There are some stories I never get tired of hearing. One of them is the formation of the Jefferson Airplane; how they were rehearsing twelve hours a day and seven days a week, because they knew that they were creating something brand new.
The early history of The Beatles is another example. How John, Paul, and later George originally got together, their apprenticeship in Hamburg, the influence of Sir George Martin, and on and on. Philip Norman has written several books that cover this territory and much more. The best known one was Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation, originally published in 1981 and revised in 1996, but he has also written two biographies of John Lennon, one of Sir Paul McCartney, as well as Sir Elton John, Mick Jagger, Buddy Holly, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix. George Harrison: the Reluctant Beatle is his most recent work.
The prologue gives a detailed account of the “Concert for George”. If you haven’t watched this, do so. While you're at it, give “The Concert for Bangladesh” a watch, too. (More on this later.) Then, watch this rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.
It’s common knowledge that The Beatles were born and raised in depressed post-World War II Britain, but George’s family was the poorest; his first seven years were in a house that didn’t have indoor plumbing. It’s also common knowledge that George had to take a back seat to Paul and John during most of the time The Beatles were together, although George still wrote and sang some good songs, such as “I Want to Tell You” and “Taxman”. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was among the best songs on the White Album, and that set the stage for three triumphs for George.
The first one was the “Abbey Road” album, which included “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun”. “Something” has the distinction of being the second most covered song by The Beatles, after “Yesterday”. The second triumph was the “All Things Must Pass”, arguably the best of the post-Beatles albums by all the band members. That led to the Concert for Bangladesh. George was a lot more than the headliner. (He had a bad case of stage fright. Understandable, since he hadn’t played in from of a crowd that big for several years.) He organized the event, and recruited all the performers for it. Eric Clapton had a bad case of heroin withdrawal at the time, and was barely able to make it onto the stage. And they didn’t know until the last minute whether Bob Dylan would show up; he also had not performed in front of a crowd for several years. The Concert for Bangladesh paved the way for future musical charity events such as Live Aid.
The book then gives us some soap opera coverage; Eric Clapton’s heroin-fueled attraction to George’s wife Pattie Boyd. Clapton wrote and recorded four songs about her, including “Layla”. Boyd got fed up with George’s philandering, left, and married Clapton in 1979; they split up eight years later. George then had a affair with Ringo’s wife, Maureen Starkey Tigrett.
Later on the book tells us about George’s friendship with the members of Monty Python, which led to a mostly successful career as a film producer. We learn about another musical triumph with the Traveling Wilburys. We also get some stories far too familiar to people who read books like this; his legal fights, first with Allen Klein, then a much worse one with Denis O’Brien. Toward the end of his life, George was one the receiving end of a murder attempt; a schizophrenic person entered his house and stabbed him multiple times. His second wife, Olivia, saved his life by whacking the assailant with a lamp.
This book is well written and researched, and as you have already read here, covers a lot of territory. I have this quibble with it; Norman tells us that before George met Olivia, an astrologer told him that a dark-haired woman would become an important person in his life. Uh, 90% of the women on this planet have black or brown hair. Any astrologer, tarot card reader, or psychic could make this prediction about anyone, and they would be right nine times out of ten. How come John Lennon’s astrologer didn’t warn him to enter his apartment building through the courtyard entrance, instead of the front door, on December 8, 1980? I’m making a plea here to all biographers; the dumbing down of the worldwide population over the past ten years is having disastrous consequences. Stop giving oxygen to the con artists.
