Mark Billingham chooses George Harrison

0:00If you can't wait for new episodes of this podcast, and you're in the UK, more episodes are available now. First on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello. George Harrison was a musician, singer and songwriter who became one of the most famous guitarists, indeed one of the most famous people in the world, as one quarter of the Beatles. The Liverpool band's success was swift and dizzying and for the rather private George, sometimes dubbed the Quiet Beatle, it seems the mantle of celebrity and adulation never quite sat comfortably. But he became a musical icon, responsible for a captivating collection of work from the songs he wrote with the Beatles right through to his solo work with numerous star-studded collaborations along the way.

0:53And nominating him today is someone who I suspect knows the words to most of that back catalogue, the crime writer, occasional musician and self-professed Beatles fanatic Mark Billingham. So, Mark, why George? Well, it sounds glib, but it's quite simply the truth, because, as you just said, he was a beetle. One quarter of this group of young men who did extraordinary, supernatural things, who changed the world, and that, on its own, would earn him a place in this pantheon. But then again, you know, does what he did for the three decades after he stopped being a beetle. There's so much to fit in.

1:29How did you discover the beetles? I first discovered them because my stepdad was a Beatles fan. He wasn't that much older than me. So he had a lot of Beatles albums on cassettes. I'm a little bit young for the Beatles, but, you know, I can remember hearing them on the radio. I can remember when they split up. I'd have been about ten. But it wasn't actually until sort of university time when I just started going, oh, my God. Are you musical yourself? I'm not as good a musician as the number of guitars I've got would suggest. I just like collecting guitars. Yeah, I play in a band of other crime writers who are all far better musicians than me.

2:07Sorry, a band of crime writers? Yes. What is this? It's a band called the Fun Loving Crime Writers, and we got together just as a bit of fun a few years ago to start playing gigs at festivals. We do cover versions of songs about crime and murder, of which there are many. Have you done Glastonbury? We've done Glastonbury twice. I know, it's ridiculous, isn't it? and included in the set, obviously because of what we do for a living, is Paperback Writer. When you and your crime writers are playing before a large audience, do you ever think of the Beatles themselves and think, my goodness, what would they think if they could hear me now?

2:42Oh, no, that would be awful. That would be awful. The idea of just looking up and seeing McCartney standing at the back, just pulling a face, that would be an absolute nightmare. Time to bring in another guest who joins us in the studio today, Dr Holly Tesla. She's a senior lecturer in music industries at the University of Liverpool, where she leads their MA programme Beatles Music Industry and Heritage. Holly, welcome. With a role like that, I'm assuming you are a fan yourself. Of course. For me, it's a sad story, but it really begins the day John Lennon gets murdered. I remember walking to school.

3:21I was about 10 years old, and I remember walking to school with a friend of mine the very next morning. And she says, isn't it a shame about John Lennon? I knew the name. I knew he was in the Beatles. That's all I knew. And my little nerdy 10-year-old self said, right, I'm going to investigate this and figure out why are so many people upset. So then I went to the library, got out a book called The Boys from Liverpool by Nicholas Schaffner, read it cover to cover about 10 times in a row and started boring everyone I knew about the Beatles. So my parents said, OK, kid, just listen to the record and stop talking about them.

3:54And from that point, there was no going back, really. And you did a PhD on them, I believe. I did. I did. What was that? I was looking at sort of the Beatles in the 21st century and how they've maintained their popularity generation after generation. And I think as much as the music, it's the story of the Beatles that compels younger generations to keep finding them and keep identifying with it. you know, four poor but honest boys from poor but honest Liverpool go on to be the greatest act of all time. Let's go back to the world pre-Beatles, if anyone can imagine such a world. George Harrison was born in Liverpool in 1943.

4:34What do we know about his childhood, Ollie? George was born and raised for the first few years of his life in a little street called Arnold Grove, and it was a two-up, two-down house where he and his whole family lived, and it was a very typical existence. There was nothing exceptional. His father drove a bus. George was the younger child and he grew up listening to music, influenced by music, and happened to find like-minded individuals. Now, how did he find the Beatles? Well, he was at school with McCartney, who by that time was already knocking about with John Lennon and he'd sort of joined the Quarrymen.

