‘Going in for flash clothes, or at least trying to be a bit different, as I hadn’t any money, was part of the rebelling. I never cared for authority. They can’t teach you experience, you’ve got to go through it, by trial and error. You’ve got to find out for yourself you shouldn’t do certain things. I always managed to keep a bit of individuality. I don’t know what made me do it, but it worked. They didn’t get me. Looking back, I feel pleased they didn’t.’
For the first three years he was in continual trouble. ‘“Harrison, Kelly and Workman, get up and get out,” that’s all I used to hear. If it wasn’t that I was being sent to go and stand in the chewer’s corner.’
When winkle-pickers came in, George had a monster pair in blue suede. ‘One of the masters, Cissy Smith, went on at me about them. We called him Cissy because he was always smoothly dressed. He said, “They’re not school shoes, Harrison.” I wanted to ask him what were school shoes, but didn’t.’
Cissy Smith’s real name was Alfred Smith, the brother of John Lennon’s Uncle George. ‘I didn’t discover that for years later either. I had hysterics when John told me.’
In his fourth year at the Institute, George began to stay out of trouble. ‘I learned it was best to keep cool and shut up. I had this mutual thing with a few masters. They’d let me sleep at the back and I wouldn’t cause any trouble. If it was nice and sunny, it was hard to keep awake anyway, with some old fellow chundering on. I often used to wake up at a quarter to five and find they’d all gone home.’
Harry, George’s eldest brother, had by this time finished school and had become an apprentice fitter. Lou, his sister, was at training college, and Peter was about to start a job as a panel beater.
Harold, George’s father, was still a bus driver but he had also become a successful union official. He started to spend a lot of time at Finch Lane, the Liverpool Corporation social centre for conductors and drivers. By the 1950s, he was the MC for most of their Saturday night socials, introducing the guests.
‘One of the earliest comedians we launched was Ken Dodd. We’d seen him at the club, having a drink, and we knew he was very funny, but he was always too nervous to go on stage. But he eventually went on. He did this act, “The Road to Mandalay”, with shorts on and one of those pith helmets. It was a riot. I don’t think he’s half as funny now.’
Harold Harrison was naturally pleased that George was at last appearing to stick in at school. He was the only one of his three sons to have got into a grammar school so he wanted him to do well. As a hardworking, meticulous union official, he wished he had had the chances George was getting.
He saw education, the way John’s Aunt Mimi did and Paul’s dad Jim, as the only way, not just to self-advancement but to success and respectability in the world.
A good secure job is what most parents want for their children, but particularly people of Harold Harrison’s generation. He had been through the worst of the depression days of the thirties, when he had been out of work for years and forced to bring up a family on meagre dole money.
George’s individualism and antiauthority don’t seem to have come from his father. At least his father’s tough early life probably drove into him the need for steadiness. But his mother was always an ally. She wanted all her children to be happy. It didn’t matter really what their interests were, as long as they enjoyed doing them.
Even when George became interested in something patently pointless, a hobby that nobody could ever make anything of, which clearly didn’t lead to security or respectability, his mother still encouraged him.
Mrs Harrison isn’t just jolly and outgoing. In her own little way, unlike all the other Beatle parents, she is one of nature’s ravers.
6 george and the quarrymen
Mrs Harrison was always interested in music and dancing. Along with her husband, she ran a learners’ dancing class — mainly ballroom dancing — at the Finch Lane bus conductors’ and drivers’ club for almost ten years.
George showed no interest in music as a child, as far as his parents can remember. ‘But he would always give you an entertainment if you asked him,’ says Mrs Harrison. ‘He would get down behind a chair and do you a puppet show.’
It wasn’t until George was about 14 that he suddenly came home and started covering bits of paper with drawings of guitars. ‘One day he said to me, “This boy at school’s got a guitar he paid £5 for, but he’ll let me have it for £3, will you buy it for me?” I said all right, son, if you really want. I had a little job by then. I’d gone back to working at a greengrocer’s, the job I’d done before I was married.’
The first person to make any impression on George musically was Lonnie Donegan. ‘I’d been aware of pop singers before him, like Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray, but never really taken much interest in them. I don’t think I thought I was old enough for them. But Lonnie Donegan and skiffle just seemed made for me.’
His first guitar, the one his mother bought for him for £3, lay in a cupboard for about three months, forgotten. ‘There was a screw holding the neck to the box part,’ says George. ‘In trying to play it, I took it off and couldn’t get it back on again. So I put it away in the cupboard. Then one day I remembered about it again and got Pete to fix it for me.’
‘George tried to teach himself,’ says Mrs Harrison. ‘But he wasn’t making much headway. “I’ll never learn this,” he used to say.
‘I said, “You will, son, you will. Just keep at it.” He kept at it till his fingers were bleeding. “You’ll do it, son, you’ll do it,” I said to him.
‘I sat up till two or three in the morning. Every time he said, “I’ll never make it,” I said, “You will, you will.”
‘I don’t know why, really, I encouraged him so much. He wanted to do it, so that was enough for me. I suppose at the back of my mind I remembered all the things I wanted to do as a girl, but nobody encouraged me.
‘So when it came to George, I helped all I could. Eventually, he was way beyond anything I could understand. “You don’t understand about guitars, do you, Mum?” he said to me once. I said no, but you stick in, I’m sure you’ll make it. Keep at it. He said no, he didn’t mean that. He needed a new guitar, a better guitar. He said it was like playing a mouth organ. There are certain notes you just can’t get because it’s not a good enough mouth organ. Well, he’d soon come to that stage with this £3 guitar.
‘So I said sure, I’ll help you to buy a new one. He got one, £30 it cost. Electric as well, or something.
‘Peter had also taken up the guitar. He had one first, in fact, now I think about it. A broken one which he got for five bob. He glued it and put it together and put strings on and it was great.’
‘My mum did encourage me,’ says George. ‘Perhaps most of all by never discouraging me from anything I wanted to do. That was the good thing about her and my dad. If you tell kids not to, they’re going to do it in the end anyway, so they might as well get it over with. They let me stay out all night when I wanted to and have a drink when I wanted to. I’d finished with all that staying out all night drinking bit when everybody else came to it. Probably why I don’t like alcohol today. I had it all by the age of ten.’