It’s impossible to overstate how shocked the music world was seeing The Beatles for the first time. Outside of their four distinct personalities whenever they played or sang, the internal chemistry between the band was matched by their original material, being among the first outfits who made writing original tracks expected rather than the exception. Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney would be credited as the key songwriters of the group, George Harrison was slowly following right behind them.
As the band started playing their first handful of gigs, Harrison wasn’t interested in writing any of his original material. Though he may have had a credit on the pre-Beatles romp ‘In Spite of All the Danger’ with The Quarrymen, Harrison was known for bringing the arrangements to life whenever the group performed their songs.
If they released the same songs today, chances are Harrison would have been given credit for the different guitar hooks that he contributed to their works. While McCartney may have been behind ballads like ‘And I Love Her’, he even admitted that Harrison had a hand in bringing the track together, coming up with the famous guitar figure that ties the piece up.
Since the band prided themselves on having every member of the group sing, Harrison would often take the lead on various cover songs, singing rock and roll favourites of the group’s heroes like Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins. While he would also sing lead on a handful of Lennon/McCartney originals like ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret’, Harrison began to realise his talent for writing tracks on their sophomore release.
Assembled in between the first onslaught of Beatlemania, With the Beatles featured the first song Harrison ever wrote for the group with ‘Don’t Bother Me’. Considering that 95% of the group’s catalogue had to do with puppy love and teen romance, Harrison’s debut single was decidedly darker than the rest of their catalogue.
Written while he was sick in bed in the middle of a tour, Harrison wrote the track about the sour side of love, as the protagonist has been left on his own and wants to be left alone until he assumes his lover comes back. Despite being a valiant first effort, Harrison didn’t think that his first song was an overlooked classic by any means.
When discussing his feeble beginnings, Harrison thought the piece was a bit too rudimentary, recalling in Living in the Material World, “[It] began as an exercise to see if I could write a song because I figured if John and Paul could write songs, anyone can. But it’s not a particularly good song.”
While Harrison wouldn’t be given the time of day compared to Lennon and McCartney, he would soon blossom into one of the most complex songwriters in the group, growing on every album from the heartbreaking ballad ‘I Need You’ in Help! to making one of the greatest love tracks of the band’s career on ‘Something’ from Abbey Road. Harrison may have only just begun with ‘Don’t Bother Me’, but the song would be the first steps of a musical giant.