5:13And he was basically going, I need you to meet my mate George. And I think they had an audition on the top deck of a bus and George played this song, Raunchy. And because he could play the lead part to this thing, John basically went, yeah, he's in, he'll do. So they became the sort of core of the group at that point, John, Paul and George. George was younger than Paul and John. Yeah. Quite a bit younger, was he, Mark? No, he was born only three years after Lennon. Yes. Although that's enough. He was always the kid, he was always the baby. and I think early on there was maybe a little bit of resentment about that on his part.

5:50I think a little bit more. Here's a clip from John Lennon talking to the BBC in 1970 after the Beatles had broken up about his memories of George joining the group. Hall introduced me to George and I had to make the decision whether to let George in. And I listened to him play and said, play raw and cheer, whatever the whole story is, and I let him in. And that was the three of us then and then the rest of the group was thrown out gradually. But George was ten years younger than me and I couldn't be bothered with him when he first came round. He used to follow me round like a kid, you know, hanging around all the time.

6:25It took me years to come round to him, you know, to start considering him as an equal or anything. I mean, he was a kid. Ten years, Mark. He wasn't ten years younger. There was no way he was ten years younger. He was three years. That was rather mean from Lennon. Yeah, I thought so. Yes. How did the band get their first big break, Holly? Oh, well, there's lots of answers to this, but I would say what really was the making of the group was when they went to Hamburg and they spent what we would now call a residency playing huge sets. And really what this enabled them to do and what it compelled them to do was really develop a repertoire that was unparalleled.

7:07They would play everything from dance band classics to their own material to cover songs. And it really forged them as a unit as well. That's, of course, also when they first began to intersect with Ringo because Pete Best was still the drummer at the time. Did they have a manager at this time, Mark? Well, yes, but not Brian. No, it was a chap called Alan Williams who was quite a character in Liverpool and he was able to work a deal in Hamburg that really started them. Where did Brian Epstein come in? Well, he had a music store, NEMS music store. And when they were in Hamburg or just after they'd come back from Hamburg, they did a recording and a couple of people came into Brian's shop asking for this record, My Bonnie.

7:53It was a version of My Bonnie. And he started to go, what's this? Why are people asking for this? And then eventually he gets the chance to go and see them at the Cavern. By which time, as Holly said, they were the tightest unit imaginable because they'd played for hours and hours and hours. these sets they were doing in Hamburg. He just went to see them and was kind of blown away. I imagine, Holly, that the relatively sudden fame must have been a bit of a shock to George Harrison's system, particularly as the youngest. I think it was a shock to all of them. We take for granted today that there are all these music industry protections and mechanisms in place, and, of course, none of that existed.

8:31The Beatles were really forging the music industry as they went. I think the world was waiting for them. You know, on both sides of the Atlantic. I mean, here, it's what? It's only 15 years after the war. Everything's very grey. It's all very grey. And then the Beatles come along. They arrived at the perfect time, I think. And soon, Beatlemania took off. And quite soon, George Harrison started being called the Quiet Beatle. What's the origin of that, Mark? Do you know? Well, I've never quite bought into that idea that he was never that quiet. No. Well, I mean, it's the way they like putting things.

9:04It's like the Spice Girls, that Spice Girls like that, that Spice Girls like that. Well, you know, we've obviously got the pretty beetle, which was Paul, and you've got the sardonic beetle, who's John. I mean, not quite sure what Ringo is. Is he the funny one? Well, George better be the quiet one. But he was never that quiet. And actually, he was funny. I've always thought George's capacity for comedy was underrated. There's a great press conference when they land in America, and the Americans seem obsessed by how long their hair is. I mean, absolutely obsessed, like they've never seen anything like it.

9:32Oh, your hair's so long. When are you guys going to cut your hair? And Harrison says, I cut mine yesterday. Which is just a great line. I heard a story, Holly, that when they did arrive in America, I think that was 1964, George had a sore throat and was trying not to say anything. And that was when he started to be called the quiet one. Yeah, I mean, it was a little before that anyway, but having a sore throat didn't actually hurt the stereotype. He published a sort of memoir in 1980 called I, Me, Mine, after his song of that name, and he says at one point there was more good than evil in being a Beatle, but it was awful being on the front page of everyone's life every day.

