George Harrison and Mal Evans posing with their watches (1964)
Photo by: Leslie Bryce
“When I started going to The Cavern, I went there so often I became a bouncer, and that was George’s instigation. He said, ‘Look, you’re big and ugly enough, why don’t you be a bouncer on the door? You get paid for it, you get in the band room and you see the bands.’ George was the first of The Beatles I made contact with, really. So we were really close to begin with. The first time I went to The Cavern, The Beatles were on and I had that feeling, ‘Oh, this is the greatest thing in the world!’” - Mal Evans, The Beatles: Off The Record
“I went to the Cavern and saw the walls wet with condensation, but not very often because I was at home with the baby. But I remember George Harrison coming around to our house a couple of times to keep me company when The Beatles weren’t playing because he knew I was left out. That was nice of him.” - Lily Evans [Mal’s wife],The Ray Connolly Beatles Archive(2005)
“Do love George, you know…there is a soul inside that skinny face…” - Mal Evans,When They Were Boys
“Mal Evans, Beatles’ Equipment Manager, looks very happy about the new gold Roamer watch that George has just given him. He had his busted on that hectic Liverpool trip, and as soon as George heard about it he promptly went out and bought him another one.” -Beatles Book Monthly Issue No. 14 (Sep. 1964)
“Once they’d completed the recording [for MMT], Mal, Neil and their families were whisked to Greece by The Beatles at George Harrison’s expense.” - Beatlesnumber9.com,“Mal Evans’ diary”
“George arranged for Mal’s family to receive £5,000 [roughly £32,560 today] on his death; he had no pension and he had not kept up his life-assurance premiums.” - The Daily Beatle(2015)
NOTE: This is a great video where Kevin Harrington, now famously known as the guy with ginger hair in Get Back, describes what it was like living in Friar Park when George and Pattie first moved there.
“George was a humanitarian. He was lovely – he really was lovely. I felt an affection for George mainly because when I first started with them on the double White Album, I sort of walked in [and] my second night – the first night I was invited in just by Mal [Evans] because I’d done this shopping thing. So the night I actually did start with them, I’m like hiding – sort of standing by this box on a stand which I now know is called the monitor, and George is just sitting on the floor playing the guitar or whatever. Everybody’s sort of getting their stuff together, and he just said, ‘Kevin, come over. Sit down, tell me all about yourself.’ That chilled me out a lot.” - Kevin Harrington
George Harrison (and, in photo 2, Mal Evans) in fan photos from 1969.
“What annoys us is that people treat us [The Beatles] sometimes as if we are just things and not human beings.” - George Harrison, Rave, June 1964
“George Harrison is the reluctant Beatle. He did not expect fame. When it came, he was bewildered.” - Melody Maker, 7 November 1964
George Harrison: “[The fans have] all got this idea that we’re something else.” Leslie S. (fan): “Good or bad?” GH: “I don’t know… whatever it is, they don’t see us as what we are, which is people.” - conversation with a fan taped at Kinfauns, 1967
Q: “How did taking LSD affect you?” George Harrison: “It was like opening the door, really, and before, you didn’t even know there was a door there. It just opened up this whole other consciousness […].” Q: “Did it make you feel that your life could be very different from what it was?” GH: “Yeah, but that presented a problem as well, because then the feeling began in me of, well, it’s all well and good being popular and being in demand but, you know, it’s ridiculous, really. I think from then on I didn’t enjoy fame. That’s when the novelty disappeared, around 1966, and then it became hard work. […] I mean, [LSD] has a humbling power, that stuff. And the ego — to be able to deal with these people thinking you were some wonderful thing — it was difficult to come to terms with. I was feeling, you know, like nothing.” - Rolling Stone, 5 November 1987 (x)
