Paul McCartney Said George Harrison ‘Wasn’t Into’ His Vision for ‘Hey Jude’
George Harrison and Paul McCartney were the first members of The Beatles to meet. They grew close in their adolescence and would go on to become founding members of one of the biggest bands in the world. Their time in the band was not beneficial to their relationship, though. Harrison and McCartney bickered often about music. McCartney recalled the struggle they faced while working on “Hey Jude” when Harrison made it clear he didn’t like the direction McCartney was taking the song.
Paul McCartney said George Harrison argued with him about ‘Hey Jude’
By the late 1960s, Harrison felt McCartney was overly domineering. When McCartney gave Harrison instructions, their interactions often devolved into arguments.
“If I made a suggestion and it was something that, say, George didn’t want to do, it could develop quite quickly into a mini-argument,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “In fact, George walked out of the group. I’m not sure of the exact reason, but I think that they thought I was being too domineering.”
This happened while they were recording “Hey Jude.” McCartney did not like Harrison’s additions to the song and instructed him to stop.
“On ‘Hey Jude,’ when we first sat down and I sant ‘Hey Jude …’ George went nanu nanu on his guitar,” McCartney explained. “I continued, ‘Don’t make it bad …’ and he replied nanu nanu. He was answering every line — and I said, ‘Whoa! Wait a minute now. I don’t think we want that. Maybe you’d come in with answering lines later. For now I think I should starting it simply first.’”
Harrison didn’t argue with McCartney about this, but it was clear he didn’t agree with McCartney’s vision.
“He was going, ‘OK, yeah. OK, fine, fine.’ But it was getting a bit like that,” McCartney said. “He wasn’t into what I was saying.”
Paul McCartney and George Harrison often disagreed
McCartney and Harrison were often at odds while recording The Beatles’ final albums. Harrison wanted more of a say over the band’s music, and McCartney did not want to give up the control he and John Lennon had.
“With Paul, it was taken to the most ridiculous situations, where I’d open my guitar case and go get my guitar out and he’s say, ‘No, no, we’re not doing that yet. We’re gonna do a piano track with Ringo, and then we’ll do that later,’” Harrison said. “It got so there was very little to do, other than sit round and hear him going, ‘Fixing a hole …’ with Ringo keeping the time.”
The tension between them grew so great while recording Let It Be that Harrison temporarily left The Beatles.
The guitarist said he wouldn’t work with McCartney again
In the years after The Beatles broke up, Harrison and McCartney grew friendly again. Still, Harrison didn’t think he would ever work on music with McCartney again.
“To tell the truth, I’d join a band with John Lennon any day, but I couldn’t join a band with Paul McCartney, but it’s nothing personal,” he said, per the book George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters. “It’s just from a musical point of view.”
Harrison thought that Lennon was controlling as well, but he never clashed with him in the way he did with McCartney.
