Cool/Funny/Lovely Stories About George | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

“The visit came about thanks to meeting George’s friend and master luthier, Danny Ferrington, in January 1999 at that year’s NAMM music trade show in Los Angeles. That was the show where my wife Liz and I and my brother-in-law, Dale Webb, first introduced Dale’s Fluke ukulele to the marketplace. “At our booth, besides the Fluke, we were presenting several of our Jumpin’ Jim’s songbooks and my book, The Ukulele: A Visual History. Danny Ferrington happened to pass by our booth and saw the uke history book. He commented that George Harrison was his friend and that George had given copies of the uke history book to his pals as a gift that past Christmas. He also went on to say that George was in Los Angeles at the moment and would love to see our vintage uke collection. Naturally both Liz and I, who lived in Los Angeles, were thrilled with the idea that a Beatle might want to visit our home. However, because we couldn’t imagine such a thing actually happening, we didn’t tell anyone and pretty much put it out of our heads. 

“A couple of weeks later, on February 2, we were still doubtful even as Danny kept calling with hourly updates on the various stops he and George were making as they supposedly were making their way to our home. And then sometime in the early afternoon Danny and George Harrison  walked into our living room. My first memory was that George grabbed a banjo uke resting on a stand and began to strum and sing the Formby song (and Herman Hermits hit) ‘Leaning On A Lamppost.’ And for the next three hours we talked ukuleles and sang songs. George sang and strummed several original songs that eventually ended up on his last CD, “Brainwashed”. “As it happened, at the time of George’s visit, Liz and I were putting the finishing touches on our Jumpin’ Jim’s ‘60s Uke-In songbook which was to include a number of Beatles songs arranged for ukulele. We were very excited about this book because it was going to be the first uke songbook to feature songs from the 1960s and we were especially pleased at how good these classic tunes sounded on the ukulele. As an example I pointed out the arrangement for ‘All My Loving .’ And then a moment later Liz, Danny Ferrington and I were all singing and strumming ‘All My Loving’ with George Harrison . Liz and I stole a look at each other while this was occurring as if to say ‘treasure this moment– this is about as good as it gets.’ 

“There are two other moments that are worth sharing. The first came about towards the end of the visit when I asked George if he would be willing to write a short note on why he liked the ukulele. He sat at our dining table and composed the charming paragraph that became the ‘appreciation’ in the ‘60s Uke Insongbook. “The other great moment was an unexpected flourish as George and Danny were leaving. At the end of our goodbyes George ran over to the piano and grandly played the famous intro to his song, ‘Something .’ And with that he said ‘See you later’ and dashed off. After Danny and George were gone Liz and I were left stunned and amazed. The year before we had made the somewhat crazy decision to leave good jobs (I worked for Billboard Magazineand Liz was a highly regarded graphic designer in the movie biz) to go full time into the ukulele business. At that moment we became convinced that George’s visit was a blessing that we were on the right path. We still do.” 

As Harrison’s health deteriorated in 2001, his friends used the uke to lift his spirits. Longtime friend and musical collaborator Jeff Lynne said that, toward the very end of Harrison’s life, “I’d sit beside him and play some ukulele very quietly. He’d wake and smile. . . . I half expected him to tell me I was doing it wrong. George was passionate about the ukulele. He played it brilliantly, studied it, and collected hundreds of vintage instruments. There’s not much you can do with a ukulele that doesn’t sound happy. I think that’s why he liked it.”

http://www.tricornpublications…..ssue18.pdf

Part 6 (last part)

parlance said
Freaky… I think this woman who was recently on Antiques Roadshow is the Leslie of your last few posts:

http://meetthebeatlesforreal.b…..tinue.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadsh…..05A05.html

http://meetthebeatlesforreal.b…..irl%20Tape

parlance

Whoa, how weird. Thanks for the links.

From Eric Idle’s Greedy B*****d Diary. There’s a lot of great George stories in there:

Day Forty. Shuffle off to Buffalo.
Saturday, November 8, 2003 – Day off in Buffalo
Further down the mall in St. Louis there is a Beatle souvenir shop, though sadly they have no Rutles stuff. I made some Rutle merchandise for Can’t Buy Me Lunch, but I gave it all to George who adored all Rutle stuff. I think the most successful present I ever gave him was a Rutle guitar, which Danny Ferrington made for me. It featured the Rutles looking out of the windows of a car, and George was thrilled with it. George once gave me the most spectacular present. It was Christmas 1975 and my marriage was breaking up and I was very sad and it was snowing and my little two year old son and I were alone on Christmas Eve. There was a ring at the door and we stood on the stoop bewildered as two men unloaded a big bulky heavy object from the back of a large truck and carried it inside. Carey and I looked at each other puzzled. What on earth was it? It was wrapped in corrugated brown paper and tied up with string, so we set about ripping the covering off. To our amazement and utter delight it was a juke box filled with rock and roll classics! There was a note on it which said “Every Home Should Have One, Happy Christmas, love George and Liv.” Well we plugged that thing in and it glowed and throbbed and pulsated with sound and we danced madly to it all that Christmas. What a great gift.

