John and George Relationship Post-Beatles | Page 2 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Definitely. Well said. I was very touched the first time I read You Never Gave Me Your Money by how worried about Ringo the other 3 all were right after the breakup…they did love each other. Hell, Paul paid for George’s treatment the last year of his life and let George use one of his houses to spend his final weeks in. And George knew this…even though it has no bearing on my life, I’m very happy to know that at least they made peace before George’s passing.

^all great points. It’s also be documented, and again I can’t remember exactly where I’d read it, where it was common knowledge that George was by far the nastiest to Yoko from day 1, while Paul was actually quite nice at first (hell, he let them f*****g MOVE IN with him and Linda when they were between Montagu Sq (kicked out) and Weybridge (Cynthia moved back in)). And Paul was the one, inexplicably, who helped Yoko get John back in ’74.

I suspect George felt the same jealousy toward Yoko that he did toward Paul with regards to diverting John’s attention from him.

^all great points, except that don’t forget that All Those Years Ago was originally a piss-take of John by George (ala How Do You Sleep?) that George only changed after John’s murder. It wasn’t as if he whipped that up out of thin air in January 1981.

BTW, Joe or some other mod, shouldn’t this thread be in either the John or George forum and not in this off-topic one?

acmac said
I think the tension between George and Paul post-1980 may appear to us to be more serious than it actually was. As they aged, their compatibility as music partners diminished (and who doesn’t have a good friend they’d never want as a roommate/business partner/work colleague?), but I think there was (almost) always a lot of love there. Sure, George could say grouchy things about Paul in interviews, but I think interviews probably put him in a grouchy mood to begin with, lol. I think that may be behind the apparent tension in some of the Anthology interviews, BTW; camera-pressure was not good for their dynamic. Filmed interviews seem to ratchet up Paul’s nervous energy, while they make George grouchy, which is a pretty bad combination. Also consider: George’s speech at the Beatles RnRHoF induction; he seems totally sincere when he says “We all love Paul very much.” The relationship between Dhani/Olivia and Paul/Paul’s kids has always seemed quite warm and familiar (Olivia even published a sharp rebuke of Guiliano’s criticisms of Paul), which doesn’t seem likely if Paul and George had had a frosty relationship. There’s also Tom Petty’s quote that George could snipe about Paul, but “he hated it when anybody else did it and put a stop to it immediately” (this echoes Alice Cooper’s description of John and Paul’s relationship). And then, yeah, as somebody mentioned earlier in the discussion, there is the matter of George spending his final weeks in a house Paul provided; George had many rich and powerful friends, but it was Paul who he allowed to help him in that way. That speaks volumes to me.

As for George complaining more about Paul than about John when it’s arguable John treated him worse… well, John was clearly a more dangerous person to piss off. Paul could be relied upon to forgive and forget. And then John died, which would make George more reluctant to diss him for a whole host of reasons.

All great points. Reminds me of what John had said in the early 70s, where it was OK for him to slag the Beatles but don’t anyone else DARE do it or John would defend them to the hilt. THAT is a true love and bond between 4 brothers that transcends any ancillary bullshit.

parlance, I will try to find the source where I read that about All Those Years Ago…I can’t remember off the top of my head because it was all those years ago I read it (pun intended )

I absolutely buy into that theory, especially with Yoko pulling the strings. One need only read Peter Doggett’s excellent book to see how Yoko was also instrumental in keeping John and Paul apart, deliberately and calculatingly, from ’74 until the end.

Agree 100%. She drove the wedge between the band in the late 60s…and I don’t believe she was THE reason they broke up, but she was definitely A reason. The thing is, after she got what she wanted (John, fame, money, etc) she continued to drive that wedge throughout the 70s…preventing John from writing and playing with Wings on V&M, scuppering a few planned writing sessions between Paul and John in the mid-to-late 70s, diverting phone calls, etc. Those are undeniable, as you said those are documented and corroborated facts, plain and simple.

That being said, I think the issues between George and John went deeper than that. Paul and John had made up and she kept them apart. George and John were not on speaking terms, but she did prevent them from rectifying that.

Yep, and that’s what has bugged me for years…the conventional wisdom is that Paul drove George batshit crazy and caused him to quit, but George was having many more issues with John, Yoko, their heroin habit, and John’s disinterest than any annoyance from Paul at that point. It’s also been well documented that Paul was actually quite welcoming of Yoko from the start even though he didn’t want her in the studio (neither did George and Ringo), and for all the s**t she and John slung at him, he was quite accommodating of her (he could’ve told John to f**k off instead of helping him with the Ballad of J&Y, for instance). And he let them move in in late ’68/early ’69 after they’d been kicked out of Montagu Square and Kenwood but before they bought Tittenhurst Park. George, on the other hand, was nasty to her from the start. He only palled with John and helped with his early solo records, I suspect, because it was easy and fun to join in the bullying against Paul. Once John and Paul made up in ’73/’74, where did that leave George? On an island of bitterness and resentment.