George Harrison Was Happy With His Position in The Beatles: ‘I Didn’t Want to Be One of Them out There, in the Front’
Despite failing to penetrate the great Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership, George Harrison was pleased with his position in The Beatles. Years later, he said he wouldn’t have liked being in the front anyway. So, it all worked out in hindsight.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney often put George Harrison in a difficult position in The Beatles
In the early days of The Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney appointed themselves the chief songwriters. Neither George nor Ringo Starr ever showed interest. However, that changed.
In 1992, George told Guitar World that he didn’t initially think about writing songs. “To get it straight, if I hadn’t been with John and Paul I probably wouldn’t have thought about writing a song, at least not until much later,” George explained. “They were writing all these songs, many of which I thought were great. Some were just average, but, obviously, a high percentage were quality material. I thought to myself, ‘If they can do it, I’m going to have a go.'”
In 1963, George experimented to see if he could write a song as good as his bandmates. The result was “Don’t Bother Me.” However, it complicated the group’s dynamic once George started writing more. Rather than welcome George’s songs, John and Paul turned most of them down. They gave him a quota of one to two songs per album, which slowly increased later.
The group’s producer, George Martin, didn’t like George coming forward with songs either. Initially, George’s songwriting was “kind of tolerated,” Martin said. “‘Oh, yes, we must have a George song on this thing,'” Martin would say condescendingly.
Soon, George had more songs mounting up, and he didn’t know what to do with them. They weren’t getting released fast enough. George told WABC-FM New York’s Howard Smith (per Beatles Interviews), “It was the way the Beatles took off with Paul and John’s songs, and it made it very difficult for me to get in.
“And also, I suppose at that time I didn’t have as much confidence when it came down to pushing my own material as I have now. So it took a while. It was whoever would be the heaviest would get the most songs done. So consequently, I couldn’t be bothered pushing, like, that much.”
To release all of the songs he wrote in just the late 1960s, with his quota, George said he’d be making Beatles albums well into the 1990s. He said he felt constipated and cast aside. During the Let It Be sessions, George abruptly quit for a time because he was sick of Paul’s domineering. He didn’t want to be a glorified session man anymore.
George was happy with his position in The Beatles
Martin confessed that he, John, and Paul never encouraged George to be an active member of the group. However, years later, after George took some much-needed time to come to terms with it all, he wasn’t angry about his position in The Beatles.
During a 1988 press conference, George revealed Martin had personally apologized. “The Beatles producer, George Martin, said recently how he always felt sorry that-because he concentrated more on them-and he should’ve paid more attention to me,” George explained.
“He said to me, personally, ‘I hope you’ll forgive me’ [Laughs]. But I think I’m quite happy with my role in The Beatles. It split up because all those problems because there were too many songs and because we got too close to each other. But I’m quite happy with the way things went.”
George said a similar thing during a 1988 interview with CNN. Finally, he could fondly reflect on his time with The Beatles, hence his ode to that period, “When We Was Fab.” “I’m much more relaxed about it now, and everybody knows the history where we all split up and we had a lot of troubles with each other.
“But I know exactly what my contribution was and something like “Fab,’ to do that “Fab” song is-I’m much more at ease with it, I can just take it completely as a joke and as a trip down memory lane. I’ve enjoyed my position in the band because I didn’t really want to be one of them out there in the front. I like being the one who could stand back and see it from a different point of view.”
George came out the other end confident and refined
At some point, George came out the other side of being a Beatle. He made peace with all the negative things that went on. George didn’t waste his life being bitter that John, Paul, and Martin never encouraged him and set him aside. He had enjoyed being in the background.
“Although John and Paul did exceptionally well as songwriters, I mean to a degree it was very difficult to come in as a songwriter,” George told CNN. “But because they’d formed this association they decided to be Lennon-McCartney, and that thing became bigger, I think, than they expected.
“For me to try and penetrate that, with the sort of sibling rivalry. I didn’t get a lot of encouragement; well, John gave me a lot more than maybe Paul did in those days. I’ve come out the other end of that now, and I just can see all the really good stuff that we did, the fun we had, and I know exactly about my contribution to The Beatles.”
Thankfully, George came to terms with a hugely stressful and sometimes harsh period in his life. He was like a yogi; he let things wash off him.
