John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles breakup feelings toward one another were famously tense, and what Lennon thought about George Harrison wasn’t much better. The two guitarists (along with McCartney) had been performing together long before they were the Beatles, which means there was plenty of opportunity to harbor resentment and ill will.
These feelings obviously came to a head around the time the band parted ways, but they persisted in the years to follow. Lennon and Harrison’s relationship was particularly complex, evolving from brotherly friends to teacher-mentor to peers to feuding frenemies.
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John Lennon Thought George Harrison Slighted Him In His Memoir
John Lennon and George Harrison started playing music together in Liverpool in their early 20s and late teens, respectively. Thus, when Harrison released his memoir I, Me, Mine and did not include Lennon, the “Jealous Guy” singer took it personally. “In his book, which is purportedly this clarity vision of his influence on each song he wrote, he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I’m not in the book,” Lennon said in a 1980 interview with Playboy.
Lennon hypothesized that the omission was due to Harrison feeling resentful about the hierarchy that developed between the two musicians. “George’s relationship with me was one of young follower and older guy,” he argued. “It’s a love/hate relationship, and I think George still bears resentment toward me for being a daddy who left home. He would not agree with this, but that’s my feeling about it. I don’t want to be that egomaniacal. But he was like a disciple of mine when we started. I was already an art student when Paul and George were still in grammar school.”
The ex-Beatle also assumed there was some slight ill will due to the fact that, for most of the Beatles’ short-lived career, the main stars of the show—both in performance and composition—were Lennon and McCartney. “[George] had been left out because he hadn’t been a songwriter up until then,” Lennon said. “If you listen to the Beatles’ first albums, the English versions, he gets a single track. The songs he and Ringo sang at first were the songs that used to be part of my repertoire in the dance halls. So, I am slightly resentful of George’s book. But don’t get me wrong. I still love those guys.”
The Quiet Beatle Once Lost His Temper On His Bandmate In A Major Way
George Harrison might not have included John Lennon in his memoir, but Lennon clearly had an emotional impact on the youngest Fab Four member. One especially volatile exchange occurred amid Lennon’s Lost Weekend, which marked an extended period of debauchery and hedonism while Lennon was temporarily split from Yoko Ono. May Pang, Lennon’s assistant with whom he had an affair, wrote about the confrontation in a New York City hotel room in her book, Loving John.
Pang recalled Lennon offering to play with Harrison at Madison Square Garden, which upset the “Quiet Beatle.” “George’s anger really burst forth. It was the first of a series of explosions, each of them followed by moments of tense silence,” Pang wrote (via Express). She wrote that, at one point in the night, Harrison screamed at Lennon, asking him where he was when Harrison had needed him. Then, Harrison demanded to look Lennon—who commonly wore dark sunglasses—in the eyes. Lennon switched to his clear reading glasses, but it wasn’t enough.
“Suddenly, [George] reached over, yanked John’s glasses from his face and dashed them to the floor. His face was a mask of fury and contempt,” Pang wrote. “I had never seen an angrier man.” Despite the violent outburst, Harrison and Lennon seemed to make amends over breakfast the following morning. Nine years after Mark David Chapman shot Lennon, Harrison recalled his late friend and former colleague fondly in an interview with Mark Rowland in George Harrison on George Harrison (via CheatSheet). “John, you know, he was a good lad. He was. There was a part of him that was saintly, that aspired to the truth and great things. And there was a part of him that was just, you know, a looney!” Harrison laughed.
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