Above: Paul McCartney and George Harrison - photo taken by Linda McCartney, Below: Paul and Linda watching George’s Madison Square Garden concert in disguise (1974)
[…] A year and a winter ago, another former Beatle went on tour and, to put it mildly, flopped. George Harrison had maturity, sincerity and the best intentions on his side. He appreciated the Beatles and his role in the phenomenon, he said, but he had grown up, changed, and did not care to dwell in the past. And to let everyone know how firmly he felt, he did a two-and-a-half-hour show dominated by Indian music. He did four Beatles songs, and this only after active encouragement from fellow musicians on the tour. He changed lyrics in three of the four Beatles songs, and rearrangements (along with George’s overworked, hoarse voice) turned them into hardly reasonable facsimiles of the songs many in the audiences had wanted to hear.
Paul and Linda attended Harrison’s Madison Square Garden show, Paul disguised in Afro wig, shades and walrus mustache, “and we loved it,” he says. He agrees that George had the right, at whatever critical cost, to say, “This is me, now.”
People, says McCartney, have this … attitude about the Beatles. “There was some girl on holiday and we were talking to her. She’s a real average British girl and she sort of summed up her view of the Beatles: these lads from Liverpool, lovely, cheery and singing lovely songs … and then, drugs! And they all went crazy on drugs. And that was the end of the story for her. Well, that’s kind of silly. And I think there’s a lot of people approaching the new shows like that. ‘Oh, well, can they actually stand up there when they were once the Beatles.’ You just have to say, ‘Well, this is me now, sorry, folks.’ Sergeant Pepper‘s a big change from the record before it. That was us then. So I think George is just taking it very naturally and saying, ‘This is me.’ “
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