George Harrison once claimed Paul McCartney “ruined” him as a guitarist
Within the confines of the expansive The Beatles discography, there are as many moments of musical joy as there are points of personal pain. It’s the duality of all pop songs. While most of the notes will bounce off the airwaves with a carefree joviality, they will sometimes hide behind them dark thoughts, unwelcome feelings and the worst emotions.
Despite the image of their bopping heads smiling into the Ed Sullivan Show cameras may be ingrained into our collective consciousness, there were some dark times for the Fab Four. Most of the band’s creative output was gilded with the kind of golden artistry that has seen them rocksteady at the top of the pop music pile for six decades, those songs often belied the blood, sweat and tears that went into the writing and recording of them. And, in the band’s grand tapestry, nobody suffered more powerfully than George Harrison.
Crippled by a fear of fame, as well as a disabling paranoia that would steadily increase over the years, Harrison was quickly dubbed the ‘Quiet Beatle’ by the press, as the enormous personalities of Paul McCartney and John Lennon came to the fore with a tongue in the cheek and a wink cocked and loaded for any would-be dame. It was the same in the studio, too. The duo were a songwriting partnership that nobody could really stand up to, and their domination of the band’s discography speaks resolutely of the chokehold they enacted, especially in the group’s formative years. However, as the band’s esteem grew and the confidence of Harrison went with it, the guitarist would outgrow his position as the principal axeman and contribute his own songs.
For this reason, Harrison’s song list within The Beatles grows massively as the band nears their end. Starting with ‘Only A Northern Song’, Harrison would contribute more and more to the songwriting process, with songs such as ‘Something’, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’ acknowledged as some of The Beatles’ best. But, for Harrison, each song on the album came with the difficulty of having to knock a Lennon-McCartney composition off its position to find placement on the album.
This scenario was indicative of the troubles Harrison experienced within the band, as Bob Dylan once said: “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.”
The reality is, soon enough, Harrison would find the powerhouse of Lennon and McCartney as a stifling entity. They would, either on purpose or through their hubris, reject his songs, deflate his belief in his own work and leave him on the brink of quitting the band occasionally. But while Harrison would quickly reunite with Lennon after the band’s break up, things were a lot frostier with Paul McCartney. Though the duo would makeup, their relationship was tense for many years.
Glyn Johns, the engineer/producer who was originally tapped to helm the Let It Be sessions, explained that Harrison In an excerpt from Graeme Thomson’s book George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door and subsequently published in The Daily Mail. “It was very uncomfortable. To watch this begin and be there in the immediate aftermath was very unpleasant.” Also speaking to Thomson for the book, Harrison’s former wife Patti Boyd characterised her husband at the time as “terribly unhappy. The Beatles made him unhappy, with the constant arguments. They were vicious to each other. That was really upsetting, and even more so for him because he had this new spiritual avenue. Like a little brother, he was pushed into the background. He would come home from recording and be full of anger. It was a very bad state that he was in.”
According to Boyd, the root of the problem was between Harrison and McCartney. “George saw Paul as difficult. They would tolerate each other, but I think George basically didn’t like Paul’s personality. I just think they really didn’t love each other.” When the band finally split, Harrison’s feelings were seemingly unleashed, and it led to the star writing a few songs about their troubled times together, including ‘When We Was Fab’, ‘Wah Wah’ and ‘Sue Me, Sue You Blues’ which, despite being aimed at The Beatles as a group, were pointed a little more intently at McCartney.
During the Let It Be sessions came one of the duo’s most famous interactions as McCartney attempts to teach Harrison a part for ‘Two of Us’. As McCartney remains exasperated that Harrison can’t quite get the guitar to sound how he likes, suggesting they make it “simpler” for Harrison, the conversation gives way to Harrison hastily replied: “OK, well, I don’t mind. I’ll play ya know, whatever you want me to play. Or I won’t play at all if that’s what you want. Whatever it is that’ll please you, I’ll do it.”
It was a moment symptomatic of their relationship as McCartney’s ideas and musical prowess threatened to overshadow any creativity Harrison had reserved for a project. In 1975, during a conversation with Allan Freeman, Harrison was now a changed entity. In promotion of ‘Dark Horse’, the songwriter had not only achieved his personal goal of becoming a complete solo artist, but professionally, he was also one of the most successful members of the band. But he still wasn’t able to shirk all of the questions about The Beatles.
During this conversation, he revealed that McCartney had not only hindered his songwriting but also held back his guitar playing: “I had no confidence in myself as a guitar player having spent so many years with Paul McCartney.” It would appear that all those years of being made to feel inferior to the great Macca had troubled the musician, “he ruined me as a guitar player.”
The typically stylish Harrison has always been famed for his unique musical stylings, and it’s unlikely that McCartney enacted any permanent damage. However, to pretend that the constant fighting between the two didn’t knock the confidence of Harrison and perhaps hold him back from achieving the above goals in a more timely fashion is to ignore a large part of their long and winding relationship.
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