George Harrison Said the Liverpool Spirit Is to Be a Comedian: ‘I Still Feel a Bit Like That’
George Harrison said the Liverpool spirit is to be a comedian. Into the 1980s, he still felt “a bit like that.” Although many people believed he wasn’t funny.
George Harrison claimed people didn’t think he was a comedian
In the mid-1960s, George became interested in spiritual matters. The media and fans were well aware of George’s spiritual interests. According to George, they started thinking he wasn’t funny anymore.
The press dubbed him the “quiet Beatle,” but he’d occasionally slip in a hilariously witty remark during interviews and other events. However, singing about religion seemingly meant one couldn’t have a sense of humor.
In Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison, Joshua M. Greene quoted Apple employee, Tony King, “When I first met George in 1963, he was Mister Fun, Mister Stay-Out-All-Night. Then all of a sudden, he found LSD and Indian religion and he became very serious. Things went from jolly weekends where we’d have steak and kidney pie and sit around giggling, to these rather serious weekends where everyone walked around blissed out and talked about the meaning of the universe.”
During a 1987 interview, Creem Magazine pointed out to George, “You’re funny, too–and that’s funny, ’cause for all those years you were thought of as being so serious…” George replied, “‘Cause I did them religious songs three or four times.”
George was serious about his spiritual journey, but that didn’t mean he forgot to be funny. He added laughter to the end of “Within You Without You” as a “way of reminding listeners not to take his pontificating seriously—search for God but don’t lose your sense of humor, he seemed to admonish himself as much as his listeners.”
George said he still had the Liverpool comedian spirit
According to George, his comedian spirit came from growing up in a post-war Liverpool.
During a 1987 interview, BBC Breakfast asked George if he still felt the Liverpool comedian spirit. George replied, “A comedian? I think the Liverpool spirit is that everybody is a comedian. I feel a bit like that.”
An example of the Liverpudlian comedian spirit can be found in The Beatle’s A Hard Day’s Night when George says “grotty.”
He said, “There was one piece of dialogue where I say, ‘Oh, I’m not wearing that – that’s grotty!’ [Scriptwriter] Alun Owen made that up; I didn’t. People have used that word for years now. It was a new expression: grotty – grotesque. I suppose he thought that being from Liverpool, he knew our kind of humour.”
The former Beatle said having a sense of humor was essential
George told Musician Magazine’s Timothy White, “I’ve always had a sense of humor–and I think it’s absolutely necessary. I think what happened is, I was tagged as somber because I did some spiritual things during a sizable phase of my own career, and sang a lot of songs about God or the Lord or whatever you want to call Him.
“You can’t be singing that material laughingly, but if you’re not smiling people draw that conclusion of seriousness. I don’t think anybody’s all serious or all comical, and I’ve seen comedians who are deadly serious when they’re offstage.
“Frankly, I always thought it was very funny when people thought I was very serious! Maybe it’s also because the last time I did interviews back in the 1970s it was all that heavy hangover from the hippie ’60s, when everybody was into this discipline, that doctrine and the other.
“I’ve got a very serious side of me, but even within that, I always see the joke too. That’s why I always liked Monthy Python.”
George’s friend, Tom Petty, told NPR that George was a “very funny man; he could just kill me with his humor.” The former Beatle was also funny when he was being cynical.
