(Personal reflections inspired by Beatles songs)
Song: “Here Comes the
Sun”
Album: Abbey Road
Release Date: September
1969
One big take home for me from the Beatles Anthology autobiography is a common thread among John, Paul, George, and Ringo regarding how little each of them gained from their formal education. Come to think of it, this was also the case for several of the other musicians I’ve written about in these blog pages, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Keith Richards. I suppose this goes with the territory: If you are a young aspiring rocker, musical ambitions are likely to clash with studies, particularly if you’re in a fledgling rock band.
I thought about this over the past week as I homed in on “Here Comes the Sun” as my topic-song of choice for this entry. The reason formal schooling came to mind was the story behind the song, whereby George Harrison played hooky on a Beatles meeting to visit his close friend Eric Clapton on the first warm spring day of the year after a long, cold, hard, London winter. There he wrote “Here Comes the Sun”. The Beatles were splintering at the time (1969) and their meetings were as often about business affairs as they were about music. Harrison was fed up, feeling like he was going back to school, which he detested. I imagine he pondered over a morning cup of tea: “a sunny day outside vs an indoor room filled with tension?”. It appears to have been a no-brainer decision.
I think we all can relate to blowing off commitments for an early spring day in the sun. I recall doing this on a handful of occasions in my undergrad years, electing to skip the elective in order to head to the school quad for some soccer dribbling with a friend or to the courts for a game of hoops (or to the frig for a beer).
One particular blow-off memory was early in my career with the US Geological Survey (USGS) when a great friend, Bob Mainguy, decided to make a last-minute Boston pit stop on his way from Paris to New York City on a business trip. Bob arrived on a Sunday afternoon. We soon connected with another great friend, Mac, and then the three of us promptly headed down to Mac’s cottage on the ocean in the village of Humarock (part of Scituate), Massachusetts.
After celebrating the night away on the breeze-blown deck, we crashed, and a few hours later awoke to a beautiful late-spring Monday morning, complete with the sound of crashing surf. All of us were supposed to gear up for heading to our respective work commitments on that weekday, but this weather and this locale were too special to pass up. One by one, we called into our offices to literally “blow off” the day. We were howling listening to each other. I was last and when the admin person (a great Korean Vet who has long-since retired) answered the phone I said “Henry, I’m calling in to blow off the day”. He said, “you mean, take a vacation day”. I said “no, I’m blowing it off!” (much laughter from Mac and Bob in the background). Henry chuckled and said “well, alright then, I’ll put you in as “blowing off the day”. (I did eventually chalk it up as annual leave).
Hooky was something George Harrison was very familiar with in grade-school. He did a lot of it in his formative years, often with Paul McCartney (and later with John Lennon too). George was the youngest of the Beatles, and so would end up missing the most schooling when John and Paul got serious about taking the band on the road. And yet, despite his lack of a formal education, Harrison grew up quickly; arguably faster than just about every other rock musician of his day.
In relation to this, there’s a scene in the Martin Scorsese biopic movie George Harrison: Living in the Material World that really grabbed me. One of the many interviewees in the film is Astrid Kirchherr, a lifelong friend of the Beatles from Germany, who they met in Hamburg during their ‘residency’ at several nightclubs there in the early 60s. Kirchherr, who hailed from Hamburg, took a number of priceless early photos of the band. She would end up falling in love with one of the then-Beatles, Stu Sutcliffe, who would die not long after of a brain hemorrhage (Stu had left the Beatles to stay with Astrid in Hamburg after his bandmates were forced to leave the country for a variety of reasons, and so Sutcliffe was with Kirchherr when he died).
Anyhow, Stu Sutcliffe was very tight with John Lennon, who struggled mightily when his best friend had passed away (this tragedy following the death of Lennon’s Mom only a few years earlier). In the Scorsese film, Astrid Kirchherr tells the story of when John and George came back to Hamburg to visit with her around that time. As she tells the story, a photo she took of Lennon and Harrison is presented to the movie-watching audience. It shows a downtrodden John Lennon sitting in a chair (it may have been Stu Sutcliffe’s art chair) with George Harrison standing over him. Kirchherr remarks in the interview that Harrison was very solemn that day and that every ounce of his energy was geared to his compassion for John Lennon and his commitment to be there for him in that moment. She points out his demeanor in the photo, in order to support her claims. I could see this too (image attached).
