The Beatles’ First Manager Said George Harrison Didn’t Put up With Any ‘Bulls*******’
Anyone close to George Harrison knew he had a very low tolerance for nonsense. The Beatles’ first manager, Allan Williams, knew this well, as did George’s friends.
Allan Williams said George Harrison had no time for ‘bulls*******’
In George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door, The Beatles’ first manager, Allan Williams, said George had a very low tolerance for shenanigans.
“Allan Williams, who booked The Beatles at his Liverpool club the Jacaranda and later took them to Hamburg, describes Harrison as ‘nice to get on with, but he wouldn’t suffer fools,'” Graeme Thomson wrote. “‘He always had a sharp tongue. Crikey, yeah! He didn’t put up with any bullshitters.'”
Thompson continued, “He was capable of a kind of blissful clarity of thought and perception often only accessible to a child, although through his life he frequently struggled to articulate it to his own satisfaction; he also had a similarly childlike knack for uncomfortably straight-talking.
“He seemed to have the truth gene implanted into his DNA long before his consciousness was expanded by drugs and spiritual awareness; fame and adulthood failed to politely polish his rough edges. There was not always a great deal of clear blue water between honesty and plain rudeness. ‘Oh yes, he was pretty blunt!’ says Bramwell [a school friend].”
When he first joined The Beatles, George didn’t take any of John Lennon’s nonsense either. He always put his bandmate in his place. George’s tolerance for baloney only became smaller.
Jim Keltner said George had a ‘bulls*** meter’
In the 1970s, George met one of his closest friends, drummer Jim Keltner. Besides Ringo Starr, his fellow Beatle, George trusted Keltner the most out of any other drummer.
Keltner knew George well and said that the former Beatle had a pretty good “bulls*** meter.”
“He had one of the greatest bulls*** meters of anybody I know,” Keltner said in a video about the Concert for George. “He could see right away something in you that if it wasn’t right, that was it. That always made me feel kinda good, like, you know, he didn’t see my bulls*** [Laughs].”
The people who didn’t activate George’s “bulls*** meter” got to be close to him. George made the people in his life feel special. However, that doesn’t mean he stopped being blunt.
Tom Petty said the former Beatle said everything that crossed his mind
George’s fellow Traveling Wilbury, Tom Petty, certainly knew how blunt he could be. During an interview with Rolling Stone, Petty said the ex-Beatle hardly shut up. Petty guessed his nickname, “the quiet Beatle,” came about because the rest of The Beatles were just louder than George.
“George had a lot to say,” Petty explained. “Boy, did he have a lot to say. That’s hysterical to me, you know, that he was known as the quiet one. I assume he got that name because the other ones were so much louder.
“I mean, they were very loud people. [laughs] One time he told me, ‘Me and Olivia had Paul and Linda over the other night, and you would have thought there were a hundred people in the house, it was so loud.'”
George never shut up, but he also didn’t hold back some things he should’ve. Petty said George was painfully honest, but that was because the former Beatle was already on to the next thing in life.
“I’ll tell you, nobody I’ve encountered ever lived his life more every day than George did,” Petty continued. “He crammed in a lot of living and didn’t waste his time. And he had an idea a minute. Some nights he would have so many great ideas.
“George really said everything that crossed his mind. I used to say, ‘You really can’t get a thought to your brain without it slipping out your mouth.’ And he was painfully honest. It was an endearing trait, but sometimes you hoped that he wouldn’t be quite as honest as he was going to be.”
George was always blunt because his life was; life is short, death is sure. He always lived in the here and now because he knew he would die one day, and welcomed that. Plus, George was done with nonsense after years of being a Beatle. He experienced a lot of shananegians that tried derailing him on his path of spirituality.
