Tom Petty strongly disagreed with George Harrison’s ‘Quiet Beatle’ nickname
Given the fact that The Beatles were the biggest band of the 20th Century by some stretch, it’s unsurprising that some fans wanted to place their own characteristics on each of the members in order to understand them better. George Harrison, for example, was given the label of the ‘Quiet Beatle’.
Yet, Harrison was not the only member of the Fab Four to have been given a characteristic tag: John Lennon was the supposed witty member of the group, Paul McCartney was the cute one, and Ringo was “just Ringo”. Interestingly though, according to Tom Petty, George Harrison’s ‘Quiet Beatle’ tag was all wrong.
Petty had played with Harrison in the Traveling Wilburys alongside Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra. Petty once told Rolling Stone that Harrison would “never shut up” in a very comical take. He added: “He was the best hang you could imagine”.
The reason that Harrison had been given the ‘Quiet Beatle’ label in the first place was that it was Lennon and McCartney who most often took on the responsibility of talking in interviews. It was the leading duo who wrote most of the Beatles’ songs, after all.
However, according to Petty’s comments, this did not mean that Harrison was quiet behind the scenes – it just meant that the journalists of the time were more interested in the relationship between Lennon and McCartney. Presumably, though, Harrison could not have cared less what they thought of him. Mick Jagger once said that Harrison could be quiet on occasion, but he could also be “funny and combative”.
Harrison’s wife Olivia also once noted that he would not be quiet at home either. Apparently, he would walk around the house shouting out words at random in order to see what kind of words would work in a song. “George would throw out words one after another,” she said, “He knew he’d find the word. He was good at that. Sometimes he was quiet and just thought about it, sometimes he just kept writing down words that began with ‘S’ until he got the right one. It didn’t matter what they were — he knew he would get to something.”
So, Harrison’s ‘Quiet Beatle’ tag was something of a journalistic invention rather than being rooted in any sort of reality. Like us all, Harrison could be quiet on occasion, but he was also affable, funny, and a social character too.
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