Tensions between the four members of The Beatles were clear when it came time to record Abbey Road. George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon were pulling in different directions, and the Peter Jackson documentary, Get Back, shows it. But the final time the four were in the studio together proved fruitful despite the animosity in the studio.
Reflecting on the late 1960s and those career-best recordings, Harrison would single out McCartney as the problem in the studio. Contributions made by McCartney were seen by the other band members as far from his best, with Maxwell’s Silver Hammer singled out for scrutiny by Harrison.
He said in 1977: “And it was a good date. Paul would always help along when you’d done his ten songs – then when he got ’round to doing one of my songs, he would help. It was silly. It was very selfish, actually. Sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs.
“I mean, my God, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer was so fruity. After a while, we did a good job on it, but when Paul got an idea or an arrangement in his head… But Paul’s really writing for a 14-year-old audience now anyhow. I missed his last tour, unfortunately.”
McCartney too would later say he was a bit of a menace in the studio around this time. Speaking during the Anthology documentary series, McCartney said: “In fact, he was about one and a half years younger than me. That’s quite a big age difference at that time.
“I suppose I used to talk down to him a bit, as you do to a kid who’s one and a half years younger than you. He was fourteen-and-a-half and I was sixteen. It might have been a failing of mine, to tend to talk down to him because I’d known him as a younger kid.”
Despite the studio tensions, it appeared Harrison was somewhat content with being in the band. While the band would not tour again after their 1964 performances, Harrison had held out hope that the four-piece would be back on the road as performing is what he enjoyed most of all.
He said: “I just had a good time just playing, you know. That’s what I miss. Even when we sold records and started doing a lot of tours, it was a bit of a drag because we’d go on the road and we’d play the same tunes to different people, and then we’d drop a few and add the new ones all the time. It got stale. I felt stale, you know, because you play the same riffs… da-da-ding-ding-dow, you know. Twist and Shout and things. By the time you came off the road, touring the world, I’d just want to not particularly…”
Despite missing being on the road with The Beatles, Harrison would rarely perform live himself. He performed a handful of times in the 1970s and embarked on a tour with Eric Clapton in 1991, but did not do much else. Harrison would perform his final show at the Royal Albert Hall, where he performed Beatles rarities with Joe Walsh and his son, Dhani Harrison.
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