These are from Michael Palin’s diary during the Monty Python days. They give a great look at George’s friendship with the Pythons as well some mentions of the other Beatles. I especially loved these since Michael Palin is my favorite Python. It’s really endearing the way he writes about George:

Saturday November 4th 1972

With Terry and Andre, walked across Regent Street and into Savile Row, where the Apple Studios are situated in a well-preserved row of Georgian town houses.  They seem to be the only place that has the technology to cut our multiple B side.  Down the stairs to the basement.  Into a foyer with heavy carpets, two soft sofas and felt covered walls, all in a rather dark, restful plum colour.  A big glass-topped coffee table, designed for only the best coffee table books, was littered with copies of the Daily Mirror.  A flamboyant stainless steel strip was sunk into one wall.  Immediate impression on entering the cutting room of being in a Harley Street dentist’s consulting room.  At one point, about 7.00, I had just come back into the studios after having a drink when a slight, thin figure walked towards me.  The face was familiar, but, before I could register anything, a look of recognition crossed George Harrison ’s face, and he shook my hand, and went into a paean of praise for Monty Python – with the same exaggerated enthusiasm that I would have lavished on the Beatles had I met them five years ago.  He said he couldn’t wait to see Python on 35mm, big screen.

Thursday January 9th 1975

Another sign of the times.  ‘The Beatles’ company, Beatles Ltd, officially and finally ceased to exist today.  The company, which held the Beatles group as such together in various legal obligations, has become increasingly obstructive to their various separate careers.  The group haven’t played together since 1969.  We began when they finished.

Friday January 10th 1975

By one of those strange coincidences, today was the day that Python and the Beatles came together.  In the last two months we’ve heard that George H has been using ‘Lumberjack Song’ from the first BBC LP as a curtain raiser to his US stage tour.  So it seemed almost predictable that the two groups would be sooner or later involved in some joint venture.  Terry J, Graham and myself on behalf of Python and Neil Aspinall and Derek Taylor on behalf of the Beatles, found ourselves at lunchtime today in a hastily converted office at the Apple Corp’s temporary headquarters in smart St. James’s, to watch the Magical Mystery Tour – the Beatles’ TV film made in 1967.  At that time I remember the film being slated by the critics and it vanished, swamped by an angry public who doubtless felt the Beatles had let them down by not subscribing to the image of success and glamour which the public had created around them.  When it was suggested at a meeting late last year that we should try and put out the Magical Mystery Tour as a supporting film to the Holy Grail, there was unanimous agreement among the Python group.  After several months of checking and cross-checking we finally heard last week that the four Beatles had been consulted and were happy to let the film go out.  So today we saw it for the first time since 1967.  Unfortunately it was not an unjustly underrated work.  There are some poor and rather messy sequences, it’s very obvious when the group is miming to playback and there’s a cutesie Top Of The Pops-type look at Paul during ‘Fool On The Hill’, which is very tacky and dated.  However, it is extraordinary still, it is far too impressionistic and odd to be just outdated and many sequences are very successful.  It’s also quite long – nearly an hour, but all in all we were pleased.  It will have great curiousity value and should be complementary to the Python film, because much of it looks like familiar Python territory.  Ringo was suddenly there, talking with Graham and Terry.  He was dressed like a British Rail porter, with a black serge waistcoat and black trousers.  I noticed his hair was streaked silvery at the sides.  He looked rather ashen-faced – the look of a man who needs a holiday.  I was given George Harrison ’s numberby Aspinall, who said he thought George would appreciate a call – he’s apparently the all-time Python fan, and it was at his mansion near Henley that they had been last night looking at the last Python TV series.  Later in the evening, fortified (why did I feel I needed fortifying?) with a couple of brandies, I phoned George Hargreaves (as Derek Taylor and Aspinall referred to him).  An American girl answered – or rather a girl with an American accent.  She sounded bright, but when I said I was from Monty P she positively bubbled over and went off to get GH.  George and I chatted for about 20 minutes or so.  He adores the shows so much – “The only sane thing on television” – he wants to be involved in some kind of way with us in the States.  He said he had so many ideas to talk about, but I was a little wary – especially when he told me he envisaged a Harrison-Python road show, with us doing really extraordinary things throughout the show, with us swinging out over the audience on wires, etc.  Hold it George, I thought, this is hardly the way to get John Cleese back into showbusiness!  But he’s clearly an idealist who has warm feelings towards us and it’s very flattering to hear one of one’s four great heroes of the ’60s say he’d ‘just like to meet and drink a glass of beer with you, and tell you how much I love you.’

