George Harrison - The Beatles: 1957–1970

The Beatles: 1957–1970

Harrison became part of the Beatles when they were still a skiffle group called the Quarrymen. He first auditioned for the band at Rory Storm's Morgue Skiffle Club, playing "Guitar Boogie Shuffle" (by Bert Weedon) in March 1958. However, Lennon felt that Harrison, then 14, was too young to join the band. During a second meeting, engineered by McCartney on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus, Harrison performed the lead guitar part for the song “Raunchy”. Soon thereafter, Harrison began socializing with the group, and filled in on guitar as needed. By the time Harrison was 15, Lennon and the others had accepted him as one of the band. Since Harrison was the youngest member of the group, he was looked upon as a kid by the others for another few years.

Harrison left school at 16 and worked as an apprentice electrician at local department store Blacklers for several months. During a low period in the band's activity, Harrison attempted to join Rory Storm's Tornados, but was turned down by Storm's mother, who believed that Harrison was too young. Harrison then joined the Les Stewart Quartet with Les Stewart, guitarist Ken Brown, and Geoff Skinner. Mona Best opened the Casbah Coffee Club on 29 August 1959, and Brown arranged for the quartet to be its resident band. When Brown missed rehearsals to help decorate the Casbah, Stewart refused to play. Brown and Harrison recruited Lennon and McCartney at short notice to help them fill the residency, reactivating the Quarrymen name for the occasion.

The Beatles were offered an engagement in Hamburg in 1960, and soon began playing at the Kaiserkeller. The musical apprenticeship that Harrison received playing long hours with the rest of the group, as well as the guitar lessons he took from Tony Sheridan, laid the foundations of the Beatles' sound, and of Harrison's quiet, professional role within the group; this role would soon contribute to his reputation as "the quiet Beatle". The band's first trip to Hamburg was shortened when Harrison was deported for being under age.

When Brian Epstein became the Beatles' manager in December 1961, he changed their image from that of leather-jacketed rock-and-rollers to a more polished, professional look, securing them a recording contract with EMI in the process. The group's first single, "Love Me Do", featuring Harrison playing a Gibson J-160E, reached number 17 in the UK chart in October 1962, and by the time their debut album, Please Please Me, was released in early 1963, the Beatles had become famous and Beatlemania had arrived.

After Harrison revealed in an interview that he liked jelly babies, British fans inundated the Beatles with boxes of the sweets as gifts. A few months later, American audiences showered them with the much harder jelly beans instead. In a letter to a fan, Harrison later insisted that no one in the band actually liked jelly babies, and that the press must have made it up.

The popularity of the Beatles led to a successful tour of the United States and the making of the film A Hard Day's Night, during which Harrison met his future wife Pattie Boyd. In the 1965 Queen's Birthday Honours, all four Beatles were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). Harrison, whose role within the group was that of the careful musician who checked that the instruments were tuned, by 1965 and the Rubber Soul album, was developing into a musical director as he led the others into folk-rock, via his interest in the Byrds and Bob Dylan, and into Indian music with his exploration of the sitar. Harrison's musical involvement with the group reached its peak on Revolver in 1966 with his contribution of three songs and new musical ideas. By 1967, Harrison's interests appeared to be moving outside the Beatles, and his involvement in the seminal album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band consists mainly of his song "Within You Without You", on which no other Beatle plays, and which stands out for its difference from the rest of the album's compositions.

During the recording of The Beatles (commonly known as the White Album) in 1968, tensions were high in the band, with drummer Ringo Starr briefly quitting. These troubles surfaced again during the filming of rehearsal sessions at Twickenham Studios in early 1969 for what later became the album and film Let It Be. Frustrated by the poor working conditions in the cold and sterile film studio, as well as by Lennon's creative disengagement from the group and what he perceived as a domineering attitude from McCartney, Harrison quit the band on 10 January. Following negotiations with the other Beatles at two business meetings, he agreed to return twelve days later.

Relations among the Beatles were more cordial, though still strained, during recording sessions for Abbey Road, which was to become the band's final recorded album. Abbey Road included two Harrison compositions: "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something". "Something" was later recorded by Frank Sinatra, who considered it "the greatest love song of the past fifty years," despite crediting its composition to Lennon and McCartney. Harrison's increasing productivity, coupled with his difficulties in getting the other Beatles to record his music, meant that by the end of the group's career he had amassed a considerable stockpile of unreleased material. Harrison's last recording session with the Beatles prior to the band's break-up was on 4 January 1970. Lennon, who had privately left the group the previous September, did not attend the session.