George Harrison was an essential member of The Beatles, but he found Beatlemania overwhelming. Fans turned out in droves to see the band perform when they came to town. However, many audience members didn’t know how to contain themselves, leading to them screaming like seagulls or behaving violently toward the band. The guitarist once expressed his frustrations with audiences via a letter he sent to a fan.
George Harrison sent an angry letter to a fan after becoming fed up with fans throwing objects at them
During the 1960s, Beatlemania took the world by storm. Thousands of fans would pack stadiums and concert halls whenever The Beatles came to their city. Their music dominated the charts, and everyone wanted to see the band that made rock n’ roll the mainstream genre of the industry.
Fans often took their love of the band to the extreme. Eventually, it caused The Beatles to stop touring in 1966. However, George Harrison accidentally gave fans ammunition when he mentioned in an interview that his favorite candy was Jelly Babies. Fans would then bring this candy to concerts and hurl them at the band. Harrison delivered a response to this in which he wasn’t too pleased.
“It’s a bit dangerous, y’know?” he said. “A jelly bean traveling at around 50mph, if it hits ya in the eye, well, you’re finished, aren’t ya? You’re blind.”
Harrison did recognize how much The Beatles meant to their fans, so he did take time to reply to fan letters. One of his responses was to 15-year-old Lynn Smith where he called out the fans’ behavior over the Jelly Babies. Shared via Express, he asked Smith to please consider what it’s like for them to feel hard candy thrown at them while performing.
“We don’t like Jelly Babies, or Fruit Gums for that matter. Think how we feel standing on stage trying to dodge the stuff, before you throw some more at us!” Harrison stated. “Besides, it is dangerous. I was hit in the eye once with a boiled sweet, and it’s not funny!”
Harrison blamed the audience for why The Beatles never reunited
The Beatles disbanded in 1970. While each member had successful solo careers, audiences still dreamed of a day when the fab four would reunite. There were little teases now and then, but George Harrison made it clear to fans that he never wanted to get the band back together.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Harrison’s answer was rather blunt. He didn’t want to reunite with the other boys because he never wanted to experience Beatlemania again. He thought fans wanted another excuse to lose their minds, but they had enough material to satisfy their thirst for Beatles content.
“They’ve got the films – Help!, A Hard Day’s Night, Let It Rot, Tragical History Tour. They’ve got lots and lots of songs they can play forever,” Harrison explained. “But what do they want? Blood? They want us all to die like Elvis Presley? The Beatles, fortunately, did that hit-and-run. But every year we were Beatling was like twenty years; so although it might only have been five or six years, it seemed like eternity. That was enough for me, I don’t have any desire to do all that.”
“It might have been fun for everybody else, but we never saw the Beatles. We’re the only four people who never got to see us. [Laughing] Everybody got on a trip, you see, that was the thing,” he continued. “We were just four relatively sane people in the middle of madness. People used us as an excuse to trip out, and we were the victims of that. That’s why they want the Beatles to go on, so they can all get silly again. But they don’t have consideration for our well-being when they say, ‘Let’s have the Fab Four again.’”
John Lennon died in 1980, and The Beatles never reunited before his death. Still, George Harrison was correct in assuming that fans would have gone berzerk if the Liverpool band did have a reunion.
