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“The night before the sessions the phone rang about 9:30 p.m. ‘Is this Al?’ a voice asked. ‘This is George Harrison. I was just calling to see if you wanted any special keyboards for tomorrow. I’ve gotten you a Hammond B3 organ, a Fender Rhodes, and a Wurlitzer piano. We also have an Arp Omni. Will those be okay for you?’ I thought it was Herbie [Flowers] having me on. Something told me to answer normally though, just in case. ‘Uhhhhhh, yeah, that sounds like everything I need. Thank you and I guess I’ll see just see you tomorrow… Good night.’ […] [At Friar Park] George came out to greet us. He had incredible eyes that could look right through you. I had not met anyone with that powerful a stare since Dylan. ‘You didn’t think it was me on the phone last night, did you, Al?’ he said, laughing. ‘No, I didn’t,’ I admitted. ‘I thought it might be Herbie having a go.’” - Al Kooper, Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Survivor (1998) “I would say the three most interesting people I worked with and got to know were Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and George Harrison.” - Al Kooper, interview conducted by Michael Limnios for Keep The Blues Alive (2012) “[George was a] really sweet guy. He had those eyes. I only saw them one other time; Dylan had those eyes. They can look right through you, right into your soul. I never thought I’d see them again but Harrison had them.” - Al Kooper on George Harrison, Lancaster Online (August 7, 2009)

Within You Without You

Paul McCartney in Mojo, July 2026

just cause they are all so beautiful in these pictures

“‘The main thing that really buzzed me, even before I heard Elvis, was Fats Domino’s “I’m In Love Again,”’ says Harrison. ‘I can even see exactly where I was when I heard that. There was this little place near where I was born called Wavertree, a district. And right at that point there’s a thing called the Picton Clock Tower, this tower in the middle of the road with this clock on it, and then nearby there used to be this old art-deco cinema called the Abbey. I was just walking across the road there when I heard Fats Domino: Yes it’s me and I’m in love again! It must have been on a radio or a record player somewhere. And it touched somewhere deep in me.’” - Billboard (1992) About photo 1: “A young George Harrison with his Tony Curtis haircut, bright fluorescent green waistcoat (under the towel), and skintight jeans. He’s carrying flippers, so he must be off to the swimming pool or the sea. This would be around 1958 or ‘59, when George, Paul, and John were in the Quarrymen skiffle group. I thought I’d taken this photograph, but Paul rang up to complain, ‘Hey you bugger lugs! I took that one!’” - Mike McCartney, Remember: The Recollections and Photographs of Michael McCartney (1992) “When we lived in 12 Ardwick Road I vaguely remember a lad who lived in Upton Green, a couple of roads away from us. The next time I saw the same lad was in and around the ‘Inny,’ but as he was a year ahead of me, he was immediately classified as one of the ‘big lads’ and therefore unapproachable. He was obviously one of those working class rebel chaps and toward the end of our school days together he got more and more outrageous. The compulsory school uniform was outvoted by his extrovert dress sense and his hair was the longest anyone could possibly get away with in the Inny, all ‘Tony Curtis’d back,’ with a school cap perched on the top rear like a rabbi’s skull cap. When his guitar playing affinity with Paul was established in the end of term skewl koncerts, he’d visit our new Forthlin home […]. His dress by this time was even more interesting… full length, skin-tight drainies down to his bright fluorescent socks, even brighter lime (Upton) green waistcoat under his blazer which he would flash at me in the school corridors (followed by a wink). He had the first blue suede, winkle picker shoes which together with incessant chewing of gum all became his trade marks. My Sweet Lord knows who he was, but his Mum must have loved him.” - Mike McCartney (writing about “George Handsome”), Thank U Very Much: Mike McCartney’s Family Album (1981)

George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Me: An Evening with Pattie Boyd – "a conversational show-and-tell" – will be held at Sydney's Four Seasons Hotel on May 15 and Melbourne's Grand Hyatt on May 16.

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today, Terence Spencer (1994)

“George was an extraordinary musician and the sweetest of men, and, over the years, I grew to adore his gentle nature, his music, his deep spirituality and his friendship. […] If we had been dropped from the same height, George would have been a feather, drifting this way and that on the breeze, and I would have been a lead weight plunging straight down: the point is we would have both there in the end. There were times when we could have been living on different planets, times when George was procrastinating over what to do and I would be decisive and all action, or waring amazingly casual and way-out clothes when I would be more traditionally dressed. Yet there were many other times when we seemed so similar, paying the same fanatical attention to detail. He could be amazingly fastidious, keeping his cars immaculately clean and taking such care and time over his gardens, both at his home near Henley, England and in his tropical paradise on Maui. This determination to get things exactly right extended to his music. George would work and work until a song was totally as he wanted it to be — not just right, but precisely right, so precisely right that it would almost sound as if it had evolved naturally, out of nothing, dreamily and effortlessly. […] [Since 2001] we have stayed very close to Livy and Dhani, who has grown up to bear such a striking resemblance to his father, both in his appearance and his mannerisms. For me, George was a true friend who opened my eyes to so much that I would otherwise not have seen, and who in his calm, gentle way gave me a new perspective on living and dying.” - Jackie Stewart, Winning Is Not Enough (2007)

