The best rock voice George Harrison ever heard: “The greatest”
The entire idea of becoming one of the biggest musicians of all time probably wasn’t something that George Harrison planned on with The Beatles.
He wanted to be the best musician that he could whenever he wrote a song or played a solo, but the rest of the world had other plans when The Beatles first crash-landed in America. These four lads from Liverpool were a godsend for teenagers everywhere, but Harrison knew that there were many artists who deserved to be remembered a lot more than they were.
But before the Fab Four changed the world, a lot of people were still viewing rock and roll as nothing more than a fad. The biggest names in the genre had already fallen by the wayside, and when you look at the way that culture was heading, people were going to have to settle for people like Ricky Nelson and Fabian if they wanted anything that sounded remotely close to rock and roll. So Harrison was simply the person there to help remind everyone where the best music came from.
Because a lot of what Harrison listened to went back to the days when rock and roll was just getting born. He was always interested in the guitar, but aside from falling love with Elvis Presley when he heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, he was open to hearing countless other artists that had something that they wanted to express. Ravi Shankar had a great sense of himself whenever he performed, and Django Reinhart made everything look easy when he performed, but no one had the same kind of raucous voice that Little Richard had whenever he made a record.
If Presley was considered a bit too risque for the times, Richard was like looking at a true dynamo brought to life. Half of what he was singing about usually went right over the heads of most parents, but the magic came from the way he sang. Every single rock vocalist since has tried their hand at copying that kind of voice, and Harrison knew what that voice sounded like up close as soon as he toured with him.
He was a God-gifted singer whenever he opened his mouth, and Harrison felt that there was no one in The Beatles that could match him, saying, “My influences in rock were the obvious ones, really. Elvis, Little Richard. It was the best stuff and I still think that’s the best stuff. I don’t even think The Beatles did rock and roll, really. We took music into other areas. We could rock but not like Little Richard. That was the greatest.”
But that didn’t mean that the Fabs weren’t going to do their best to try and copy what Richard was doing. McCartney was the one that could actually pull off that kind of voice whenever it came time for them to sing tunes like ‘Long Tall Sally’, and while there were more than a few songs that had that same fire as Richard had, they were always going to be competing for second place whenever they stepped up to Richard’s position.
So if they couldn’t outdo Richard at his own game, the only logical thing was to go in the opposite direction. There was no point in making the same kind of tunes that everyone else was, so making records like Rubber Soul and Revolver was their way of soaking in all of their influences and making their own renditions of whatever they were working on.
A lot of what ended up in Harrison’s bag of tricks usually came from the days when The Beatles adopted the skiffle side of rock and roll, but Richard was still the gold standard that everyone aspired to be. No one was going to have the same flair that he did, but being able to look on in wide-eyed amazement was the next best thing when he flung his leg on top of his piano whenever he performed.
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