George Harrison Didn’t Understand Why His Mother Answered Fan Mail
George Harrison loved his mother dearly, but they disagreed on some things, including her answering fan mail. From the day that George came home and asked for his first guitar, Louise Harrison supported her son. She encouraged him musically and let him leave school to travel to Hamburg, Germany, with The Beatles.
When the band played at The Cavern Club, she always cheered them on in the front row. After The Beatles became famous and Beatlemania exploded, the only way she could support her son was to support his fans. So, she answered fan mail. All fans deserved a personal answer for loving him so much.
George Harrison went off to be a Beatle while his mother stayed home and answered fan mail
The Beatles’ fame didn’t just affect them. It also affected their parents and guardians. John Lennon’s Aunt Mimi didn’t associate much with Beatles fans. However, Ringo Starr and George’s parents willingly invited bus-loads of fans who’d traveled to Liverpool from all over the world into their homes. What could they do?
Soon, excited girls started visiting and pointing at George’s house. Louise, in particular, made an effort to interact with her son’s fans as much as possible, answered fan mail, and communicated with fan clubs.
In Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison, Joshua M. Greene wrote, “Harold’s hesitations were swept away in the deluge of his son’s success, brothers Harry and Pete basked in the reflection of their kid brother’s glow, and mother Louise looked after George’s fans.
“Each week she traveled to Beatles Fan Club headquarters in Liverpool to pick up batches of promotional photos. Then she returned home and stayed up late answering fan mail longhand, often writing two thousand letters per month. Shelves along one wall of their new home displayed gifts sent from around the world.”
On George’s 21st birthday, almost a million cards, letters, and gifts arrived at the Harrison house. Seven truckloads of mail filled their home’s entry. The postal department said it was the most mail delivered to one address outside the royal family. Meanwhile, screaming fans mobbed the house. Some even kissed the doorknob.
Suddenly, Harold and Louise became celebrities, just like their son. “People always think we must be different now, because of George,” Louise said. “We went to a fan’s wedding the other day, and people said, ‘How can you enjoy yourselves with the likes of us?’ They expect us to wear mink all the time.”
Louise also became pen pals with a fan for five years. She told Lorraine O’Malley about what was happening in The Beatles and even some personal things about her son.
George disagreed with his mother answering fan mail
In a 1968 interview, Louise explained that she got fan mail from most parts of the world. She said when George saw all the fan mail, he always told her she was more popular than him.
Louise said, “He has a good laugh about it, especially when he reads some of them, they say, ‘Dear Mum,’ you know, he says, ‘Who’s this then?’ [Laughs].”
George might’ve been good-natured in her presence, but Greene wrote that he wasn’t impressed with his mother and her fan mail.
The author wrote, “Like all mothers and sons, they had had their occasional differences. Fan mail, for instance. Why she had insisted on always answering fan letters was beyond him. It was naive.
“To her way of thinking, a letter from a stranger halfway around the world deserved a personalized response and maybe even a snippet of lining from one of her son’s old coats. It never seemed to occur to her that the letter might have been sent by a stalker, or that someone had found their home address and chose to invade their privacy.
“Then again, this was the woman who had taken on extra jobs at Christmas when George was a boy so that he and his siblings would have holiday gifts. It was Louise who had bought him his first guitar and who had urged his father to let him go to Germany despite their concerns for his safety. He wanted to play music, and that had been enough reason for her. Her love was unstinting.”
Beatles fans awarded Louise for her unconditional love for them
Fans worldwide recognized Louise’s unconditional love for every one of them, and they rewarded her for it.
Greene wrote that on one of the Harrisons’ walls hung a gold plaque from the United Beatles Fans of Pomona, California. The plaque read: ‘Presented to Harold and Louise Harrison for the time and effort they have shown to Beatle People everywhere.'”
George continued to let his mother write her fan mail, even though he didn’t understand why she did it. Louise responded to fans, especially O’Malley until she died in 1970. George wrote a song called “Deep Blue” while she died. Without Louise Harrison, there’d be no George Harrison. She should have more than a gold plaque; she needs a gold statue.
