How the “young kid” George Harrison helped shape some of Paul McCartney’s best songs
George Harrison always had to fight twice as hard to have his voice heard. He grew up in Liverpool as the youngest of four children, joining The Quarrymen – later to become The Beatles – in February 1958. After the arrival of Ringo Starr during the band’s stint in Hamberg, Harrison once again found himself the youngest of four, something that would define his role in the group for years to come.
Some time ago now, Mojo published a retrospective interview with Paul McCartney, during which he was asked about dubbing George Harrison “the kid” of The Beatles in the band’s early days. When asked how long Harrison was treated as the infant of the group, Paul said: “I probably lasted a couple of years. Just because of his age, in a group of men who’ve grown up together, particularly round about their teenage years – age matters. In John’s case, who was three years older than George – that meant a lot.”
Paul continued: “John was probably a bit embarrassed at having sort of ‘a young kid’ around, just ‘cos that happens in a bunch of guys. It lasted for a little while. It was particularly noticeable when George got deported from Hamburg [in November 1960] for being underage. Otherwise, when he first joined the group, he was a very fresh-faced looking kid. I remember introducing him to John and thinking, ‘Wow, there’s a little bit of an age difference.’ It wasn’t so much for me ‘cos I was kind of in the middle. But as we grew up it ceased to make a difference. And those kind of differences iron themselves out.”
Paul’s comments remind us that Harrison’s age greatly impacted how he was treated within the group. For years, Harrison lived under the shadow of the Lennon-McCartney writing partnership, contributing the odd song here and there, many of which were accepted out of a sense of obligation. It would take George a couple of years to redefine his role in the group, eventually providing tracks like ‘Something’, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’. But even in the early days, Harrison proved himself to be a powerful collaborator.
On being asked to name a song that benefitted from Harrison’s involvement, McCartney struggled to pick just one. “There were quite a few,” he began. “I would think immediately of my song ‘And I Love Her’, which I brought in pretty much as a finished song. But George put on do-do-do-do [sings the signature riff], which is very much a part of the song. Y’know, the opening riff. That, to me, made a stunning difference to the song and whenever I play the song now, I remember the moment George came up with it. That song would not be the same without it.”
McCartney went on to note that Harrison’s trademark solos were “very distinctive and made the records. He didn’t sound like any other guitarist,” he said. “The very early days we were really kids and we didn’t think at all professionally. We were just kids being led through this amazing wonderland of the music business. We didn’t know how it went at all – a fact that I’m kind of glad of ‘cos I think it meant that we made it up. So we ended up making things up that people then would later emulate rather than us emulating stuff that we’d been told.”
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