George Harrison - The Travelling Wilbury

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The one musical “twat” George Harrison thought had no talent

Fri 24 July 2026 17:00, UK

When talking about the attributes of every single Beatle, George Harrison was always going to be the most honest member of the group.

John Lennon did have his moments where he would be upfront about his feelings and some of the horrible behaviour he got up to in the past, but ever since the day he got up onstage, Harrison knew he didn’t need to waste time lying through his teeth and keeping up the charade that every other rock and roll star did whenever he gave an interview. He was going to say what was on his mind, and he didn’t always have to be cordial about it.

It was already bad enough for him to have harsh feelings about his bandmates after the band broke up, but when looking at his long-term relationships with the Fab Four, Paul McCartney was always going to be a bit of a touchy subject. He was always treated like a little brother by Macca, even at the best of times, and he wasn’t going to be shackled by that once he made it big on his own.

He had a whole wealth of songs to explore on his own, and he didn’t need to spend his time worrying about what the rest of the band thought about what he was doing. He was satisfied enough knowing that he was making some of the most spiritual music of his career, but the idea of whoring himself out to the tabloids and going on every single show to play one of his tunes was never his idea of a good time.

His goal was to get people to think, but that’s not what those rock and roll shows were all about. No one was getting on Top of the Pops thinking that they were going to preach to the people with their music, and while Harrison wasn’t exactly trying to open everyone’s third eye at the same time or anything, he did know that American Bandstand was everything that it was cracked up to be, anyway.

After all, some of the biggest stars at the time were more flash than anything else, and when looking at the way that Dick Clark presented the acts, Harrison felt that it was all about selling records more than the music. The most important pieces of the show usually came from when someone made a controversial statement when they were being interviewed, and since The Beatles had outgrown the TV show format by the mid-1960s, Harrison was a bit more honest than usual, talking about Clark’s job.

The man had been known as a champion for rock and roll throughout his career, but Harrison didn’t see what all the hype was really about, saying, “I’ll tell you, I don’t know what Americans think of him, but from the Beatles’ point of view, Dick Clark – I don’t know what he ever did with his own talent. Y’know, all he does is send you letters: ‘Can I have a clip of you doing this?’ You get to the point of saying, ‘Fuck off, Dick, think of your own ideas, you’re not getting any more of our shit. Just make your own films and rip off other people.’ Y’know, he’s a twat.”

A lot of that may have been about Harrison becoming a bit of a curmudgeon, but it all comes from the way that promoters liked to play the game back then. There’s always a fine line between a reporter who wants to get a quote that will make them famous and one who seems genuinely interested in the music that you’re making, and Harrison didn’t need a lot of convincing to realise what Clark was after.

It’s that constant pressing that made Clark one of the kings of rock and roll at the time, but it wasn’t always what the artists might have had in mind. He was interested in churning out a product, and Harrison’s music was worth so much more than the standard pop fluff that Clark was used to working with.