George Harrison met John Lennon through Paul McCartney. McCartney suggested Harrison join their band, the Quarrymen, and Lennon reluctantly agreed. He believed Harrison was too young and would ruin their band’s image. Eventually, though, he grew to respect his younger bandmate. Harrison said this happened after he kissed a girl who looked like Brigitte Bardot.
George Harrison shared the moment he felt he gained John Lennon’s respect
Harrison looked up to Lennon, but Lennon didn’t give him the same respect. That is, until Harrison kissed a girl who looked like Bardot. Lennon had long harbored a crush on the French actor, to the point that he asked his girlfriends to try to look more like her.
“Of course, as a teenager, my sexual fantasies were full of Anita Ekberg and the usual giant Nordic goddesses,” Lennon said in The Beatles Anthology. “That is, until Brigitte Bardot became the love of my life in the late Fifties. (All my girlfriends who weren’t dark-haired suffered my constant pressure to become Brigitte). By the time I married my first wife — who was a natural auburn — she too had become a long-haired blonde with the obligatory bangs.”
Harrison apparently had similar taste in women.
“I remember that the first time I gained some respect from John was when I fancied a chick in the art college,” Harrison said. “She was cute in a Brigitte Bardot sense, blonde, with little pigtails. I was playing in Les Stewart’s band.”
Harrison’s bandmate threw a party and there, the future Beatles guitarist made a move on his crush. This earned him points with Lennon.
“Anyway, Les had a party at his house and the Brigitte Bardot girl was there, and I pulled her and snogged her,” he said. “Somehow John found out, and after that he was a bit more impressed with me.”
George Harrison felt John Lennon was initially embarrassed of him
Lennon’s respect was likely gratifying, as Harrison had long suspected that his bandmate was embarrassed of him.
“I think [John] did feel a bit embarrassed about that because I was so tiny,” Harrison said, per the book George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door by Graeme Thomson. “I only looked about ten years old.”
Still, this had little effect on how much Harrison admired Lennon. He took every available opportunity to spend time with him. Even after The Beatles broke up, Harrison spoke fondly about his former bandmate.
The former bandmates were not happy with each other at the end of Lennon’s life
While the feud between Lennon and Harrison didn’t reach McCartney-Lennon levels of notoriety, they did fight. They were at a particularly low point in their friendship at the end of Lennon’s life. Harrison had recently written a memoir, I, Me, Mine, and Lennon didn’t feel that he got enough credit in it.
“Well, I was hurt by George’s book, I, Me, Mine—so this message will go to him,” Lennon told Playboy in 1980. “He put a book out privately on his life that, by glaring omission, says that my influence on his life is absolutely zilch and nil. In his book, which is purportedly this clarity of vision of his influence on each song he wrote, he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I’m not in the book.”
This was one of Lennon’s final interviews, indicating that he was not happy with his former bandmate at the end of his life.
