Why didn't Paul write and record with George after 1970?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Mister President, Sep 1, 2016.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Haristar

    Haristar Apollo C. Vermouth

    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    That interview video cut off a bit at the end... George actually says "Maybe he ran out of good ones of his own. Well it's true... except for Bip Bop, of course. Bip bop, bip bop band, dig your bottom dollar, put it in your hand..."
     
    angelees and theMess like this.
  2. gkmacca

    gkmacca Forum Resident

    Yes. Could you imagine George's reaction if Paul had belatedly had another hit by doing a cover of 'Got My Mind Set on You'? 'Oh, he needed to go back and ride on someone else's coat tales,' 'He's run out of ideas,' 'I guess he's reverted to childhood,' 'If oldies are all he's got...' etc etc. He never expected to get the same treatment back.
     
    tteal, maywitch, theMess and 2 others like this.
  3. Haristar

    Haristar Apollo C. Vermouth

    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    Or if Paul had made the Traveling Wilburys - 'Typical, making a super group, as if that ever works :laugh:'.
     
    maywitch and theMess like this.
  4. coniferouspine

    coniferouspine Forum Resident

    I think their personal and musical relationship pretty much ended with the "answering guitar bit" in "Hey Jude," if not already much earlier than that. In fact, I don't think they liked each other very much.

     
    DTK and Dream #9 like this.
  5. Haristar

    Haristar Apollo C. Vermouth

    Location:
    Hampshire, UK
    I'm thinking it may have started around 66-68 when they all got interested in different things. Paul and Ringo leaving India before the others in '68 may have had an effect on George.
     
  6. Dream #9

    Dream #9 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    The older Harrison got the more bitter he became. It was a cheap shot towards Macca.
     
  7. czeskleba

    czeskleba Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I think you guys are taking those comments far more seriously than they were intended. It's just a snarky joke, a guy giving his friend some s**t in a joking way. It's the kind of dry humor the Beatles specialized in, particularly Lennon and Harrison. He's smiling when he says it, and he does not seem bitter at all to me, nor does he seem like he's "sneering" at McCartney. He even mentions that he enjoyed the film.
     
  8. Fivebyfive

    Fivebyfive Forum Resident

    Location:
    East coast, US
    Well if it took sacrificing a friendship to keep those answering guitar bits off Hey Jude, then ... "so long, George." :targettiphat: Paul in this case was right. They would have ruined the song. Might as well tank the friendship as ruin a great song. (I may be only half serious here.)
     
    tteal, maywitch, No Bull and 2 others like this.
  9. Paulwalrus

    Paulwalrus Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chile
    He never expected it... because he knew he'd never get it. The same holds true for Lennon's comments in the press about Paul, and hell, even Ringo's. They wouldn't have talked like that if Paul was the sort of person to answer in kind in the press.

    I know some will complain in the "sure Paul is a saint" vein... but we're talking facts here.
     
    tteal and maywitch like this.
  10. Paulwalrus

    Paulwalrus Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chile
    Btw Fivebyfive, you make an excellent point about Paul's several long time collaborations.

    It is true that Paul seems to come up with a song in a complete form, so he simply wants it the way he wants it. It is his friggin song. If someone comes up with a part he considers better than what he has written (ie, the guitar solo on My Love) then he'll use it. Otherwise he won't.

    Now, some musicians can deal with /understand this form of composition / style of work, and some can't. Fact is Paul has always written /worked like this. Aren't there stories of him telling the drummer of the Quarrymen how to play or something of the sort?.
     
    tteal, maywitch, theMess and 2 others like this.
  11. Maidenpriest

    Maidenpriest Setting the controls for the heart of the sun :)

    Location:
    Europe
    Paul did not write with George before 1970 so why would they after ?
     
    zebop likes this.
  12. Syd Avett

    Syd Avett Forum Resident


    Great photo! I was amazed at all the entries in Keith Badman's book on the Solo years where George and Paul(and their wives) would gather for dinner. I believe the two men were indeed friends(when litigation wasn't brewing) but I also agree that George just did not want to make music commercially with his friend Paul because of things in the past.

    As pointed out, Paul and George were mates before John even knew George so they went back a long way. I feel Paul was hurt that George became kind of a John disciple early on after Paul went to the trouble of talking John into letting George into the band.

    Oh well, what they had was between them and far be for us to spoil, overstate or understate their relationship.
     
    maywitch and No Bull like this.
  13. No Bull

    No Bull Forum Resident

    Location:
    Orlando Florida
    George is my all time favorite musician... but I agree with everything in this post.

