13 Feb 2024
George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle
Philip Norman
Scribner, 2023. 487pp. Photo inset. Index. (and worthless Source Notes by chapter)
Let’s start by just saying this is a fascinating history of Harrison from birth to death, along with all the Beatles and how the band came to be. However, there are editing/style problems so I’m also going to deal with those rather than try to summarize the Beatlemania that we’re probably at least somewhat familiar with.
I will say that this could have been aptly titled: How to Screw Up Your Life With Sexual Infidelities, Drugs and Alcohol — and we’re not just talking about George here. It’s also a tale of financial mis-management of the musicians and deceptions. Of course the book is not entirely full of negativity, but the drug lifestyles of the other Beatles as well as Clapton, Dylan, Delaney Bramlett, Jimi Hendrix, Phil Spector et al., are certainly a major element of the rock ‘n’ roll and entertainment worlds.
First, some highlights
- Harrison’s love of the ukelele
- “Skiffle/skiffle groups”: origins of Brit rock – a British variant of the 1930s American Great Depression style where people would make music by blowing melodies into kazoos and jugs, scraping a kitchen-washboard with thimble-capped fingers. According to Norman, it appeared in Britain at the same moment as rock ‘n’ roll (15).
- Beatle rule: “Sex on the road doesn’t count” (415)
- Tabloids for “prurient food shoppers”
- Apple Corps Records: a pun on ‘apple core’
- History of the “Apple Scruffs” – George’s name for the women who hung out on the walkway steps and other locations hoping to get a glance at the boys (225; 293-99). Later memorialized in a song by that name in 1970. “On either side of the front steps, a small crowd of young women from all over the country, and the world, waited all day, every day, regardless of weather or season, for however fleeting a glimpse of this or that Beatle exiting or departing” (225).
- Traveling Wilburys. Fascinating origin of the band’s name: They needed a name that would partly shield them from all their current managerial obligations and contracts, so they used one of George’s old expressions: “If a taping turned out to have a mistake, ‘We’ll bury it in the mix’.” (400)
- Allen Klein, Denis O’Brien – it would be hard to find two shadier business associates.
Now, the problems
Since the author is a Brit, there are a lot of British terms and usages as well as music industry slang — quite understandable. But the author (and editor) are continually screwing up sentence understandability using confusing pronouns and sentence fragments, especially in the latter half of the book, suggesting editing burnout. It would sometimes take me 5 minutes and numerous re-readings of a paragraph to figure out who was doing what to whom.
Referencing Lennon’s Double Fantasy, named after his favorite freesia bloom (whatever “double” means):
“With the album’s release in November came an intense round of media interviews dispelling the long-standing rumors of a Howard Hughes-style hermit who’d gone completely bald, the ultimate Beatle [sic] tragedy, and snorted so much cocaine that it had destroyed the septum between his nostrils” (381).
Not only is it confusing, it’s ungrammatical.
Unfortunately (maybe) I didn’t mark down all the pronoun and name confusions, but here are a few examples. Referring to a partnership dispute among the Beatles in the High Court in 1970:
“George’s bewigged ventriloquist’s doll spoke in an authentic George tone of ‘the superior attitude which for years past Paul has shown to me musically’” (p303).
But there’s no hint of who the “bewigged doll” might be—a barrister? a judge? a manager? Wait…26 pages later we learn that it is apparently Denis O’Brien, a sleazy American lawyer.
At the same hearing we learn that John had submitted a written statement about the dispute:
“John’s statement reflected little credit on the man soon to write a song pleading ‘gimme some truth’.”
But this is not a universally known song lyric, so does it refer to a Lennon song or a Harrison song? (It turns out to be from John’s Imagine album.)
In a section about George’s wife Pattie (Boyd) attacking Ringo’s wife, Maureen, upon learning of George and Maureen having an open affair and discovering them in his “guilty bedroom”:
“A French or Italian wife at this point might have resorted to a loaded revolver. Pattie’s milder English response was to attack Maureen with a brace of water pistols and then give two fingers to the Hare Krishna piety that George could put on and off as it suited him” (334).
I’m guessing “brace” is British slang for “a pair” (though not 2020s use) but one wonders how Pattie could “hammer on the door” and have water pistols at the ready in case she catches the couple in the act. (Water pistols, really?!) And what are the “two fingers”? Is that British gesturing, such as one might use while bracing two water pistols? (Oh, and Boyd’s first name is spelled differently at different places: Pattie/Patti)
In a section about a get together of George, Pattie, Clapton and his girlfriend, Charlotte Martin, “she was totally unconscious of Clapton’s rapturous gaze” — OK, she must be Pattie Boyd. But then we read;
“In the aftermath of a New Year’s Eve party at Cilla Black’s house, she [?] recalls, ‘everything went swiftly downhill . . . Charlotte didn’t seem remotely upset about Eric and was getting uncomfortably close to George.’ He [Eric? George?] denied anything untoward and accused Pattie of paranoia, whereupon she (Charlotte? Pattie?] fled the house and went to London to stay with friends” (ellipsis in original, 240-41).
In a section on a British television (Ch. 4) special celebrating Carl Perkins:
“George joined a group of his [George’s or Perkins’?] devotees, including Ringo, Eric Clapton, and Johnny Cash’s daughter Roseanne, seated in a row rather like a school class to play along with Perkins classics like “Honey Don’t,” “Matchbox,” and his [George’s?] early signature track [?] with the Beatles, “Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby.” (391)
In most instances throughout the latter half of the book we can guess that “he” usually refers to George, but not always.
Another problem is a publishing gaffe: There are 8 pages of “source notes” that are completely worthless because there’s no reference in the text and the notes simply list various sources. So it’s hard or impossible to know if the reference is to a song title, book title, movie title or whatever, without telling us what is being referenced back in the text. Thus, if there’s a juicy quote in the chapter, you can’t go to the back and see where it came from.
In addition, there are numerous sentence frags, though maybe that’s just a stylistic device.
Finally, a technical note about money. Norman states that the 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night had been assigned a “rock bottom budget” of £20,000 — whatever rock bottom means, but probably not what the author thinks — but in fact it cost $500,000 (£400,000). Maybe someone originally thought they could get it done for £20k, but that’s not explained. And it takes 2 or 3 pages for us to realize that it’s Hard Days that is being referenced.
Overall, ignoring the grammatical and descriptive obfuscations, this is worth reading if you are hankering for the lowdown on what might be the most deservedly famous musical groups. They paid their dues. And none of them were saints (OK, maybe Ringo)
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