The George Harrison solo show that disappointed John Lennon: “It wasn’t the greatest thing in history”
There was no rule saying that John Lennon needed to have warm feelings about his former bandmates after The Beatles broke up.
The fact that they split up at all was because Lennon needed to move on from being stuck in the same band for so long, and he didn’t want to find himself spinning his wheels and not being able to make the kind of music that he wanted to with Yoko Ono. But even if he was massively angry at Paul McCartney when he started making subtle jabs at him on ‘Too Many People’, it’s not like he necessarily had the rest of the Threetles in his corner on everything.
Ringo Starr was the one who was most willing to get the band back together, but even when jamming with his old friend on the album Imagine, there were more than a few times when he even thought things got out of hand. The drummer never approved of Lennon’s attacks towards Macca on ‘How Do You Sleep’, but it turned out Lennon did have a bone to pick with Starr’s career as well.
Sentimental Journey was nothing but fluff as far as he was concerned, and while he may have been right about Starr not finding his footing as a crooner, it’s not like he wasn’t willing to give him a few hits along the way. In fact, Starr might be one of the only bandmates that Lennon never really had that much of a falling out with, but there was always going to be some bad blood between him and McCartney for a while.
Then again, McCartney was the one person who could kick Lennon into high gear. He admitted to liking a lot of what McCartney had done on Band on the Run, and while he didn’t care much for his debut album, the fact that ‘Coming Up’ led to him coming out of retirement for Double Fantasy was enough proof that the ‘Nerk Twins’ were still willing to push each other even went they weren’t working together.
But after George Harrison roared out of the gate with All Things Must Pass, things did start to hit a bit of a slump. It’s hard to say that Harrison was waning by any stretch, but when he started coming out with records like Dark Horse and preaching about his beliefs, a lot of people simply didn’t want to listen to what he had to say, and that included Lennon when he first saw his old mate perform.
He was more than happy to see his old mate performing, but Lennon felt that it was Harrison’s turn to take a flogging in the press, saying, “It wasn’t the greatest thing in history. The guy went through some kind of mill. It was probably his turn to get smacked. When we were all together there was periods when the Beatles were in, the Beatles were out, no matter what we were doing. The public, including the media, are sometimes a bit sheeplike and if the ball starts rolling, well, it’s just that somebody’s in, somebody’s out. George is out for the moment. And I think it didn’t matter what he did on tour.”
Granted, that might have been due to what Harrison was doing while he was on tour. There were already a few tunes that didn’t resonate with fans, but since his next few shows included him doing alternate versions of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and changing the lyrics to Lennon’s ‘In My Life’, it was hard to tell whether he was trying to recontextualise the songs or having a bit of fun with what everyone expected.
But even if Lennon was right about Harrison’s tour being a bit drab, it’s hard to hold Harrison at fault when he didn’t really want more. He liked the idea of playing music with his friends, and while he was more than happy to make records whenever he could, his goal was to have fun rather than worry about having the kinds of hits The Beatles had. He already had that part of his career, so everything else was him having fun.
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