#harrisongs

George Harrison with Mukunda Goswami in Vrindavan, India, 1996. Photo by Prithu Prabhu (?).

“[George] also wrote [songs] to remind himself. People sometimes accused him of preaching (laughs). But you know, he was really preaching to himself. He wasn’t trying to say, ‘You be like this because I’m already like this.’ No, he was always trying to remind himself. And that’s the reason he liked India so much, because he said that, ‘Everywhere you went, there was a reminder.’” - Olivia Harrison, KSHE 95, 26 December 2014 (x)

George Harrison, photographed by Ringo Starr; photo © Ringo Starr.

Q: “Do you think people have got the wrong impression of you over the years?”
George Harrison: “In that they think I’m serious, yeah. I have serious moments but I’m totally the opposite really. I think with ‘My Sweet Lord’ period and ‘Bangla Desh’ and the late ‘60s it did become political and everybody did get a bit serious but I never lost a sense of humor. That’s why people couldn’t believe I was making Monty Python’s Life of Brian.”
Q: “They thought of you as a spiritual, religious type locked away in the house in Henley.”
GH: “Well my concept of religion and spirituality isn’t Cliff Richard and the Shadows and Billy Graham. It’s very free, you know.” - Q, 1988

“I think I’ve had an image, people have had a concept of me being really straight ‘cause I was the serious one or something. But actually, I mean, I’m the biggest lunatic around; one of them anyway… I don’t know, in a way I’m serious, but not necessarily about the things people would think I’d be serious about. And I’m completely comical, you know? I like craziness. I had to in order to be in The Beatles. [laughs]” - George Harrison, A Personal Music Dialogue With George Harrison At 33 & 1/3, 1976

“I’ve always been very silly [chuckles]… And the thing is if I don’t crack a smile, my face just looks serious anyway. And I think what they did is, they pigeonholed me into this thing, Oh, he’s the mystical one, the spiritual one, or he’s the boring one, or whatever. And consequently they missed out on some of the jokes I was putting in there [the songs].” - George Harrison, In The Studio With Redbeard, 1992

Q: “What’s the most popular misconception about you that people have?”
George Harrison: “That I am serious. Pisces are depicted as two fish going in opposite directions. Many people do not see my humorous side.” - MSN web chat, 15 February 2001 (x)

George Harrison and Richie Havens, 1969; photographer unnamed, photo © akg images.

“I thought ‘Here Comes The Sun’ was the happiest, simplest, clearest wishing well for the world of all the songs that they [The Beatles] had ever done. It is a message for all of us. The sun is going to come up tomorrow, no matter what. You’ve got to be prepared, it’s going to be all right. Things are not as hard as you’re making it. That was the message of the time that needed to be heard. I said that to George and he said, ‘It is a song about finding the light, the real light, the sun.’” - Richie Havens, British Beatles Fan Club, 2011 (x)

George Harrison, 1992; photo by Nigel Parry.

“I hadn’t written a tune in a while, and ‘Blow Away’ [released on George’s 1979 self-titled album]… I was just sitting in the garden with the pouring rain, it was freezing cold, so I wrote that song. Like any given day will have the morning, and then you’ll have the day, and then the nighttime, and in the Indian philosophy they call this triguna, it means the three basic elements: creation, preservation, and destruction. But they’re all part and parcel of each other. You know, you have the nighttime which is like this negative kind of dark… but it’s — you need that in order to have the freshness again of the new morning. So the song was like that. It started out where everything was… the house was leaking, and the pouring rain, it’s miserable and I’m just about the lose it when I just remember, ‘No, wait a minute, all I’ve got to do is cheer up a little.’ In the second verse, the sun comes out, by the last verse everything’s cool again.” - George Harrison, In The Studio With Redbeard, 1992 (x)