The last time George Harrison saw John Lennon before his death: “He was nice”
It’s both the most miraculous and saddest thing about The Beatles when you remember that, at the end of the day, they were just four friends.
Meeting as mere teenagers back in Liverpool, the band was gathered through church fêtes and childhood reputations for the most part, as Paul McCartney met John Lennon at a church summer party, and George Harrison was grandfathered in as a friend of a friend who they knew could play rock and roll guitar. Ringo Starr came later, but even still, all the boys were already familiar with him as another regular figure around the clubs.
Strip it back, and that’s all it really was: four friends with undeniable musical chemistry, a wide mix of influences, and a shared desire to have a good time. When you picture moments like their days in Hamburg or that first American tour, it almost feels like you missed out, not just on being in the crowd, but on being there afterwards, in the pub, part of the gang.
Their friendship and banter powered the entire beginning, as it was really their humour and charm that got them noticed before they were musically all that good. So it makes sense that it was only when the foundation broke down that the band started to collapse too, leading to an eventual split when the connections became too frayed.
The most heartbreaking fact about the band, though, is when you remember that all four of the Fabs didn’t make it to old age. After the breakdown of the group, it took a good while to rebuild relationships, and it was always going to be a dark cloud haunting the tale that while McCartney and Lennon had made up to some degree before 1980, the two lifelong friends weren’t quite back to being best mates by the time the latter was shot and killed at only 40.
McCartney grappled with that in his own way through songs like ‘Here Today’, which still prompts a tear from him when he sings them live. He still brings all the memories of the band together on stage, but alongside mourning Lennon, he’s also grieving Harrison, who also passed too early at 58. There’s comfort in thinking that maybe somewhere in some spiritual afterlife, the two are hanging out. Perhaps it would look a little like Harrison’s memory of the last time he and Lennon got together, recalled, “I was in New York at his house, at the Dakota’s (building)”.
It was nothing wild or extravagant. It was simply the two old pals spending time together as Harrison continued, “He was nice, just sort of running around the house making dinner”. One thing stood out to him, as he noticed, “He was actually playing a lot of Indian music, which surprised me, because he always used to be like, a little bit (annoyed) when I was playing it. So he had hundreds of cassettes of all kinds of stuff. He grew into it.”
With the quiet one being the first to walk out of The Beatles because he felt his work was ignored, and his influences shrugged off, there could have been scope for him to be a bit put out or irritated by his old bandmate only now being open to listening to the music he loved, but he wasn’t. Instead, it felt like a moment of kinship, of connection, as if Lennon finally got into these tunes because they reminded him of his friend.
After Lennon’s death, it was weird. Already scattered around the world and rarely seeing each other, the absence was now brutal and clear, yet the spiritual Harrison always held a belief: “We will all meet again somewhere down the line”.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.