When Bob Dylan highlighted the talents of George Harrison
George Harrison had a difficult role in the Beatles; he was the youngest member of the band and initially struggled to make an impact on their songwriting. However, he was part of a group with arguably the most prolific songwriting partnership to ever come to fruition. As such, he was likely sidelined while Lennon and McCartney pressed on with their seeming effortlessness.
It’s a sentiment that even Bob Dylan agreed with, highlighting the talents that Harrison possessed deep down. “George got stuck with being the Beatle that had to fight to get songs on records because of Lennon and McCartney,” Dylan said. “Well, who wouldn’t get stuck? If George had had his own group and was writing his own songs back then, he’d have been probably just as big as anybody.”
Dylan would play with George Harrison alongside Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra in an almighty supergroup by the name of the Traveling Wilburys. The Wilburys would release their first album in 1988, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. and the follow-up effort would arrive in 1990, following Roy Orbison’s sad passing.
While Dylan felt that George Harrison had something of a dud role in the Beatles, up against the figureheads of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with the Wilburys, Harrison had something he felt he could call his own. Tom Petty once revealed, “George absolutely adored the Wilburys. That was his baby from the beginning, and he went at it with such great enthusiasm. The rest of his life, he considered himself a Wilbury.”
And so too was Harrison in awe of being able to play in a band with someone like Dylan. He was a massive Dylan fan, and the Beatles had regularly covered his songs during jam sessions. In the Get Back documentary, the band make frequent references to the folk star, who had been making waves overseas in America in the 1960s, while the Beatles were making similar movements in the UK.
Bob Dylan also commented on the creative prowess of the two main songwriters in the Beatles. Of the Lennon-McCartney partnership, he said, “They were fantastic singers. Lennon, to this day, it’s hard to find a better singer than Lennon was, or than McCartney was and still is.”
He added, “I’m in awe of McCartney. He’s about the only one that I am in awe of. He can do it all. And he’s never let up. He’s just so damn effortless.”
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