GEORGE HARRISON
“THE QUIET ONE? HE WASN’T QUIET AT ALL…”
GEORGE HARRISON was a “cocky little boy” of 17 when he met Klaus Voormann during The Beatles’ formative residencies in Hamburg. They remained close confidants and Voormann enjoyed a ringside seat – as friend, flatmate and collaborator – during the Fabs’ imperial phase and, later, Harrison’s own blossoming solo career. Graeme Thomson listens as Voormann recalls tales involving fish finger diets, late-night phone calls from “Herr Schnitzel” and the making of George’s very own masterpiece...
GEORGE HARRISON
George Harrison on the set of A Hard Day’s Night, March 1964
Photo by MAX SCHELER / MAX SCHELER - K & K/REDFERNS
ROCK AND
ROLL MUSIC
The Beatles arrive in Hamburg on August 17, 1960. After six weeks at the Indra Club, on October 4, 1960 they play their first show at the Kaiserkeller, where they strike up a friendship with 22-year old graphic artist Klaus Voormann, art student Astrid Kirchherr and Jürgen Vollmer, a photographer at the Institute For Fashion
THE thing to remember about George Harrison is that he was a Gemini.The twin sign. Yin and yang. On Revolver you have “Love You To” and “Taxman”. Two sides. He could be really living this spiritual life – into meditation and getting up at 5am to see the sun come up – and doing it very extensively. Then suddenly he would go crazy! He could swap from the one extreme to the other, and he could find ways to make himself believe that it was the good thing to do. He would talk himself into it. This is why he was always searching for something – because he knew himself well enough to know that he needed something to hold onto.
The first time I saw George he was only 17 years of age. He was very different to how he was later. He was a cocky little boy! This band he was with was completely unknown. It was the autumn of 1960. In this club in Hamburg, the Kaiserkeller, they played for people to dance. George was singing all those funny songs, which he did later on a little bit, when he sat around and played ukulele. He was into songs like “I’m Henry The Eighth, I Am”, singing it all cockney. He would sing all those Eddie Cochran numbers too, like “Twenty Flight Rock”.
It took some time to get to know them. We had gone to concerts and jazz clubs, but this scene was completely new to us. We went many times. They had started looking over to us – “There they are again, those Existentialists!” – and we were looking at the stage all the time, seeing all the details. “Look at George, he’s got big ears, hasn’t he! And he has funny teeth – he has those Dracula teeth!”
“WHERE THEY WERE LIVING WAS TERRIBLE”
KLAUS VOORMANN
They were talking on stage in English and our English was not so hot. Eventually [Astrid and Jürgen] said to me, “Klaus, you speak English. Why don’t you make contact so we can meet them?” John was standing by the stage, and I went over and took the record cover I had designed with me, which was “Walk… Don’t Run” – by The Typhoons, not The Ventures. I showed it to John, and he said, “Go to Stuart, he’s the artistic one.” Because John was the rock’n’roller, he didn’t want anything to do with art. So I went over to Stuart [Sutcliffe] and we got on like the world on fire. It was amazing, we talked about everything. It was only natural then that in the breaks between shows we went out with Stuart and the others came along, and we’d watch them eat their cornflakes.