George Harrison Steered Clear of Approaching Other Famous People Because He Knew What That Was Like
George Harrison steered clear of approaching other famous people. He knew what it felt like when people confronted him. If George craved invisibity he rationalized that other celebrities did too.
George Harrison would’ve loved to be invisible, so people didn’t bother him
After experiencing Beatlemania for about 10 years, George’s nerves were shot. He said he and the band came out of the 1960s “shell-shocked. They were lucky to have their sanity and humor intact.
For much of the 1960s and 1970s, George and The Beatles couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed by people. “A good romp? That was fair in the films,” he wrote in his 1980 memoir, I Me Mine, “but in the real world . . . we didn’t have any space . . . like monkeys in a zoo.”
Eventually, George didn’t know whether his life was a blessing or a curse. During a 1975 interview with Dave Herman at WNEW-FM (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George said the blessing is that you’re rich and famous and “all this looks rosy.” On the other hand, the curse is that you’re never left alone and have to deal with people’s expectations.
George never escaped the watchful eye of the public and the hounding press. They analyzed and scrutinized his every move. George often wished he was invisible.
“Sometimes it’s just hard,” he said. “You’d just like to be anonymous. Sometimes I’d just like to be invisible, even now after ten or whatever, twelve years, of that. I still find I can’t even go out. If I want to go out and watch somebody singing at the Roxy or something, I go in there and it’s like the club tilts over.
“I become part of the show. And that’s amazing after all that time. Sometimes it’s nice to be invisible and just go out and just be nobody.”
George didn’t want to approach other famous people
If George didn’t like it when people approached him, why would he want to confront other celebrities? During a 1986 interview on Australian TV, George mentioned that he saw Crocodile Dundee‘s Paul Hogan trying to get a tan at the Bel Air Hotel. The reporter said it was surprising to hear that George was too shy to go and say hello.
George said he didn’t think of himself as a celebrity. He only felt famous when he went on TV to give interviews. However, in the normal day-to-day life he led, he didn’t “go around thinking I’m a famous person.” In another interview, George said he didn’t think of himself as a fully-fledged celebrity.
So, when he saw other celebrities, including Hogan, who he’d seen on TV, he didn’t “want to go around bothering people because I remember what it was like as The Beatles. ‘Hello lads, you don’t know me, but my grandmother met you in Birmingham.’ You know all that sort of stuff.”
The former Beatle loved when people didn’t recognize him
Eventually, George came to terms with being famous and a Beatle. In a 1987 interview with Creem Magazine, George said he’d cooled off. For the most part, George got the privacy he craved by avoiding the paparazzi and not giving interviews.
He got to the point where he could walk down the street and be ordinary. George explained, “Now, if somebody comes up and says, ‘Alright, George,’ and they just congratulate you and thank you for all the music you did in the past and what you’ve been doing that’s nice. It’s the concentrated mania that would make anybody go crazy.”
Unfortunately, the press hounded George until the day he died. However, he didn’t let it bother him anymore.
