Guitar World (GW): John Lennon once said, "I grew up in Hamburg - not Liverpool." Is that also true of the Beatles as a group?

George Harrison (GH): Oh yeah. Before Hamburg, we didn't have a clue. We'd never really done any gigs. We'd played at a few parties, but we'd never had a drummer longer than one night at a time. So we were very ropy, just young kids. When we arrived in Hamburg, we started playing eight hours a day - like a full workday. We did that for a total of 11 or 12 months, on and off over a two year period. It was pretty intense. At first we played the music of our heros - Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Ray Charles, Carl Perkins - anything we'd ever liked. But we still needed more to fill those eight hour sets. Eventually, we had to stretch and play a lot of stuff that we didn't know particularly well. Suddenly, we were even playing movie themes, like "A Taste of Honey" or "Moonglow", learning new chords, jazz voicings, the whole bit. Eventually, it all combined together to make something new and we found our own voice as as a band.

GW: Did those tight, Beatles vocal harmonies also come out of Hamburg?

GH: We'd always loved those American girl groups, like the Shirlelles and the Ronnettes. So yeah, we developed our harmonies from trying to come up with an English, male version of their vocal feel. We even covered some of those songs, like "Baby, It's You" on the first album.

GW: The Beatles stopped touring in 1966 around the time of Revolver. That album was a quantum leap in terms of the band's playing and songwriting. Rock could now deal with our inner lives, alienation, spirituality, and frustration, things which it had never dealt so directly with before. What kicked that off was it Dylan, the Byrds, Indian music, philosophy?

GH: Well, all of those things came together around the time of Rubber Soul and Revolver we just became more conscious of so many things. We even listened deeper somehow. That's when I really enjoyed getting creative with music - not just with my guitar playing and songwriting but with everything we did as a band. It all deepened and became more meaningful.

GW: When you did that tour with Eric Clapton in Japan, you opened with "I Want to Tell You" from Revolver. There's a weird, jarring chord at the end of every line that mirrors the disturbed feeling of the song. Everybody does that today, but that was the first time we'd heard that in a rock song.

GH: That's an E7 with an F on the top, played on piano.The song was about frustration we all feel trying to communicate things with just words. I realized the chords I knew at the time just didn't capture that feeling. So after I got the guitar riff, I experimented until I came up with this dissonent chord that really echoed that sense of frustration. John later borrowed it on Abbey Road. If you listen to "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" it's right after John sings "it's driving me mad!"

GW: When you came back from India, did you intentionally copy on guitar any of the techniques you learned there?

GH: When I got back from this incredible journey to India, we were about to do Sgt. Pepper's, which I don't remember much at all. My ears were just all filled up with this Indian music so I wasn't really into sitting there thrashing through "I'm fixing a hole". Not that song anyway! But if you listen to "Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds", you'll hear me try and play the melody on guitar with John's voice, which is what the instrumentalist does in Hindustani vocal music.

GW: What about John? He was a much looser, more intuitive musician and composer. Did you help him flesh things out?

GH: Basically, most of John's songs, like Pauls, were written in the studio. So as the songs were being written, they were being given ideas and structures, particularly by John. As you say, John had this flair or a "feel". But he could also be bad at knowing exactly what he wanted to get across. He could play a song and say, "It goes like this." Then he'd play it again - totally differently! Also his rhythmn was very fluid. He'd miss beats or maybe jump a beat.

GW: Like a lot of old blues players.

GH: Exactly like that. And he'd often do something really interesting in an early version of a song.

GW: The medley on side two of Abbey Road is a seamless masterpiece. How did you manage all that with just four and eight track recorders?

GH: We worked it all out carefully in advance. All of those mini songs were just partly completed tunes. There was a bit of chorus here and a verse there. We welded them all together into a routine. Then we actually learned to play the whole thing live. Obviously, there were overdubs.

GW: Was Paul just trying to hold the band together or was he becoming a control freak?

GH: Well ... sometimes Paul "dictated" for the better of a song, but he also pre-empted some good stuff that could have gone in a different direction. George Martin did that too. They've all apologized to me for all that over the years.

GW: But you were pissed off enough about all of this to leave the band for a short time during the "Let It Be" sessions. What was it that upset you about what Paul was doing?

GH: Paul couldn't see beyond himself. He was on a roll - but it was a roll encompassing his own self. And in his mind, everything that was going on was just there to accompany him. He wasn't sensitive to stepping on other people's egos or feelings. Having said that, when it came time to do the occassional song of mine - although it was difficult to ever get to that point - Paul would then be really creative with what he'd contribute, you just have to listen to the bass line on "Something" to know that, when he wanted to, he could give a lot. But, you know, there was a time when....

GW: How difficult was it to squeeze your songs in between the two most famous songwriters in Rock?

GH: To get it straight, if I hadn't been with John and Paul I probably wouldn't have ever thought about writing a song, at least not until much later.

GW: "Something" was your most successful song. I think every guitar player wonders, did you get that riff first?

GH: No, I wrote that song on the piano. I don't really play piano, which is why certain chords sound brilliant to me - then I translate them to guitar and it's only C.

GW: You made music that awoke and changed the world. Could you sense that special dimension of it all while it was happening, or were you lost in the middle of it?

GH: A combination of both, I think. Lost in the middle of it - not knowing a thing - and at the same time somehow knowing everything. Around the time of Rubber Soul and Revolver it was like I had a sudden flash, and it all seemed to be happening for some real purpose.

GW: Finally, any recent acid flashbacks you care to share?

GH: No, no, that doesn't happen to me anymore. I've got my own cosmic lightning conductor now. Nature supports me.

Wywiad ze strony The Beatles by Joryk