“When We Was Fab” — the music video: “I was a bit nervous because Godley and Creme are a couple of loonies, especially Lol [Creme]. They’re very sweet, but I wasn’t sure if they knew exactly what they were doing. I found out they knew sort of ninety percent what they were doing and the other ten percent was a bit of a grey area. But it was very good, very funny. I approached them. I said, ‘Go home and smoke something, listen to this and come up with an idea.’ They came up with the idea and after a few days they started panicking. They said, ‘It’s not going to work, it’s not going to work.’ And they tried to get out of it and I said, ‘Don’t panic now.’ I had to do it; I had three or four days before Christmas and it had to be done, so I said, ‘Just go for a walk in the garden, have a cup of tea, calm down, and then I’ll talk to you in an hour.’ And I talked to them in an hour and they said, ‘I think it’ll be okay.’” - George Harrison, Is This Live?: Inside The Wild Early Years of MusicMusic (2016) “In the new video I got my old Sgt. Pepper suit on but I’m busting out of there all over, that’s why you only see it for like three frames of the movie. [laughter]” - George Harrison, Rockline (February 10, 1988) “[A] Bristol model-making company has given the ex-moptop a hand, quite literally, in making his latest pop video. […] All these hands [in the video] work for Lyons Model Effects […]. Although the video was filmed in London, George came to Stoke Bishop to have a body cast made. This was then dressed as him and propped against a fake wall, behind which the Bristol hands, and attached owners, were secreted. George’s head was then superimposed atop the torso. […] ‘We were told before he came to keep things quiet, that he didn’t want a fuss,’ said Tina, who was caught out when the star arrived unexpectedly early. Chris had gone to collect Godley and Creme from Temple Meads when the security intercom at their Bell Barn Road premises buzzed and a George asked if he could come in, please. ‘I thought it was the lads mucking about, so I went to the door very nonchalantly and was quite taken [a]back to find it was really him standing alone on the doorstep. The Fab One had driven himself to Bristol, and was even modest enough to introduce himself. ‘He really was very nice, and very intelligent,’ said Tina [Lyons]. ‘He had a very dry sense of humor and showed an interest in other people. He was just very normal.’ [...] A special trip had been made to buy tights for George  to wear while he was getting plastered, but he thoughtfully brought his own. His lightly-clad form was then wrapped in cling-film, covered with dental plaster and left to dry for 30 minutes. ‘He was very patient, although at first I think he may have been a bit apprehensive, which is quite understandable,’ said Tina. The Lyons have molded quite a few famous bodies, Stephanie Lawrence, Paul Scofield and Ruth Madoc’s among them, but it wasn’t easy being casual about a Beatle dropping in for the day. ‘When we walked him to his car a lady stopped on the pavement and her jaw dropped. She mouthed “Is it him?”, and when we nodded all she could do was mouth back “I thought so.” Even then, I don’t think she could really believe it.’" - Bristol Evening Post (March 31, 1988) Pictured in photo 2 are all the people behind the special effects of multiple hands — in the center, Paul Wanless, and clockwise, Rick Bennett, David Lawson, Chris Enthwhistle, Tina and Chris Lyons. The single cover art by Klaus Voormann: “George said, ‘I have a song it’s reminiscing about the old days. Can you do a cover?’ I took the same picture from the Revolver cover, the old George, and put a new George on the bottom.” - Klaus Voormann, Uncut (May 2020)

(By the way, about the shirt George is wearing on the cover: Olivia “picked it out,” as George commented in a promotional interview.)

smoking

“You know, they say knock on the door and it will be opened or seek and ye will find. In those days we went through so much experience – almost like going through twenty years of experience all crammed into three, four years. And some of those experiences were pretty heavy. And it just made me feel like I wanted to know what was the point of all this. Because as you said, we made our money and fame and all that which is what most people regard as making it. But for me that wasn’t it. It was good fun for a while but it certainly wasn’t the answer as to what life was all about. And so I needed to know what that was about. If you know historically, I got involved with Ravi Shankar, with Indian music, I went to India, I did a bit of yoga and then I did a bit of meditation. And through all that experience somewhere down the line, the answers came to me as to what the point of life was and what are we doing in these bodies. And so I don’t really have so many questions any more.” - George Harrison, interviewed by Dave Tollington in Toronto (1988) “George was one of few who found what they were looking for. It touches me deeply to think that I could at least accompany him a part of that way, from the little cheekily grinning seventeen-year-old boy who wooed the Reeperbahn girls with ‘Corinna Corinna’ to the wise and knowing man that he had already been for a long time before leaving the world stage forever far too soon in November 2001. I will never be able to describe in words how much he meant to me and how much I will always miss him.” - Klaus Voormann, translated from Warum spielst du Imagine nicht auf dem weißen Klavier, John? 

“Astrid took them to shops and showed them clothes that they could wear and at that time they wanted to have those leather pants and stuff and they bought that cheap, ugly leather stuff in Hamburg in a leather shop. Apart from that they did not necessarily take up on what we were up to, but they listened to it and they were interested. You could feel that there was a really great interest in anything we were talking about. If it was about French art or of it was about some movies we saw or whatever, and in particular Stuart was the link to that part because he was very much into his painting. We just talked about it. But I don’t know, maybe later when we saw how they developed, some of the things we were talking about came through. I always say that when you see the cover of Beatles for Sale [photographed] by Robert Freeman where they have those big scarves round their neck, which were actually knitted by Astrid, the hair is really loose and the photo is loose too, and that’s the sort of time when I felt now they have picked up on what we were doing in those days.” - Klaus Voormann, Astrid Kirchherr: A Retrospective “It was always a giving and taking between us. They taught me the meaning of bravery, of sticking to an idea. They had to survive in situations in Hamburg, when they were penniless, which were disgusting. I tried to help them, and our different influences changed each other. Theirs came from America, and they taught me about Chuck Berry — and mine came from France and they learned about Sartre or Juliette Greco. It was an equal thing. And they liked my knowledge as far as fashion was concerned. But all this rubbish about ‘the haircut’ is nothing to do with what The Beatles really were. […] I didn’t even have a camera [anymore] when George talked me into doing […] Wonderwall Music. I had taken other pictures besides The Beatles, some of which I thought were better, but no-one was interested, and I began to feel unsure. Am I really good enough? But George never ever changed, he still believed in me.” - Astrid Kirchherr, MOJO’s 1,000 Days of Beatlemania “[George] said ‘Oh by the way, I need a cover or an inner sleeve for my next LP’ and he said ‘I would like you to take it.’ […] Then he offered to build me a studio in London to take pictures and asked me if I could think it over. I was so unsure about me being a photographer, because of The Beatles boom, and I was thinking ‘Am I really good or am I just a Beatles photographer?’ So I just gave him a call and said ‘No, I don’t want to,’ and the only thing he answered was ‘Well you are my little fool.’” - Astrid Kirchherr, Astrid Kirchherr: A Retrospective

holy shit dude

“Number one, she is the sweetest person you could possibly imagine.“ - Klaus Voormann, Astrid Kirchherr: A Retrospective “It was so soon after the war. All the struggles we had then: the guilt of the war, the guilt of our parents. Then meeting some youngsters from England who felt: the Germans are our enemies. They came to play music, and suddenly they found Germans were creative people that they could be inspired by — and we felt the same.“ - Astrid Kirchherr, Sight and Sound (April 1994) “Astrid was dressing like that [in leather] when we were still just Liverpool scruffs. She was the one who had the leather kecks and the Beatle haircut. […] Astrid was so loving; she’d take us home and feed us. She helped us a lot, even just to let us have a bath. Astrid was twenty-two at that time, and I was seventeen; she seemed so much older than me, and so grown up… […] Astrid was the one, really, who influenced our image more than anybody.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology “George was always my favorite, his kindness and his wit. He was just a wonderful person and whenever I was in trouble, like with money and things, he was always looking after me and he invited me a couple of times to London and later on to Henley. I just miss him terribly because he was like a little guardian angel for me, I feel like I am in a way lost without him.” - Astrid Kirchherr, Astrid Kirchherr: A Retrospective “I had the strongest friendship with George. He was one of my best friends. We saw each other often, and he always looked after me, got in touch constantly to ask if I was healthy and if I have everything. Today […] I still meet up with his wife Olivia and his son Dhani.” - Astrid Kirchherr, translated from Hörzu (2005) “[At Friar Park in 2001] I remember we had a little walk in his park, and I was so full of love and joy to be with him that I cried. [George] said, ‘You must not cry, I will always look after you.’ He had no fear. No fear whatsoever. I miss his presence, but I've got the feeling he's still around me.” - Astrid Kirchherr, The Age (2005)

[—from Many Years From Now, Barry Miles]