Scan - “That’s ‘Beatle Book’ photographer, Leslie Bryce (a bit like Bob Monkhouse, don’t you think) looking over Paul’s shoulder. Pic was taken with Leslie’s camera by George in Denmark.” Scanned from The Beatles Book, September 1964
George Harrison and Paul McCartney hitchhiking, summer of 1957
“One year, Paul and I decided to go hitchhiking. It’s something nobody would ever dream of these days. Firstly, you’d probably be mugged before you got through the Mersey Tunnel, and secondly everybody’s got cars and is already stuck in a traffic jam. I’d often gone with my family down South to Devon, to Exmouth, so Paul and I decided to go there first.
We didn’t have much money. We found bed-and-breakfast places to stay. We got to one town, and we were walking down a street and it was getting dark. We saw a woman and said, ‘Excuse me, do you know if there’s somewhere we could stay?’ She felt sorry for us and said, ‘My boy’s away, come and stay at my house.’ So she took us to hers - where we beat her, tied her up and robbed her of all her money! Only joking; she let us stay in her boy’s room and the next morning cooked us breakfast. She was really nice. I don’t know who she was - the Lone Ranger?
We continued along the South coast, towards Exmouth. Along the way we talked to a drunk in a pub who told us his name was Oxo Whitney. (He later appears in ‘A Spaniard in the Works.’ After we’d told John that story, he used the name. So much of John’s books is from funny things people told him.) Then we went on to Paignton. We still had hardly any money. We had a little stove, virtually just a tin with a lid. You poured a little meths into the bottom of it and it just about burned, not with any velocity. We had that, and little backpacks, and we’d stop at grocery shops. We’d buy Smedley’s spaghetti bolognese or spaghetti milanese. They were in striped tins: milanese was red stripes, bolognese was dark blue stripes. And Ambrosia creamed rice. We’d open a can, bend back the lid and hold the can over the stove to warm it up. That was what we lived on.
We got to Paignton with no money to spare so we slept on the beach for the night. Somewhere we’d met two Salvation Army girls and they stayed with us and kept us warm for a while. But later it became cold and damp, and I remember being thankful when we decided that was enough and got up in the morning and started walking again. We went up through North Devon and got a ferry boat across to South Wales, because Paul had a relative who was a redcoat at Butlins at Pwllheli, so we thought we’d go there.
At Chepstow, we went to the police station and asked to stay in a cell. They said, ‘No, bugger off. You can go in the football grandstand, and tell the cocky watchman that we said it was OK.’ So we went and slept on a hard board bench. Bloody cold. We left there and hitchhiked on. Going north through Wales we got a ride on a truck. The trucks didn’t have a passenger seat in those days so I sat on the engine cover. Paul was sitting on the battery. He had on jeans with zippers on the back pockets and after a while he suddenly leapt up screaming. His zipper had connected the positive and negative end in the battery, got red hot and burnt a zipper mark across his arse.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology
Scans - George Harrison’s photographs of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Hotel George V, Paris, January 1964; scanned from Living in the Material World.
Scan - George Harrison, Liverpool, c. 1958/1959, photographed by Paul McCartney; scanned from Remember by Mike McCartney.
Photo: Paul McCartney
“A young George Harrison with his Tony Curtis haircut, bright fluorescent green wasitcoat (under the towel), and skintight jeans. He’s carrying flippers, so he must be off to the swimming pool or the sea. This would be around 1958 or ‘59, when George, Paul, and John were in the Quarrymen skiffle group. I though I’d taken this photograph, but Paul rang up to complain, ‘Hey you bugger lugs! I took that one!’” - Mike McCartney
Q: “You met Paul first.” George Harrison: “Yeah, Paul went to school with me. I met him when I was about twelve years old. So I had this guitar, the one I just talked about, and Paul had a trumpet for some reason. His father, in his earlier days, had been involved in a little dance band. He was a piano player. So there was a lot of music in Paul’s house too. But [then] we started hanging out together.” - WNEW-FM, 1987
“George put on do-do-do-do [sings the signature riff] which is very much a part of the song [‘And I Love Her’]. Y’know, the opening riff. That, to me, made a stunning difference to the song and whenever I play the song now, I remember the moment George came up with it. That song would not be the same without it.” - Paul McCartney, MOJO, November 2011
“Paul always writes nice melodies.” - George Harrison, Scene and Heard, 8 October 1969
“‘The thing about Paul,’ George says, ‘is that apart from the personal problem of it all, he’s having a wonderful time. He’s going riding and he’s got horses and he’s got a farm in Scotland and he’s happier with his family. And I can dig that.’” - early 1970s; The Blacklisted Journalist, 2001
“I’ve always preferred Paul’s good melodies to his screaming rock & roll tunes. The tune I thought was sensational on the London Town album was ‘I’m Carrying.’” - George Harrison, Rolling Stone, 19 April 1979
“[N]ow we don’t have any problems whatsoever as far as being people is concerned, and it’s quite nice to see him. But I don’t know about being in a band with him, how that would work out. It’s like, we all have our own tunes to do. And my problem was that it would always be very difficult to get in on the act, because Paul was very pushy in that respect. When he succumbed to playing on one of your tunes, he’d always do good. But you’d have to do fifty-nine of Paul’s songs before he’d even listen to one of yours. So, in that respect, it would be very difficult to ever play with him. But, you know, we’re cool as far as being pals goes.” - George Harrison, Rolling Stone, 19 April 1979
“But we do, actually, we do get on. […] I still love him, and it doesn’t matter, I’m going to continue my friendship with him regardless of his attitude, because I don’t have time to screw around anymore, you know.” - George Harrison, The Midday Show, February 1988
“Actually, I love Paul, he’s my mate, and it doesn’t matter what they say in the papers, they’re not gonna get much mileage out of that one.” - George Harrison (regarding the media’s claim of a feud between Harrison and McCartney at the San Remo Festival in 1988), Aspel & Company, 5 March 1988
“There’s always a place in my heart for Paul… and Linda.” - George Harrison, Musician, March 1990
Q: “Does Paul still piss you off (tell us the truth)” george_harrison_live: “Scan not a friend with a microscopic glass — You know his faults — Then let his foibles pass.” george_harrison_live: “Old Victorian Proverb.” george_harrison_live: “I’m sure there’s enough about me that pisses him off, but I think we have now grown old enough to realize” george_harrison_live: “that we’re both pretty damn cute!” - Yahoo web chat, 15 February 2001 (x)
