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George Harrison and Paul McCartney didn’t agree on much in and out of their time with The Beatles. They had their ups and downs as friends and were far from musically compatible. One of the things about Paul that frustrated George the most was his inability to balance good and bad.
George Harrison said Paul McCartney was charming one minute but uptight the next
Paul was in a grade above George at school, but they took the same bus and discovered they both loved skiffle. Paul’s earliest impressions of George were of “a cocky little guy with a good sense of himself; he wasn’t cowed by anything.”
George’s sense of self got him through challenging periods of being a Beatle. He stayed humble throughout Beatlemania. When Paul and John Lennon pushed his songs to the side, he wasn’t fussed. George wasn’t competitive and didn’t want to be upfront anyway.
However, things between George and Paul worsened toward the end of The Beatles. George hated whenever Paul treated him like a glorified session man.
Outside of The Beatles, George and Paul’s relationship mellowed, but it was never the same. In 1979, George told Rolling Stone he had no problems with Paul personally, but he couldn’t see them being bandmates again. On Aspel & Co. in 1987, George said he hadn’t known Paul for 10 years, but they’d been hanging out more.
The following year, Paul seemed to scrap all the healing and repairing he’d done with George when he decided to use The Beatles’ legal issues with each other as an excuse to miss their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
During a press conference that year, George discussed Paul suddenly wanting to write songs with him. “Paul had asked, had suggested maybe the chance of me and he writing together something, and it’s pretty funny really because I mean, I’ve only been there about 30 years in Paul’s life. It’s like now he wants to write with me, but I think it may be quite interesting sometime to do that.
“I think there’s a thing with Paul. One minute, he says one thing, and he’s really charming, and the next minute, he’s all uptight. We all go through that, you know, good and bad and stuff. But I think by now, we got to find like somewhere in the center.”
George told VH1 in 1988 that he’d “become a bit more balanced over the years. I’m still a bit extreme being a Pisces. I’m either all this way or all that way, but I’ve tried, over the years, of bringing both extremes closer to the middle.”
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George said Paul thought too much about his past
During a 1988 interview with Countdown Holland, George said it was possible that he and Paul would play together again. However, he liked hanging out with other artists who were more friendly than Paul.
“You know, I just like to hang out with people who are friendly,” George said. “I was sort of getting friendly with Paul, a little bit, but I haven’t really known him that well for the last 10 years. If it gets to the point where he’s friendly and happy then we could do something. At this point in time, I have more fun with Jeff Lynne, Eric Clapton, and Ringo and Elton.
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“We get on really good, and I don’t like to get into situations where I don’t have fun. Paul sometimes is too, you know, he thinks too much of his past. But there’s a good chance. I think we maybe-if we can write a tune together someday. It may be interesting.”
George was mostly sick of Paul’s hypocrisy.
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The guitarist thought the ‘Yesterday’ singer was a hypocrite
George often called Paul a hypocrite, especially regarding his no-show at The Beatles’ Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction.
In one 1988 interview, George said, “We’ve all gone through problems with businesses and different things, but they’ve all slowly been getting solved. We’re right on the point now, the best time we’ve ever been at in order to get all our past problems solved.
“Plus, the fact that we’ve spent a lot of time with meetings with Paul, having dinner, and just being friends because having not spent a lot of time with him, you have to get to re-know each other again, and we were just in the process of doing that and enjoying each others’ company and with Ringo.
“For some strange reason, he decided to superimpose some old business thing that was getting solved anyway onto the Hall of Fame. It was a shame he didn’t come, really.
“We had a deal together that The Beatles were us four. If any one of that four wasn’t in the band, The Beatles wouldn’t exist. It can’t really exist with the three of us, but at the same time, we could all be on a stage together. I suppose like we could have done at the Hall of Fame if Paul had been there.”
Eventually, George, Paul, and Ringo came together to record two new Beatles songs, “Free As A Bird” and “Real Love,” with John’s old demos. So, George and Paul must have repaired some of their relationship.
If George, of all Beatles, was willing to come together that meant something. He’d come to terms with everything and didn’t hold onto his past like Paul.
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