    And yes Paul was 100 percent correct about Hey Jude.
     
    maywitch, theMess and Haristar like this.
  14. NightGoatToCairo

    NightGoatToCairo Forum Resident

    Location:
    .
    I totally get what you're saying. I'm like this with close friends and certain acquaintances. It takes time to 'build' that type of rapport, but it can actually be a lot of fun and paradoxically bring you closer together. I'm guessing George and Paul got this and it was no biggie. Of course, I don't know. Maybe Paul was less comfortable behaving that way in front of a camera, with George there or not. Maybe he [Paul] was a bigger devil to George away from the spotlight and thus George took great pleasure in this type of banter publicly. Whether anyone thinks it's funny or not is really a moot point outside of their relationship, I guess?

    In fact, this thread has got me reflecting a lot on the way I am. I think I get taken the wrong way at times and I'm probably to blame for that. So I guess I feel a bit of empathy towards George and the negativity he has received in this thread. Someone mentioned the introvert George and the extrovert Paul being one factor in the awkwardness between them. I totally get that. I don't have a dog in this fight - to address the balance, I love The Beatles and have a bit of Paul's solo work. On the other hand, I don't have any Harrison solo work; but I find McCartney quite fatiguing and far to exuberant when he's not performing. I think he'd drive me nuts!
     
    Jarleboy likes this.
  15. No Bull

    No Bull Forum Resident

    Location:
    Orlando Florida
    With all due respect.. This is total bunk.
     
  16. NightGoatToCairo

    NightGoatToCairo Forum Resident

    Location:
    .
    A fascinating thread and great contributions from yourself and many others. What is the name of the book you have written regarding the Get Back sessions?
     
  17. NightGoatToCairo

    NightGoatToCairo Forum Resident

    Location:
    .

    Ah, this one I guess?

    [​IMG]
     
    No Bull, Jarleboy, theMess and 5 others like this.
  18. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    I think the "Hey Jude" incident was a major turning point not only in Paul and George's personal and professional relationship but was probably the final nail in the coffin as far as George having any positive feelings about being a Beatle went. Okay- it's Paul's song, he didn't like George's idea about the "answering" guitar phrase, but, Jesus, Paul, you could have been a little more tactful than outright rejecting George's idea by saying "come in on the second chorus, maybe", couldn't you? Paul carrying on in a similar manner during the Let It Be sessions didn't help and it was probably Paul bringing up the "Hey Jude" incident again that spurred George on to his "I'll play whatever you want me to play" rant. So yeah, the "Hey Jude" thing was undoubtedly a major sore spot for Harrison- I wouldn't be surprised if his "quoting" of "Jude" in "Isn't It A Pity" wasn't meant as a pisstake.
    Not unlike Lennon, Harrison sorta had a streak where he could dish it out but couldn't take it. Take "This Guitar Can't Keep From Crying" as an example. Here's a song where Harrison is 'reacting', supposedly, to the critical drubbing he'd received over the Dark Horse tour and album, except IMO George sorta comes across a bit of a "poor me" whinger in the song. Again, he could dish out the criticism and misanthropy, but seemed to react badly at times when it was directed at him.

    But who the hell knows? Hold on, I think I have my framed degree in Armchair Psychology around here somewhere:laugh:
     
    coniferouspine and Siegmund like this.
  19. delmonaco

    delmonaco Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sofia, Bulgaria
    I didn't read all the pages, but did McCartney ever show interest of writing with George Harrison? I was always under the impression that he never took George's songwriting skills very seriously...
     
    tteal likes this.
  20. gkmacca

    gkmacca Forum Resident

    There's a bit of a Sunshine Boys vibe about Paul and George's relationship in the later years. You know, even saying something like 'enter' instead of 'come in' is enough to start tension between the two men (dread to think what 'Let Em In' did to poor George!). And when it came to public interviews, they all knew what buttons to press. For example, George doesn't say he enjoyed the movie, he says he 'quite liked it'. And he claims he can't remember what songs were in the movie he 'quite liked'. And he has the dig about running out of good songs. He knew exactly what he was doing. It was different to teasing each other in private.

     
    coniferouspine likes this.
  21. Mister President

    Mister President Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    London
    Paulwalrus likes this.
  22. Hardy Melville

    Hardy Melville Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    On that video of George talking about Paul and what was really going on there...

