George Harrison Could Only Get Any Peace When He Locked Himself in the Bathroom 

When George Harrison and Pattie Boyd began dating, she noted how difficult touring was for him. He went long periods of time without seeing her, but he also felt that he could never get a moment of peace. Between the screaming fans, photoshoots, concerts, and media obligations, Harrison rarely got a moment to himself. Boyd said that if Harrison wanted a moment of peace, he had to lock himself in the bathroom.

Pattie Boyd said she hardly recognized her boyfriend when he performed 

Harrison was a major celebrity when he met Boyd, but she rarely felt like she was dating a famous person. She hardly recognized him when she saw him perform.

“I almost forgot that George was a famous pop star,” she wrote in the book Wonderful Tonight. “As far as I was concerned he was just my boyfriend — I saw the Beatles performing for the first time on Ready Steady Go! It was the pop show on television, presented by Cathy McGowan, and everyone watched it. There was George, doing what he did. I couldn’t believe he looked so different, almost as if he was in uniform. Until then I’d had no experience of people who adopted a stage persona that was entirely different from their private one.” 

George Harrison sought out peace in his hotel bathrooms

Soon after they began dating, Harrison embarked on The Beatles’ 1964 tour. The busy tour schedule helped launch the band to unprecedented levels of global success, but Harrison did not like this type of fame. 

“George hated it,” Boyd wrote. “Even when he got away from the fans, he said, there were screaming policemen and lord mayors, their wives, hotel managers, and their entourage.”

She explained that he could only get a moment of peace when he shut himself in a hotel bathroom. He needed the moment of solitude when everything was so chaotic around him.

“The only place he got any peace was locked into the bathroom in his hotel suite,” she explained. “I think the Beatles were quite frightened of their fans, who always wanted to touch them. They might easily have been crushed under such a weight of humanity.”

George Harrison later derived peace from spirituality

In his later years with The Beatles, Harrison found a sense of peace through spirituality. He meditated and chanted Hare Krishna. He said his spirituality allowed him to envision a life outside of fame. 

“It wasn’t until the experience of the 60s really hit,” he said in 1982, per The Guardian. “You know, having been successful and meeting everybody we thought worth meeting and finding out they weren’t worth meeting, and having had more hit records than everybody else and having done it bigger than everybody else. It was like reaching the top of a wall and then looking over and seeing that there’s so much more on the other side. So I felt it was part of my duty to say, ‘Oh, OK, maybe you are thinking this is all you need — to be rich and famous — but actually it isn’t.'”