Paul McCartney Apologized Years After He and George Harrison Stole From a Family Who Was Hosting Them
In 1958, years before Beatlemania or even minor local success, Paul McCartney and George Harrison went on a hitchhiking trip around Wales. McCartney liked taking his bandmates, Harrison and John Lennon, on trips like these. He and Harrison befriended a local family, but they took something from their home. Years later, McCartney received a letter about the theft and apologized.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison went hitchhiking around Wales
Harrison and McCartney met on the bus to school and bonded over their love of music. They became close, and McCartney started taking his younger friend on hitchhiking trips.
“I often think of George because he was my little buddy,” he told The New York Times in 2020. “I was thinking the other day of my hitchhiking bursts. This was before the Beatles. I suddenly was keen on hitchhiking, so I sold this idea to George and then John.”
He said he was always instigating these trips.
“We did that, and then I also hitchhiked with John,” he explained. “He and I got as far as Paris. What I was thinking about was — it’s interesting how I was the instigator. Neither of them came to me and said, ‘Should we go hitchhiking?’ It was me, like, ‘I’ve got this great idea.'”
In one of these early trips, McCartney and Harrison traveled around Wales together.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison stole a blanket from a family
While in Wales, McCartney and Harrison pitched a tent in the backyard of a local family, the Brierleys. Due to a storm, however, they moved into the family’s farmhouse and stayed there for a week. A year later, Harrison and McCartney returned to the home. This time, when they left, they took one of the family’s blankets with them.
Years later, in the 1980s, Irene Brierley wrote McCartney a letter and jokingly mentioned the missing blanket.
“Dear Mrs Brierley (Irene). Your letter reached me eventually and I was sorry to hear about my ‘debt,'” McCartney wrote back, per Express. “I remember well the fun we had in Harlech and hope the enclosed cheque will settle our money differences! Excuse the scrawl as I’m trying to write this on a bouncing express train!! I was very sorry to hear about your hubby — he was a very nice man. Please give my best to your boys. Kindest regards, Paul (McCartney).”
McCartney included a check for £30 with the letter, which was eventually auctioned online.
He loves looking back on memories with his bandmates
McCartney tells stories like these often. Though he has had a fruitful — and more extensive — career outside of The Beatles, he likes looking back on his time with the band. Though he has joked that people yawn at the rehashed stories, they make him believe in magic.
“Just all of these memories, there are just so many of them … So I do like to go on about The Beatles, because it was magical,” he told GQ in 2020. “People say, ‘Do you believe in magic?’ And I say, ‘I’ve got to.’ And I don’t mean, you know, Gandalf or wizardry or that sort of thing necessarily. For me, it’s how life can be magical, these things that just came together.”