10:18Did the pressure begin to show quite early, Holly? Absolutely it did. With all of them, or particularly with George? All of them. It's something, again, that we can't really understand what it would have been like in the 1960s because, again, at least today, we're aware of mental health issues and there are protections in place for the Beatles. It was just tour, tour, tour, non-stop. It was absolutely unsustainable and it really did take a toll on them. Now, Mark, do you have a sense of what George Harrison was, I know this sounds silly, what he was really like? What sort of character he was during those years with the Beatles?

10:59because the tabloid reports at the time painted a picture of someone a bit unpredictable. Well, I think there's something in that. I've certainly seen interviews with girls who knew him at the time, who were maybe a little involved with him at the time, who always said you're never quite sure which George you were going to get. Were you going to get sweet George or were you going to get angry George? But certainly later on, you do become aware of a kind of, not a schizophrenic split personality thing, but about two very distinct sides to him, an attention. a tension between this incredible worldly success he has and that he enjoys, they all do.

11:35You know, they're young men and they do enjoy this stuff and this pull towards something rather more spiritual. He was apparently a bit frustrated from quite early on with the hierarchy in the band. Yes, and, I mean, you can kind of understand that. I mean, here he is in a band with these two incredible songwriters who at this point aren't quite aware they've got a third incredible songwriter just in the mix. And I think I'd have been frustrated if I was him. I mean, you know, there he is bringing in songs like All Things Must Pass and whatever, and then knocking that back in favour of Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

12:09I think I, if I'd been George at the time, would have been extremely frustrated. He wanted to write songs, Holly, and increasingly he did write songs, but the Beatles' output was really dominated by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, wasn't it? It was. So what was happening, he was building up this arsenal of music and with every song he'd write and he'd come in to the recording session and say, listen to this. And they'd say, yeah, that's all right, but we have your two for this album. And he's writing not unsubstantial music and he's still getting turned away. No wonder he gets, who wouldn't be?

12:43I think one of the greatest things is that the most downloaded Beatles song these days on Spotify is Here Comes the Sun. It's a Harrison song. Yes. And I like to think that somewhere he's smiling at that. Now, in 1966, he married his first wife, the model Patti Boyd. How did they meet, Holly? They met on the set of A Hard Day's Night, the film, where she was one of the extras. She was playing a schoolgirl, and she and George got together and got married. How did it go? All right for a while. I mean, probably lasted longer than a great deal of rock and roll marriages back then. I think one of the problems came when George introduced his friend Eric Clapton into the mix, and Clapton is quite happy to say that he fell hopelessly in love, hopelessly in love the minute he met her.

13:34Tell us about what I first remember about George, except that he was the best-looking Beatle, his absorption in Eastern music. How did all that start? I think he discovered the sitar on the set of Help, which is, what, 65, somewhere like that. So quite early on, he's going, wow, what is this instrument? This instrument makes an incredible sound. I'd like to learn to play this. And then he strikes up a relationship with Ravi Shankar and introduces the instrument onto Beatles' recordings. Norwegian Wood, I think that was the first one. And, you know, he starts introducing the band to Transcendental Meditation and they go and see the Maharishi in Wales.

14:10So it's not just the music. No, no, no, no. The whole band took a trip to India together, Holly, in the late 60s. Well, they took more than one trip in more ways than one. But really, what happens when they were touring for 1966, as we were talking about, it is just so intense and just so much pressure on all of them. Everywhere they went, they were followed by cameras and media. So they just decided to go someplace where they could just have some privacy. And that happened to be India. and while they were there, George really connected his interest in Indian music with Indian spiritualism and it was something that stayed with him his entire life.

14:51And it went very, very deep with George and, as I say, he was so drawn to that, but there was still this pull back to earthly pleasures, shall we say, which didn't really work with the spiritual side of life. The earthly pleasures being what? Sex, drugs? Sex and drugs and rock and roll, to put it quite simply. There was a lot of that stuff going on. And, you know, he's interested in motor racing and fast cars and all that stuff, which doesn't really go with the kind of philosophy he was hearing from the Maharishi. Except that that side, the mystical side, the contemplative side, can be seen actually as a response to the high-paced living side, as a sort of retreat from it in a way.

15:35Yes, yes, that does make sense. And I suspect that's kind of what was going on. And by now he was coming into his own as a musician and songwriter in his own right. Could you put your finger on what was his biggest contribution to the Beatles? What would they have lost if they'd lost George? They'd have lost The Voice, which I think can't be overstated. I think he matured as a songwriter, became an incredibly good songwriter, became a slide guitar player like no other slide guitar player. There's a really strange thing. I've always thought, you know, instantly, when it's a George Harrison slide guitar solo, You know, he sounds like nobody else.

