“He’s better than the lot of ya”: The one musician George Harrison called ‘The Governor’
There has always been something uniquely British about George Harrison. His sense of dry wit and continual self-deprecation always endeared me to him more intently than the other Beatles. Paul McCartney always felt more like a slightly annoying, if not totally triumphant, co-worker who you try to avoid at social events. John Lennon, equally, seemed so resolute in his feelings that his unwavering confidence meant he seemed more at home in America. Ringo Starr always seemed like a laugh, but didn’t feel like he’d offer too much beyond the first pint’s worth of conversation.
No, Harrison seemed like the kind of bloke you could meet grabbing a paper and end up spending the day with, charming and cutting in all the right places. It meant that when I caught a glimpse of the moustachioed musician speaking about one of his favourite songwriters of all time as part of a daily doom scroll, an almost instantaneous shudder went down my spine.
Paying someone a compliment isn’t exactly anti-British, but it doesn’t sit all that well with our penchant for pursing our lips so tight we could burst. As the clip moved on, it provided a shower of praise from one man to another, with Harrison claiming Dylan to be the ultimate songwriter, “better than the lot of ya” and a man whose music he always listens to, even claiming (no doubt with his tongue firmly in his cheek) that he would name his next child Dylan. An intense feeling of unease swept across me, however, when he uttered the very simple words “he’s the governor”.
There are few monikers more life-affirming in British slang than being referred to as “the governor”. Usually delivered with a confident swagger of working-class wit, the term is reserved not just for those who have achieved highly or ascertained some control over their surroundings, but who have done so and managed to be appreciated and revered by their peers. Governor is a democratic term in more ways than one.
The thing is, it’s hard to disagree. There is no songwriter more widely acclaimed than Bob Dylan. His position has been hard-earned through decades of high-quality output. He had to struggle through misrepresentation, through outright beligerence when he “went electric” and general discouragement whenever he decides to take a step on stage and perform his songs, not how they sound on record, but however he deems they should be played.
Dylan and Harrison would share a devoted friendship before the latter’s death in 2001. It would be Dylan who encouraged Harrison to write his own songs. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2007, he said: “George had an uncanny ability to just play chords that didn’t seem to be connected in any kind of way and come up with a melody and a song. I don’t know anybody else who could do that, either. What can I tell you? He was from that old line of playing where every note was a note to be counted.”
In the same interview, Dylan explained why he believed Harrison was hamstrung by his bandmates in The Beatles. The legendary singer-songwriter remarked, “George got stuck with being the Beatle that had to fight to get songs on records because of Lennon and McCartney. 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.”
Even still, with Harrison having shared his band practices with both John Lennon and Paul McCartney, being able to call Eric Clapton and Ravi Shankar close friends, it is surprising that no other artist can come close to Dylan for him. But there is a good chance that if you asked any of the aforementioned men for their own pick, they would point towards the ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ singer too.
Dylan would become the catalyst for Harrison to truly recognise himself, not as a member of The Beatles but as the individual he was. It was an American who would give the likely lad from Liverpool his first hefty dose of confidence. It might seem odd for an artist as quintessentially British as Harrison to have found inspiration in Dylan or indeed Ravi Shankar, but the truth is that the ability to open himself up to the culture of others is part of what makes Harrison so British in the first place.
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