However, once George got a taste of life outside of one of the biggest bands in the world, he started to hate the idea of a Beatles reunion. (Cheatsheet)
George could do anything he wanted outside the band, even if that meant not making music. Regardless of what he did with his life, though, it was always under the watchful eye of the media and fans. He didn’t like doing what music executives, the press, or fans wanted. A Beatles reunion was at the top of everyone’s list.
So, after George got the call about performing at the Prince’s Trust Concert in 1987, he was concerned someone was trying to trick him into being a part of a Beatles reunion.
Other big-name rock stars were also set to perform, including George’s buddies Eric Clapton, Jeff Lynne, Elton John, and Phil Collins.
However, George didn’t know his fellow Beatle Ringo Starr was also set to perform until Ringo called him. According to Rolling Stone, George and Ringo had been contacted without the other knowing about it.
“George phoned me up,”Ringo said, “and I told him, ‘Somebody’s asked me if I’m doing this Prince’s Trust, and of course, I can’t really do it without playing on it with you.’ He said, ‘Ooo, I don’t know about that.’ I mean, Ringo will always be my friend, but just that made me nervous."
And George said “I felt straightaway, somebody’s trying to set this up again.” This being a Beatles reunion. “You know, it’s one thing going on as me. But if I’m going on as the Beatles, I want to be able to have some sort of control over it.”
George started to detest that nostalgia when fans only ever wanted him to play Beatles hits during the rare performances he gave throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He told Entertainment Tonight that pressure would have been worse during a Beatles reunion.
“The pressure, you know, of the people expecting you to do something,” George said. “It’s a wonder we didn’t all go bananas really because I mean just say for that instance that Prince’s Trust. It was bad enough me and then Ringo."
“Wath was worse if Paul was there as well, as he was the year before, people are gonna-they’re expecting to hear you know whatever, I don’t know what they’re expecting to hear, but we could never deliver that, can’t deliver the goods.”
George wasn’t OK with fans wanting a Beatles reunion because it meant they didn’t care about the band’s well-being.
“They’ve got lots and lots of songs they can play forever,” George told Rolling Stone. “But what do they want? Blood? They want us all to die like Elvis Presley? Elvis got stuck in a rut where the only thing he could do was to keep on doing the same old thing, and in the end his health suffered and that was it.
“The Beatles, fortunately, did that hit-and-run. But every year we were Beatling was like twenty years; so although it might only have been five or six years it seemed like eternity…. People used us as an excuse to trip out, and we were the victims of that.
“That’s why they want the Beatles to go on, so they can all get silly again. But they don’t have consideration for our well-being when they say, ‘Let’s have the Fab Four again.'”
Continuing to Entertainment Tonight, George explained that most Beatles fans were “stuck on something that’s a craze and then they don’t see that it takes all these other bits that make that.
“I think a lot of people would, you know, if you put out a record and call it ‘The Beatles,’ you’d have all these people who’d rush out and buy it regardless of if it was a load of rubbish. Because you know of the name.”
George never wanted to become a Beatle again. “Not in this life or any other life,” he said.
Recently Olivia Harrison, widow of the guitarist, discovered the song lyrics in the couple's home
Song:According with NME A lost song written by George Harrison has been found inside an old piano bench.
Olivia Harrison, widow of The Beatles guitarist, found the lyrics for ‘Hey Ringo’ in a folder of notes stored inside the seat in the couple’s Oxfordshire home.
The lyrics, according to The i, say Harrison’s guitar playing is incomplete without his former bandmate, Ringo Starr’s, beat. They include the lines: “Hey Ringo, now I want you to know, that without you my guitar plays far too slow” and “I’ve heard no drummer who can play it quite like you“.
“There was a folder in George’s piano bench and inside I found a typed lyric for Hey, Ringo. It think it dates from around 1970,” Olivia Harrison said. She also said she believed he had recorded music for the track on a home cassette.