16:11You're listening to the great life of musician, singer, songwriter and erstwhile Beatle, George Harrison. And you've just heard a version of his composition, Something, taken from the 2009 album Let It Roll. By the end of the 1960s, it's said that George Harrison was feeling a bit overlooked, a bit underestimated. Yes, but George never loses his temper. He's building up, as Holly said, this arsenal of songs. that have been rejected by the rest of the band so that when the Beatles split up, he releases this triple album, which is the biggest, most successful solo Beatles album, universally kind of praised, critically adored.

16:53Which one was that? All Things Must Pass, which is a song that the Beatles were offered and there are recordings of it, but they said, no, that's not good enough. And you can see George going, right, just you wait. And some of the songs you have already mentioned, I mean, something is as beautiful a love song as has ever been written. I think, didn't Frank Sinatra quite famously say, the greatest love song Lennon and McCartney ever wrote? Yes. You know, Here Comes the Sun, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, he wrote some wonderful, wonderful songs. They broke up in April 1970, and once the Beatles were over and George was free to do whatever he liked musically, he also pioneered a new fundraising model.

17:32Holly, tell me about the concert for Bangladesh. Well, it came about really through his relationship with Ravi Shankar, who brought the troubles in Bangladesh to George's attention. And Ravi was hoping to maybe have a little fundraiser. And George said, I think I could help you with that. And maybe we could do something bigger. and all of a sudden they were playing two shows at Madison Square Garden and it was really the first big rock benefit gig. Without that we wouldn't have had Live Aid in the 80s and all of the benefit shows that have followed. So he's bringing in his friends like Bob Dylan and Ravi Shankar and all of the others that join him on stage as well.

18:14It's a cast like no other at that time. But of course George is nervous because he's never played solo before. This is the first time he'll be on stage without the Beatles. He's also personally organising everything. When he was trying to get Dylan on stage, Dylan was having his own problems and is always notoriously hard to pin down anyway. I actually can tell you we've got a clip from the man himself, George Harrison, talking to the BBC back in 1977, explaining how he'd persuaded a rather reluctant Bob Dylan to get involved. Right up until the moment he stepped on the stage, He was not sure he was coming because the night before we went to Madison Square Garden and he freaked out He saw all these cameras and microphones and this huge place and he was saying hey man, this isn't my scene I can't make this and I said look, you know, it's not my scene either Man, you know, I don't do this every day In fact, this is the first time I've ever done anything on my own You at least have been a solo artist for years, you know, and I was just tired of trying to organise the whole thing and so on stage I just looked around to see if there was any indication if Bob was going to come on or not and he was walking right on the stage.

19:27I'd like to bring on a friend of us all, Mr Bob Dylan. I don't think you can overstate how incredibly stressful that must have been for him. I mean firstly putting the whole thing together just the logistics of that but you know it's five years, at least five years since he's played live anywhere and as Holly said he hasn't got Paul and John and Ringo on stage. You know, he's suddenly on his own. And yet it's brilliant. The concert is absolutely an absolute triumph. It seems to me, Holly, that this is a period of major change in George's life, including his marriage. What happened? Well, in a nutshell, Eric Clapton happened, but it was a long time coming.

20:07The pressures of being a Beatle just took their toll on all four of them and all four of their relationships. I mean, John's first marriage broke down, Paul's relationship with Jane Asher broke down, Ringo's marriage eventually broke down, and, of course, George's and Patty's did as well. And Patty blamed his lifestyle. Drugs, she said, cocaine, alcohol. Was it an acrimonious thing? Well, what it was really like, I don't think we will ever know. What it was supposed to have been like in terms of interviews that had been given later and press coverage and so on was anything but acrimonious. Clapton tells the story that he just essentially sat down with George and said, listen, man, I'm in love with your wife.

20:48And they were very close friends. I mean, we can't stress how close Clapton and Harrison were. And apparently George said, yeah, OK, off you go. I mean, I'm not sure how true that actually is. Well, it is true that Eric and George remain good friends. And here's Eric himself talking to Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in 1989. Mid-60s, I did a Beatles show at Hammersmith when we became fast friends, and we had a lot in common. And then I met his, when he married Patty, I met her, and I fell blisteringly in love with Patty. And that went on in an unrequited way for so many years. And then when their marriage was on the rocks, we started seeing one another.

