Two Beatles Became Interested in Music While in the Hospital
Each of The Beatles became interested in music at a young age. They obsessed over artists like Elvis Presley and began dedicating themselves to learning to play instruments. Both George Harrison and Ringo Starr became interested in playing music while in the hospital. They shared how their lengthy stays made them want to learn to play an instrument.
George Harrison decided he wanted a guitar while in the hospital
When Harrison was a preteen, he fell ill with kidney problems.
“I’d just left Dovedale Junior School and gone to the big school, the Liverpool Institute, when I went into hospital. I got sick when I was twelve or thirteen with kidney trouble,”,” he said in The Beatles Anthology, adding, “I always used to get tonsillitis; childhood illnesses. I had a really sore throat, and this one year the infection spread and gave me nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys.”
He did not enjoy the weeks he spent in the hospital, but they did inspire him to pick up the guitar.
“I was in Alder Hey Hospital for six weeks on a non-protein diet: I had to eat spinach and horrible food,” he said. “It was during this time that I first wanted to get a guitar. I heard that Raymond Hughes, who used to go to Dovedale — I was now at the Institute and hadn’t seen him for a year — had a guitar he wanted to sell. £3 10s, it cost. It was a lot of money then, but my mum gave me the money and I went to Raymond’s house and bought it.”
Though Harrison said it was a “real cheapo horrible little guitar,” it kicked off his lifelong love of the instrument.
Another Beatle began to pursue music during a hospital stay
Starr spent much of his childhood in and out of the hospital. He fell into a coma due to peritonitis and stayed in the hospital for a year. Several years later, he contracted tuberculosis and spent roughly two years in a sanatorium. As this was a lengthy stay, hospital staff introduced Starr to the drums to keep him occupied.
“Playing drums for me started in hospital in 1954, where, to keep us entertained, they gave us some schooling,” Starr said. “A teacher would come in with a huge easel, with symbols for instruments shown on a big piece of board. She gave us percussion instruments: triangles, tambourines and drums. She would point at the yellow and the triangle would sound, and she would point at the red and the drum would sound. I’d only play if they gave me a drum.”
Starr joined a hospital band, and his love of the instrument continued after he left.
“I was in bed for ten months: it’s a long time, so you keep yourself entertained; it was that and knitting,” Starr explained. “That’s where I really started playing. I never wanted anything else from then on. Drums were the only thing I wanted and when I came out I used to look in music shops and see drums; that’s all I’d look at.”
George Harrison said The Beatles loved all kinds of music
Though Starr and Harrison left the hospital with a single-minded focus on their respective instruments, they enjoyed all types of music. Harrison explained that The Beatles took inspiration from anywhere they could find it.
“You can hear something and think that you don’t like it, and think that it’s not influencing you,” Harrison said. “But you are what you eat, you are what you see, what you touch, what you smell and what you hear. Music has always had a transcendental quality inasmuch as it reaches parts of you that you don’t expect it to reach. And it can touch you in a way that you can’t express. You can think that it hasn’t reached you, and years later you’ll find it coming out. I think, as Beatles, we were fortunate that we were open to all kinds of music.”
The various influences made them stronger artists.
