Thinking About How One Of The First Big Moves George Makes Post-breakup Is To Run Away To New York To

bob dylan (first printing, second edition) lyrics 1962-1985 signed copy to george harrison, 1986. reads: "to george ; you're great and always will be!- best wishes ; bob dylan ; 3/'86"

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George Harrison’s purple jacket, worn when he and John were on the David Frost Programme September 27, 1967. Designer unknown.

My scan from “You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-70.” This was the catalogue from the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition of the same name. Book edited by Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh.

i want to cry. i threw it all away. fucking unreleased. he remembered it all from playing it with bob and listening to bob sing it to him . please. someone hold me

“I was falling in love. When I heard those songs I melted. They were mana from heaven to me. And he was so shy and fragile. I wanted to mother him and he seemed to want and need it. He seemed so helpless.”

-Joan Baez recalling her “first dates” with Bob Dylan, Positively 4th Street by David Hajdu

Maybe i’m literally just fucking crazy but also it feels like a callback to idiot wind

“i woke up on the roadside” “i’ve been sleeping on the road” and then talks about what’s in his head . now obviously the going going gone line is more specific to the fact he’s been on tour for a year during the rolling thunder revue, but still.

and holy fucking shit the line about diamonds and rust. BEFORE it’s all diamonds and rust . he’s saying that he feels he can salvage their relationship and not leave it in this “diamonds and rust” memory, that they can still be friends and have some sort of nuance - but first, for joan’s own good, and bobs, joan has to let go. joan has to stop loving him. and he knows it too, and he’s saying the same to himself too.

the first time he sings this verse he’s more gentle. he also admits that he’s still in love with joan. literally just right then and there. he says i’m in love with you, but you have to understand that freeing yourself means letting go of me. the next time he just says “i’ve been telling you baby”, being a bit more mean and direct. he still calls her baby but it’s still way more like “come on just get over it”.

i think it can also connect to this line from winds of the old days about being set free -

this entire song is about bob, but this line directly references a hard rains a gonna fall. there’s so much analysis to be done of this line and how it’s about bob moving on from protest song and also how bob not only lies to all the reporters, but to his loved ones. “the sixties are over so set him free” means leaving that all behind, and i think yes she’s singing to bob but here she’s singing a bit to herself, saying that her and bob will never be together, it’s no longer the sixties so she needs to let their potential child go. and i think bob is directly responding to this: you want to be free, it’s you who needs to let go, not me. and this goes back to bob Not Taking Responsibility like in a simple twist of fate. i forgot if i yapped about it here but like when joan changed the lyrics to simple twist of fate, bob was originally just “i was born too late blame it on a simple twist of fate” but joan said basically i’m better than this, she adds “i was born too late to blame it on a simple twist of fate”, meaning i’m not just going to simply blame it on fate, i know what i’ve done and i’ve taken my own actions. and bob does the same thing here, he refuses to acknowledge that he also initiated shit with joan . and holy fucking shit this song is insane

1970

From George’s handwritten lyrics to the Harrisong “All Things Must Pass.”

Q: “You once remarked that you were trying to write a Robbie Robertson kind of song with ‘All Things Must Pass.’” George Harrison: “‘The Weight’ was the one I admired, it had a religious and a country feeling to it, and I wanted that. You absorb, then you interpret, and it comes out nothing like the thing you’re imagining, but it gives you a starting point.” - Musician, November 1987

Q: “Where did the phrase ‘All Things Must Pass’ come from?” George Harrison: “I think I got it from Richard Alpert/Baba Ram Dass, but I’m not sure. When you read of philosophy or spiritual things, it’s a pretty widely used phrase. I wrote it after [the Band’s 1968] ‘Music From Big Pink’ album; when I heard that song in my head I always heard Levon Helm singing it!” - Billboard, 8 January 2001

“‘All Things Must Pass’ just shows the nature of the physical world. Everything is changing all the time. We get born and we die. But we are in this body, and we go through from birth to death. We stay the same — the soul is the same, but the body is changing. It’s the nature of… it’s called duality, and it just keeps changing. But everything passes except the essence of that, which is our soul.” - George Harrison, French TV interview, 26 August 1997 (x)

hi babe :) any chance we could get touch starved john who thinks he’s clingy & just wants held? you’re the sweetest, thank you doll <3

hello my dear ! i hope it’s okay that i used lennison for this ! i couldn’t resist !!! <3

Needy

Request: hi babe:) any chance we could get touch starved john who thinks he’s clingy & just wants held?

Pairing: Lennison

Warnings: Some suggestive language

“George,” John whines from the couch.

George can only roll his eyes, this is the fourth time in the past five minutes that John has called out for his boyfriend.

He knows exactly what John wants.

“Geo—“ John starts but is immediately interrupted by George.

“John—Please be quiet for just one moment,” he takes a deep breath, “I’m trying to focus on something.”

“Writing songs can wait, George. I can’t believe you would let the love of your life sit over here and waste away without so much as a kiss or a hug?” John asks incredulously.

George picks his head up from his guitar, “You are far from attention deprived, John. And even if you were, I think you would survive.”

John lets out another whine, “But George,” he pauses for a moment to attract his lover’s eye contact, “I could just drop dead right now and you’d just have to live with the fact that you wouldn’t give me any affection.”

George sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, “You are insufferable,” he states plainly as he sets his guitar down and closes his notebook.

John grins as George’s figure appears in view, “Well hello there handsome,” John purrs as George settles beside him.

George rolls his eyes once again as John climbs into his lap and places his arms around George’s neck.

“Oh don’t act so unamused,” John teases, “I know you are just as needy as I am.”

George fights the urge to roll his eyes for a third time as his hands settle at John’s waist, “Y’know, John, I love you. I really do, but sometimes I’d like to just shut that pretty little mouth of yours.”

John lets out a gasp of (fake) surprise, “You love me? I had no idea!”

This time George does roll his eyes for a third time before pulling John forward to press a kiss to his lips.

“I like you better when you shut your mouth,” George whispers as they pull away.

John’s smugness can be seen from a mile away, “I always knew you did.”

This is just my 2 cents, but I think the way Get Back is framed as Paul being the only one who cared is incorrect.

It's not that George didn't care. He was in good spirits at the start, offered songs, offered suggestions to make the songs as good as they could be, etc. The others weren't interested.

At one point George mentions Magical Mystery Tour, and I think that's significant. George decided to stay silent and let things play out when MMT was being filmed, and it turned out to be a bit of a disaster. It was like he could see Get Back was going to end the same way unless he spoke up. He was determined to prevent The Beatles from repeating a mistake.

To me, that's the opposite of not caring.

And look what happened as a result. The Beatles did change course, and the Get Back sessions became monumentally better.

Paul said once that George was the one who always got them out of doing things none of them actually wanted to do because he wasn't afraid to put his foot down, and this was one of those cases imo. It might not make him the most popular with fans, but George saved the band a lot of grief by being that person.

“The musicians crowded around center stage for final bows, cheers washed up in waves from the audience, and even Dylan was swept up in the euphoria. Backstage, Dylan picked George up and squeezed him. ‘God,’ Dylan said, ‘if only we’d done *three* shows.’”

— Joshua M. Greene on the Concert for Bangladesh, Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison