This book is dedicated to gardeners everywhere.

G.H.

Introduction

, HE lyrics to I Me Mine were known to me long before the October evening in 1974 when I met the man who wrote them. George and I had spoken by telephone many times because I worked for his Dark Horse records label in Los Angeles. Still that first face-to-face meeting, followed by twenty-seven years together, is just as vivid today as the last time I saw his face.

During our life together the issues of possessions, attachment and identification with the ego were in the forefront of our awareness and George was always quick to point out that in reality there is no I, Me or Mine. George was relentless at keeping our spiritual aim true. We were only humans walking a long road towards our shared goal of enlighten­ment and I, for one, welcomed any reminders.

To the course of a day I might have said, "Oh, your bit of the garden looks great", to which he would reply, "It's not my garden, Liv". It was his way of reminding himself and me that we are pure Spirit, and that the Spirit is in 'every grain of sand', belonging to everyone and no one; that nothing is 'mine' and that the T we all refer to must be recognized as the little '1' in the larger scheme of the Universe. George was tired of the I Me Mines of this world, including his own, and had been from a very early age. When searching for a title to this book, he was well aware that the lyrics to these songs would always be tied to his name and consid­ered bis songs, even though he knew the creativity bestowed upon him was a divine gift. So rather than conjuring a book title that might try to explain away the gift of songwriting with, "Well, I wrote them but they

Foreword

VER since the war 1 have thought about gathering the bits of paper with my song lyrics scattered around and about.

Two drunkards cornered me in a hotel room near Heathrow

Airport in July 1977 and showed me that if I did find the lyrics, they could be bound into a nice book. They brought with them a copy of Captain Bligh's Log of H.MS. Bounty, published by Genesis, a bargain at £158 a copy.

Jack Hargreaves' programme Out of Town was on television some time later and in it he showed how old leather books could be restored to their original condition which made me appreciate the craft and seriously consider having these trivial bits of paper dignified in this Way.

In excruciating detail, just for you, at a price outside everyday experience, we offer the small change of a short lifetime. It was to have been called The Big Leather Job but became known as / Me Mine for it could also be seen as a "little ego detour".

I have suffered for this book; now it's your turn.

George Harrison Somewhere in England

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Part I is narrated by George Harrison with introduction and notes by Derek Taylor in italics.

Chapter I

HERE was a view that when everybody else was 'growing up' we were just fooling around being rocknroll stars", George Harrison said when we were preparing this book. In the context of what you will read, this specious view, which was undoubtedly widespread at the end of the nineteen-sixties, will be shown to have been as inappropriate as the unquestioning idolatry which it had replaced.

I Me Mine, a sly paradox of a title chosen by a man concerned for many years and for many reasons to send his ego packing (still trying and not always succeeding) is a book which tells a story of growing up, not necessarily the hard way but certainly not the easy way, for no matter how greatly privilege and wealth may have seemed to grace the Beatles' evolution, 'easy' is not the word for what happened to them on their way to what has come to be known as The Top.

In writing this opening portion of the book, I shall quote substantially from George himself (from conversations recorded in California, in Oxfordshire and in Suffolk) because although we have been chums for years and years, I do know less about him than he does of himself, and in any case, he is blessed with two gifts as a storyteller: an extraordinary memory for detail (dates, directions, weather, mood, time of day, appearance, etc.) and he has a guileless desire to make his attitudes absolutely distinct. This latter attribute has infuriated his detractors ('why does the man have to preach so?') yet it has secured from more open-minded folk—millions of them—a real sense of gratitude for the reassuring quality of his optimism, and he has won enduring love for his honesty.