    My wife, who is not the same lifelong Beatles fan I am, did become one, and she from the beginning was a George fan. I could be wrong but I get the impression George was more appealing on a personal level to women than the others, but not only women. His many friends in the music world attest to that, and to the limited extent I ever thought about it over the years, I would think yeah Ringo is the good time guy, John kind of difficult at times, Paul maybe a bit too earnest? George then seemed like a regular person and with an interesting sense of humor.

    But he really was more complicated than he might have seemed at times. I hear both sides here on what was going on in that interview, and I quite simply can't tell what was really going on. Most likely George was intending to be funny, with a sort of mocking humor that he didn't really mean to be taken as overt criticism of Paul. And yet... it does seem some bitterness is in there, doesn't it?
     
    NightGoatToCairo likes this.
  23. gkmacca

    gkmacca Forum Resident

    I'm sure when George had stopped really caring that much about producing 'hit' records he was good fun to work with (and some accounts of his tour of Japan with Clapton claim George was more popular with Eric's band than Eric was!), whereas McCartney was and is still ready to deal with the pressure of trying to be 'significant,' and that makes the work environment a bit more likely to have its tense moments. But the idea that George was always laid back, fun and fair is pretty misleading. Take, for example, Bernie Krause's experience with Electronic Music:


    "Before we get started," he said, "I want to play something for you that I did on synthesizer. Apple will release it in the next few months. It's the first electronic piece that I did with a little help from my cats." He hit the "play" button on the tape recorder. At first I didn't recognize the material. However, little by little I became increasingly uncomfortable, knowing that I had heard this performance before. After a few more minutes I realized that the recording was taken from the Lomax demo session I had played for Harrison only a few months earlier.

    A bit flustered, I finally rallied the courage to say "George, this is my music – the same stuff I played while demonstrating the Moog at the Lomax session in LA. Why is it on this tape and why are you representing it as yours?" "Don't worry," he responded with assurance, "I've edited it and if it sells, I'll send you a couple of quid." "Wait a minute, George, you never asked me if you could use this material. It belongs to Paul Beaver and me and we need to talk about it." At which point he got red in the face, veins began to stand out along his neck, and he got pissed. Even Beatles don’t like to get caught. Beatles are not used to being told “No.”

    "You're coming on like you're Jimi Hendrix," he responded, his voice rising in pitch and volume. "When Ravi Shankar comes to my house, he's humble." Then, as if not to be undone and seeing that I wasn’t impressed with his defense, he screamed his most famous line, "Trust me, I'm a Beatle!"

    Without hesitation, I quietly got up, put on my coat, and asked him to order me a car because I had had enough and was going home. While waiting for my ride to materialize, he had the audacity to ask me if I would show him how to set up a bagpipe sound. Without saying a word, I patched one for him, and left thinking that all he had to do was to stick the chanter up his butt – and blow.

    The album, "Electronic Music," by George Harrison, was released some months later. But not before I had it recalled and ordered my name taken off the cover. I didn't have the money or juice to sue him. The proper retribution would have to wait for someone more courageous and less intimidated by Harrison's tendencies to copy – like the person who wrote "My Sweet Lord" and chased George down until the matter was settled in court favoring the claimant and penalizing Harrison with a hefty copyright infringement fine. Rather then reprinting the album cover, Apple simply had my name silvered over. If you can find one of the old issues of the album, hold it in the right light and you can still faintly see my name – spelled incorrectly, of course. Although I did get credit on the inside jacket, along with his cats, I never did receive a single 'quid.' Also, the son-of-a-bitch never did invite me back to his house so I could show him my "I'm-as-humble-as-Ravi-Shankar" routine that I've been practicing ever since.


    Astronauta Pinguim: Five questions to Bernie Krause
     
    tteal, maywitch, john_frogg and 3 others like this.
  24. Siegmund

    Siegmund Vinyl Sceptic

    Location:
    Britain, Europe
    A brilliant story that I was completely unaware of. Love the sarcasm! :)
     
  25. Neil Anderson

    Neil Anderson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    This story's never made much sense to me. I don't doubt that it was his music on one of the sides, but why on earth under those circumstances would he request that his name be removed from the album? And why would he not sue? Plenty of lawyers would take it on a contingency basis. Having said that, it was undoubtedly badly handled by George, but it doesn't lower my estimation of him as a musician. "You know George's worst album ever? He plagiarized half of it!" Who cares?
     
    No Bull likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine