It’s difficult to imagine the Beatles without George Harrison, but there was once a moment where his joining the band was not certain.
In November of 1956, a 16-year-old John Lennon formed a skiffle group with some school friends they called the Quarrymen. The following summer, Lennon met Paul McCartney at a gig and invited him into a lineup that also consisted of Eric Griffiths, Colin Hanson and Len Garry. At that point in time, McCartney was responsible for lead guitar duties, but it soon became clear that it was not his strong suit.
“For my first gig, I was given a guitar solo on ‘Guitar Boogie,'” he later said for I could play it easily in rehearsal so they elected that I should do it as my solo. Things were going fine, but when the moment came in the performance I got sticky fingers; I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ I was just too frightened; it was too big a moment with everyone looking at the guitar player. I couldn’t do it.”
Finding George Harrison
As luck would have it, McCartney had a replacement in mind. He and Harrison were both students at the Liverpool Institute and often rode the same bus to and from school. A shared love of music cemented a friendship between the two.
READ MORE: The Worst Song From Every George Harrison Album
“Paul came round to my house one evening to look at the guitar manual I had, which I could never work out,” Harrison once recalled. “It was still in the cupboard. We learned a couple of chords from it and managed to play ‘Don’t You Rock Me Daddy O,’ with two chords. We just used to play on our own, not in any group, just listening to each other and pinching anything from any other lad who could do better.”
John Lennon’s Reservations
Lennon, however, was not so sure. Harrison was only 15 years old and looked it. Lennon was then 17, in art college and not all that interested in having someone so young join his band.
“There is a vast difference between being in high school and being in college and I was already in college and already had sexual relationships, already drank and did a lot of things like that,” Lennon recalled to Playboy in 1980. “When George was a kid, he used to follow me and my first girlfriend, Cynthia — who became my wife — around. We’d come out of art school and he’d be hovering around like those kids at the gate of the Dakota now.”
Nevertheless McCartney urged Harrison to audition for the group, which he did.
“He pulled out his guitar and played ‘Raunchy,’ [a rock ‘n’ roll instrumental released by Bill Justis in 1957] and that was it – he was in the band,” McCartney said to Uncut in 2008. “He was a bit too young, almost out of the age range for us, a little too baby-faced, but he was just a great player.”
Listen to Bill Justis’ ‘Raunchy’
Harrison’s obvious talent persuaded Lennon to bring him into the band — not that Harrison was going to pushed around, baby-faced or otherwise.
“He was a terribly sarcastic bugger right from day one,” Harrison said per The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years, “but I never dared back down from him. In a way, all that emotional rough stuff was simply a way for him to help separate the men from the boys, I think. I was never intimidated by him. Whenever he had a go at me I just gave him a little bit of his own right back.”
Listen to the Quarrymen’s ‘In Spite of All the Danger’
George Harrison Albums Ranked
A ranking of every solo album by former Beatles star George Harrison.
Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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