There is another reason for offering such a wealth of first-person recollection

and that is that like all public figures whose fame went further and deeper than the mere state of being Very Well Known, the Beatles were greatly second-guessed, 'interpreted', assessed, and under-and-over-estimated to the point of

I first saw the Beatles at a concert on joth May 1961, when Joan {my wife) and I visited the Odeon cinema in Manchester where we then lived and where I worked as theatre critic and columnist for the Northern edition oj the London Daily Express. The Beatles were closing a remarkable ^package show' (a phrase ofthe/pjos and 19 60s indicating a concert in which a sizeable number of recording artists, performed for half an hour, or less, twice nightly, and mostly in cinemas) which included Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Roy Orbison. The promoter was Arthur Howes, a worthy man of the day.

Joan had seen the Beatles on television and liked them very much. I bad not seen them but, although word took a long time to reach newspapermen, I had heard of them and we both thought it would be a good night out. The show was quite astounding. We were on the front row, able to see every detail of the performance, although, untrained as we then were, we could scarcely hear the music above the loudest screaming me had ever experienced. The Beatles were excellent (so were Gerry and the Pacemakers and Roy Orbison) and it was quite clear that something exceptional was happening.

I wrote an excessively laudatory review, stating that "the Liverpool Sound had come to Manchester" and that it had been "magnificent" and that because of it, "popular music had, after years of unspeakable rubbish, become healthy and good again". 1 described the Beatles as "fresh, cheeky, sharp and young" and even now these words an as good as any to explain what they were like and after the first show they were all as one to me; I had no idea who was who. To compress what followed . . . / interviewed their manager, Brian Epstein, followed, noted and reported every scintilla of their progress every single day thereafter and became a regenerate Beatlemaniac.

As their identities became clearer to me, I observed that George was The Quiet One (see Rutles later), and when the Editor of the Manchester Daily Express, John Buchanan, to whom, even now, a graceful 'thank you' is renewed, said that one of the Beatles should be invited to write a guest column in the Daily Express every Friday, I suggested that the fortunate Beatle should be George. He asked if there was a particular reason. I said there were several: George seemed to be a decent chap and when I had met him at press

16

conferences and backstage he had been approachable and transparently sincere ' expressive. Buchanan and I proceeded to draw up a draft proposition for Epstein whom we met at his offices over The Wizard's Den (a magic shop) in Moorfields, Liverpool. John Buchanan put the situation to Brian Epstein: a Beatle should have his name on a weekly article in the Daily Express, yet a Beatle would not write it. It would be written by me. "Oh, why?" asked Brian. ^'Because Derek knows what the reader wants", replied John Buchanan. {This Reader and what He wants! . . . Did I know?) Brian accepted this proposition and asked if we had any Beatle in mind. I said that we had in mind George. Again Brian asked: "Why?" I said that George had seemed to me to be a nice lad, easy to talk to, quiet, pleasant, all of that. Brian said: "How interesting. A rather nice idea. It would be good for George, it would give him an interest, an extra interest. John and Paul have their song-writing and Ringo is rather new."

He asked if me had any amount in mind, a fee per week. John Buchanan looked very nervous, for Brian could be intimidating in this regard. '''Fifty pounds, we thought", said Buchanan. Epstein feigned astonishment. "Fifty pounds", he said, bis voice squeaking. "Fifty pounds for one of the Beatles in the Daily Express? Most certainly not! I am not letting George put his name to an article in the Daily Express for fifty pounds." John Buchanan said it would not involve George in very much work, after all I would be doing the writing, and I didn't earn fifty pounds for a full week's work. That, said Brian, was nothing to do with him and it was worth pointing out that Derek, if he would forgive the bluntness, was not one of the Beatles. So, said Brian, the fee was a hundred pounds and that was far too little and he would put it to George and see what George said.

There followed a meeting between Brian and George and the result was that at the end of i$ 63, George Harrison became a columnist in the Daily Express as Beatlemania appeared to be at its height. The Beatles had released two albums in England, and five singles, four oj them number ones in the British record charts. Ahead . . . the unknown response of the United States, and most of the rest of the world. The indications from Europe were that Britain had a phenomenon on its hands. In our third joint article, George and I expressed, in a cliche, cautious optimism.