HIGH WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FIRENDS

(½) 

George in Acapulco, January, 1977. 

 "Well, all of 1977 I didn’t write a song, I didn’t do anything; I was not working at all really, so I decided I’d better start doing something. I’d just turned off from the music business altogether. I am a bit out of touch with the other music. There’re certain artists that I always like to listen to, but I don’t listen a great deal to the radio. I just got out of it – I was ‘skiving,’ as the English say. Everybody else doesn’t notice, because if your past records still get played on the radio, people don’t notice that you’re not really there. But I just got sick of all that. […] 

 "Having been in this business now for so long – it was 1961 when we first made a record, I think, so it’s eighteen years now – the novelty’s worn off. Really, it comes down to ego. You have to have a big ego in order to keep plodding on being in the public eye. If you want to be popular and famous, you can do it; it’s dead easy if you have that ego desire. But most of my ego desires as far as being famous and successful were fulfilled a long time ago. 

 "I still enjoy writing a tune and enjoy in a way making a record. But I hate that whole thing of when you put it out, you become a part of the overall framework of the business. And I was a bit bored with that. If I write a tune and people think it’s nice then that’s fine by me; but I hate having to compete and promote the thing. I really don’t like promotion. In the Sixties we overdosed on that, and then I consciously went out of my way at the end of the Sixties, early Seventies, to try and be a bit more obscure. What you find is that you have a hit and suddenly everybody’s knocking on your door and bugging you again. I enjoy being low profile and having a peaceful sort of life. 

 "So anyway, to answer your original question, it got to be the end of 1977 and I thought, ‘God, I’d better do something.’” 

 - George, Rolling Stone, 1979.