George Harrison was only 19 years old at the time and yet, wisdom was already deeply ingrained.
For my next blog entry (several weeks down the road), I’ll be writing about memories related to John Lennon’s life and death (it will be 40 years this coming December 8th when he was killed in cold blood). Here I’d like to reserve some thoughts on Harrison’s life and death (although much about his life has already been written in these pages, so I will keep it short), the latter of which occurred on November 29, 2001. Beatle George was only 58 years old when he died (my age now). It was the 2nd of a triple blow in 7 months’ time of deeply-felt events beyond my immediate sphere of connections (the first was 9/11 and the third would be John Entwistle’s passing in early 2002). For myself - and I am sure many others - it was about as bad a stretch as what we are all going through now in 2020.
My recollection of hearing the news of George Harrison’s death is not as intense as it was when I heard the news of John Lennon’s death, most likely because I had experienced another 20 years of life in the interim. My hearing the news was just prior to walking my daughter to school on a mild late-fall day. As the case with Lennon’s death, I internalized that news for the most part. If I had someone to commiserate with at the level I needed, I would have. But that was not the case, which was ok by me. Sometimes the best way to mourn is on your own (although, I must say commiserating was not a problem a few months later, when John Entwistle died, and that worked out too, in a far different way).
Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney visited George Harrison two weeks before his death. By all accounts, it was Harrison who kept the conversation lively, upbeat, and at times, hilarious. George Harrison has never shied away from death. Give a listen to his songs “All Things Must Pass” and “Art of Dying” and you certainly would agree. In fact, I’ve often gotten the sense that Harrison was looking forward to death (in one interview near the end of his life, he stated something to the effect that his only sad reflection was in leaving his son Dhani behind at such a young age).
George Harrison’s 2nd wife Olivia Harrison (who he was committed to from the mid-70s to his passing) claims that the brutal stabbing of her husband by an intruder into their London home in 1999 ultimately led to his untimely death (Harrison was stabbed in multiple locations including the lungs, one lung of which collapsed; the official reason for death was lung cancer). That would mean that two Beatles were slain by crazed individuals … a head shaking thought when you consider the fact that the Beatles core message was love. Olivia Harrison comes across as a very peaceful soul in any interview I have ever seen of her, and like her husband, in tune with a solid faith. In another poignant part of the Scorsese film Olivia states that when her husband died, the room lit up in an amazing, spiritually-felt glow. I believe her.
I remember the news when Pattie Boyd (George Harrison’s first wife) married Eric Clapton (Harrison’s close friend) in 1979. What was memorable about this wedding for me was that Harrison played guitar at the reception. This says a lot about George Harrison’s take on life. From what I have read, the love triangle hurt Harrison to the core, but he was able to overcome that hurt to be there in, what would be for most of us, a very awkward situation. Harrison was able to do that because he was always living in the present, vs the past or future. He was able to do this because of his faith.
My good friend and colleague, Mike Major (who receives these weekly entries) first presented the modern-day video “Here Comes the Sun” to me early in this Fab Foundations year: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQetemT1sWc ). It’s a fantastic video (I only wished I was able to use it for my original “Gem Videos” series 12 years ago), with numerous photos taken by Linda McCartney, most of which took place at John Lennon’s London Tittenhurst Park estate. It would prove to be the band’s last photo-op. There is also some creative animation in the video, including the Beatles feet prancing across Abbey Road (see the 1:10 mark of the video).
George Harrison was a self-made man. All the Beatles were, really. The four of them overcame the lack of formal education and privilege to become one of the most successful rags-to-riches stories in history. And of the four, Harrison may come down in history as the Beatle who made it happen the most. He did this by finding afterlife in life. And maybe one could argue, by playing a little hooky too.
- Pete
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