George Harrison Exploded at Yoko Ono For Eating His Food
Yoko Ono’s constant presence in the studio began to wear on George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr. Things grew so tense that, eventually, Harrison blew up over a digestive biscuit. The Beatles had always been protective of their food, and when he saw Ono eating his snack, he began screaming about her.
George Harrison began shouting about Yoko Ono in the studio
The Beatles were so protective over their food that they were not allowed to share snacks. Therefore, when Harrison noticed Ono eating his digestive biscuits, it became a problem.
“After a moment or two, [George] began staring bug-eyed out the control room window,” engineer Geoff Emerick wrote in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles. “Curious, I looked over his shoulder. Yoko had gotten out of bed and was slowly padding across the studio floor, finally coming to a stop at Harrison’s Leslie cabinet, which had a pack of McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits on top. Idly, she began opening the packet and delicately removed a single biscuit. Just as the morsel reached her mouth, Harrison could contain himself no longer. ‘THAT B****!’”
Emerick explained that the outburst shocked everyone in the control room, but they knew immediately what was making him angry.
“‘She’s taken one of my biscuits!’ Harrison explained. He wasn’t the least bit sheepish either. As far as he was concerned, those biscuits were his property, and no one was allowed to go near him,” Emerick wrote. “Lennon began shouting back at him, but there was little he could say to defend his wife (who, oblivious, was happily munching away in the studio) because he shared exactly the same attitude toward food.”
John Lennon said he couldn’t forgive his bandmate for his behavior
The incident, when compiled with many others, made it difficult for John Lennon to forgive Harrison for his behavior. He felt that Harrison and McCartney had mistreated Ono, and he held on to this anger for a long time.
“Ringo was all right, so was Maureen, but the other two really gave it to us,” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1971. “I’ll never forgive them, I don’t care what f***in’ s*** about Hare Krishna and God and Paul with his ‘Well, I’ve changed me mind.’ I can’t forgive ’em for that, really. Although I can’t help still loving them either.”
George Harrison’s frustration with Yoko Ono continued after The Beatles broke up
While Harrison and Lennon remained friends after The Beatles broke up, the former never fully warmed to Ono. When Harrison planned his Concert for Bangladesh, he invited Lennon to perform. Lennon agreed, so long as Ono could perform with him. Harrison refused, prompting a fierce argument between the former bandmates. As a result, Lennon did not perform in the concert.
Years later, in the 1980s, Harrison visited the office of a Warner Music executive who had a picture of Lennon and Ono. Per the book George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door by Graeme Thomson, Harrison scribbled “lewd graffiti” on the image, captioning it “The Traveling Arseholes.”
