GEORGE HARRISON ON GEORGE HARRISON
Interviews and Encounters
edited by Ashley Kahn
A literary playlist to the mind and music of the “Quiet Beatle.” After writing about John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Carlos Santana, Kahn turns his attention to the second Beatle, after John Lennon, to be selected for the popular Musicians in Their Own Words series. Kahn has collected more than 40 interviews that span the period from 1962 to 2001, when Harrison died. They include interviews with magazines, newspapers, and TV and radio shows as well as a “number of never-published gems.” (Foremost among these are the columns he wrote for the Daily Express in 1964, “offering a peek inside the bubble of the band’s ascendancy.”) The collection reveals a humorous, witty, self-deprecating, guileless, spiritual man. In 1963, shortly after the group’s debut, Harrison joked, “we should have another two years at least, I think.” In an interview with Larry Kane, who covered their early American tours, Harrison opined on his band mates, noting how Paul was “the lovely one” and “Ringo was the cuddly one.” As early as 1967, Harrison called Ravi Shankar his “musical Guru.” Then bang, it’s 1970, and the Beatles have broken up, barely 100 pages into this 500-page collection. Harrison was hopeful for a reunion—“I think it’s very selfish if the Beatles don’t record together”—and he occasionally opened up about why so few of his songs were on the albums. In 1971, he told Dick Cavett that his band mates “very subtly” held him down. In 1974, after his wife left him for Eric Clapton, Harrison claimed he wasn’t sad. “Eric’s…been a close friend for years,” he said, and “I’d rather she was with him than with some dope.” In 1988, talking to Kurt Loder, Harrison enthusiastically discussed the Traveling Wilburys and his illustrious band mates, including Bob Dylan, and he was irked by McCartney’s decision to skip their 1988 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction: “Paul is a hypocrite sometimes.” A terrific collection for Beatles fans to savor.