Friday October 3rd 1975

From the Captain’s Cabin to the Work House – the studio in Old Kent Road where we are to re-record ‘Lumberjack Song’. (George loved the song so much he offered to produce it as a Christmas single. It reached No. 51, but no higher as the Pythons refused to sing it on Top of the Pops.) The Fred Tomlinsons have been rehearsing for an hour by the time I arrive (just after 8.00), and up in the control room are Eric and George Harrison . George grasps me in a welcoming hug and Eric pours me some Soave Bolla. Downstairs, noisy rumblings of Fred Toms. I get down there to find them in the usual hearty good spirits – no Soave Bolla in evidence down there – just huge cans of beer and cider! Instead of dividing the song and introduction up into different takes, we just launch in, and soon we’ve done three versions straight through and my voice is getting hoarse from all the added shouting at the beginning. But one of the takes seems to please everybody. George, Olivia, Kumar (George’s assistant), Eric and I leave in George’s BMW automatic for a meal. We drive, if that’s the word for George’s dodgem-like opportunism, to the Pontevecchio in Brompton Road. George’s a vegetarian, but he managed to demolish some whitebait quite easily, and did not pass out when I had duck. (I noticed everyone else ate veg. dishes only.)

Saturday October 4th 1975

At half past four drive up to collect Eric and take him out to George’s house in Henley to mix the song we recorded last night. Eric philosophical about his recent separation from Lyn. He laughed rather ruefully when he told me he’d taken Carey out to the zoo this morning – ‘With all the other divorcees,’ as he put it. But he cheers up when we get to Henley and in through the gates of Friar Park, the magnificent, opulent and fantastical mid-Victorian Gothic pile which George bought seven years ago with the Beatle millions. George’s flag flies above its mock embrasures – it’s an Indian symbolic design of the sun and the moon and bears ‘om’ mantra. In the gardens there are grottoes with mock stalactites and stalagmites in mock caves and there are Japanese houses and Japanese bridges and all kinds of other ways in which an enormously rich Victorian can spend money on himself. George has endorsed it all by cleaning everything up and looking after it and generally restoring the place to its former splendours. The nuns whom he bought it from had let it rather go to seed and, according to George, had painted swimming trunks on the cherubs and cemented over the nipples on the some of the statues. It is delightful just to walk around and examine the intricate details of the carving – the recurring naughty friar’s head motif – even in evidence in brass on every light switch (the face is the fitting – the switch is the friar’s nose). It has none of the feel of a big draughty Victorian house, but one can’t escape the feeling of George somehow cut off from everyday life by the wealth that’s come his way. Maybe he feels the same way, for almost the first thing we do is to walk through the grottoes, across the lawns and down to the elaborate iron gates and into the world outside. Henley, with its narrow streets and the fine church tower standing protectively over the little town, with thickly wooded Remenham Hil looming behind. This was the town my mother was born and brought up in – in fact, she had been to Friar Park for tea when it was owned by Sir Frank Crisp, a barrister. Strange to think of the circumstances that brought me into Friar Park sixty years after she came here for tea. Anyway, we all walked down to the local pub – where we drank Brakspear’s Henley Ales and played darts. George was clearly anxious that we should stay the night, play snooker on his Olympic size snooker table, smoke, drink, mix the record and generally enjoy ourselves. But this was my second evening devoted to the ‘Lumberjack Song’ and I wanted to be back with Helen, so I reluctantly resisted most of the mind-bending delights of Friar Park and stuck to a couple of glasses of white wine. Half-way through the evening, George went out into Henley and returned with vast amounts of vegetarian food from a new Indain take-away that had just opened. We all ate too much – George dipping in with fingers only. Home about 4.00. Helen not pleased, as she had really expected me a lot earlier – and I very indignantly tried to tell her how much hospitality I had had to refuse, to get back even by 4.00. Still, it’s no time of night for an argument.