool is a tough town. I wouldn't particularly want to run into Paul McCartney in a dark alley, if he didn't like me.

(Michael Lindsay-Hogg, May 2024, interview with Rob Sheffield for Rolling Stones)

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john lennon paul mccartney why is he like this john and paul this matters in mclennon lore endlessly fascinating

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penguininahottub

6 months ago

Did Yoko consciously position John as abandoned by everyone, and constantly remind him of that fact (reinforced with whatever went on with Janov), in order to make herself irreplaceable as his one and only ever loyal saviour?

If she didn’t, how long before she realised the full extent of what she’d taken on?

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john lennon the beatles paul mccartney yoko ono john and yoko

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penguininahottub

3 months ago

Can we talk about this documentary from 2021? Please. It can’t have been made in 2021. Mainly want to compare thoughts on Paul’s telling of July 6th meeting and his impression of John (~15:24). What the fuck was going on with him at this time? Other examples of some kind of reshaping of the narrative here. It needed reshaping, still does - but this seems super heavy handed and not like Paul at all. He looks so uncomfortable at times. I hate some of this.

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john lennon the beatles paul mccartney extraordinary john and paul that john and paul business mclennon forever trump never in spite of all the danger oh darling

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penguininahottub

7 months ago

This boy will cut up your curtains if you cross him.