John Lennon’s temper is well documented. To say he wasn’t the nicest man to be around would be an understatement, as his friends, partners, and bandmates suffered at the hands of his anger over the years. But one Beatles song in particular got his blood boiling.
It’s been said often that Lennon struggled when it came to collaboration. The musician was reported to have very little interest in his bandmates’ songs, an energy that comes across clearly in the Get Back documentary. Lennon wanted to work on his own tracks first and foremost and was very protective over how his songs came about and were finished.
George Harrison, it would seem, got the brunt of it. While Lennon and McCartney are seen as the main songwriters in the band, Harrison’s contribution proved vital in the end, producing defining songs like ‘Here Comes The Sun’, ‘Something, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and more.
When it came to recording their 1965 album Rubber Soul, Lennon and Harrison worked closely to get the guitar sounds right. Their collaboration was especially vital on ‘Norwegian Wood’. But Lennon admitted to getting rather angry when they struggled to get the song right.
By the mid-1960s, Harrison was starting to experiment with the sitar, and Lennon wanted him to add the instrument to the track. But as they tried to figure it out, Lennon got more irate.
“George had just got the sitar and I said, ‘Could you play this piece?’” Lennon told Rolling Stone. “We went through many different sort of versions of the song, it was never right and I was getting very angry about it, it wasn’t coming out like I said.”
“They said, ‘Well just do it how you want to do it’ and I said, ‘Well I just want to do it like this,’” Lennon remembered.
“They let me go, and I did the guitar very loudly into the mike and sang it at the same time and then George had the sitar,” he added. “And I asked him could he play the piece that I’d written, you know, dee diddley dee diddley dee, that bit, and he was not sure whether he could play it yet because he hadn’t done much on the sitar but he was willing to have a go, as is his wont, and he learned the bit and dubbed it on after. I think we did it in sections.”
Lennon’s anger and judgement towards Harrison would roll on for the next few albums. In an interview after the band announced their split, Lennon gave him a scathing review, “George has not done his best work yet. His talents have developed over the years, and he was working with two fucking brilliant songwriters, and he learned a lot from us.”
Placing himself and McCartney above the guitar player in terms of skill and talent, at least Lennon recognised his ego, adding, “Maybe it was hard for him sometimes, because Paul and I are such ego-maniacs, but that’s the game.”
