Credit: Far Out / Alamy

“Had chips”: The day George Harrison left The Beatles

Tue 7 April 2026 18:00, UK

For most music fans, the world may as well have ended in 1969 when The Beatles split up.

Despite breaking America and becoming the world’s biggest band just five years prior in ‘64, life before The Beatles had begun to feel like forever ago – their impact on modern music was so profound that it was difficult to remember a time when they didn’t exist, releasing at least one album a year and evolving the creative process in doing so.

Outside the walls of the studio, it felt like the apocalypse, but from the inner sanctum, it was a collective sigh of relief, because this band of brothers had been cooped up together for too long, and their trust was slowly disintegrating into resentment, not least between the band’s two pioneering leaders, John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

But the most interesting turn from The Beatles’ split wasn’t really to do with their dynamic songwriting partners; it was instead the forgotten middle sibling whose budding creative genius had become stifled in the band.

Ever since his return from India and the tutelage of Ravi Shankar in 1966, George Harrison had been contributing a whole lot more than rhythm guitar for the band. His spiritual voyage had carved out a unique songwriting style that somewhat bridged the dark introspection of Lennon with McCartney’s melodic sensibilities to write some of the band’s most interesting tracks.

‘Taxman’, ‘Something’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’ were indisputable greats and showcased Harrison as a prolific writing force. But by that point, the hierarchy was set in stone, and the third songwriter could never quite prove his worth to his peers. McCartney in particular would continue to stifle Harrison’s vision, and in those final recording sessions, it had finally reached breaking point.

On January 10th, 1969, while working on the Let It Be sessions, Harrison walked out of a rehearsal session and decided his time within the band had reached an end. For a week, The Beatles had been rehearsing at Twickenham Film Studios, where they were being filmed for a documentary which has now been immortalised in Peter Jackson’s film Get Back.

As the footage has since shown, tensions were high within the band during those days. Fraying relationships, creative differences and of course, Yoko Ono’s constant presence in the room resulted in a simmering sense of animosity between songs. But it was while they spent the morning working on ‘Get Back’ that Harrison’s final straw was broken, as McCartney continually disagreed with his creative suggestions, ultimately discouraging his contributions altogether.

George Harrison’s diary entry from that day shows his rather nonchalant attitude towards the whole thing, as he wrote, “Got up, went to Twickenham, rehearsed until lunch time – left The Beatles – went home and in the Evening did King of Fuh at Trident Studio – had chips later at Klaus and Christine’s, went home.”

Harrison did a U-turn on his exit, in a bid to get the record done with the rest of the band, who too were trudging along against their own will. Let It Be would eventually come out in May of next year, and the greatest band to ever do it would cease to exist.