21:28She finally left him. But George, when I told him about it, his attitude amazed me, because it was, well, if that's what it's going to be, that's what it's going to be. as long as we're still friends, because that's the important part. Mark, George and Derek Clapton didn't just remain friends, they toured together, although George was also involved in a new band of his own. Is that right? Well, yes. Are you talking about the Travelling Wilbury? Yes, yes. I think that was a bit of a renaissance for George, because I think largely for much of the 80s, the stuff he was putting out wasn't great. A lot of it was sort of contractual obligation stuff.

22:01And then he, I think, was recording, doing something with Tom Petty or recording, and he was made to all these people and he just suddenly fancied the idea of being in a band again and had this fancy moment, well, if I was going to be in a band, who would I ask? Well, Bob Dylan, obviously, and Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne, and suddenly you've got this supergroup who put some fantastic music out, and I think that really revitalised everything for him. He seems to me to have been a man that liked to keep busy, always working on new projects. Holly, he even got into the movie business. Tell us a bit about that.

22:31He did. Well, he always had a friendship with the Pythons, the Monty Python folks, and he started to finance some of their films. But from there, he went on to produce some films, none of them hugely successful. Madonna's film, I think, Shanghai Surprise. Long Good Friday, I think it was Handmade, Mona Lisa. But, you know, he mortgaged his house to finance this Python film, which was Life of Brian. And at one point they said to him, what are you doing? And he said, I wanted to see the film. And I kind of love that about him. And he married again? He married again, yeah. Who too? Olivia Aris. So this is a settled George Harrison, do you think, Mark?

23:11Is he more sort of at peace with himself? I think so, yes, I think so. Certainly to the point now where he can actually start writing songs about what his life was like as a Beatle, to actually look back a little bit. He writes this song When We Were Fab and he writes All Those Years Ago, which is kind of... He rewrites to do with Lennon after Lennon had been killed. But I think he's at peace with it a little bit more than he was. You know, there was certainly a point when people would go, Beatles, Beatles, and he'd go, oh, shut up. I think he became resigned to the fact that he was always going to be a Beatle.

23:44The murder of John Lennon must have had a terrible effect on him, Holly, or did it? Of course, of course, on all of them. I mean, Paul McCartney stops touring for a number of years. George doesn't go on the road. I think he certainly beefed up security, didn't he? I think they all would have. It also made him think about what they could do by way of anthologising what the Beatles had done. Well, I think the whole anthology idea was McCartney's. I'm not sure George was actually that keen when that project began. So when anthology was being produced, they had the unfinished demos from John Lennon of Real Love and Free as a Bird, and the other three collaborated to finish the song.

24:26So essentially, even though it was a John Lennon song, all four of them played on the track, and thus it becomes, you know, Beatles songs. And I think Harrison said something like, God, I hope when I'm dead they take all my rubbish old outtakes and turn them into hits. In the 1990s, George underwent apparently successful treatment for throat cancer, but before he could properly get back on his feet, he and his wife were the victims of an attack in their own home. Now, this is a really horrific incident that I had forgotten about. I remember it making news at the time, though, Mark. Remind us what happened.

25:01A man with mental health issues broke into Friar Park. George was stabbed, like, 40 times. And, you know, the two of them, the two of them were attacked. And, you know, Olivia's hitting a guy with a poker, and it sounds ridiculous. And all this time, George is chanting Hare Krishna as this guy's trying to kill him. I mean, it really was extremely serious. He had a collapsed lung. I mean, he very nearly died. Yeah, and his wife beat this... He was a paranoid schizophrenic, I think. Beat him off with a poker in the end. I mean, I think I've seen interviews with Danny, with his son, saying, I do believe that hastened his death.

25:35It's true that not long after that, the cancer returned, and despite various operations and treatments, he died on the 29th of November, 2001, only 58 years old. Big question, Holly, do you think that George Harrison was underappreciated? Absolutely. Mark? No question about it. As a songwriter, as a singer, as a musician, he was massively, massively underrated. George has been much written about, much discussed, exposed for much of his life in the public spotlight. If he were here in the studio today, what would you ask, Holly? Oh, put me on the spot. I think the one I'd ask him, did he ever find peace?