Stuart was going to stay in Hamburg, cos he’d fallen in love with this girl Astrid [Kirchherr], who was part of a little set who called themselves the Exi’s, existentialists. They were very cool in black, tight trousers, little high-heeled boots. She was blonde, she had a short Peter Pan pageboy haircut, she looked dead cool. We’d never seen a chick like it. She dressed like a boy, a very slim little boy, so it was all, Fuckin’ hell, look at her! I think we all fancied her but she fancied Stuart, who’d been the one guy who’d never been able to pull anything in our band. We’d always pulled before old Stu, but he got these great shades and struck a James Dean pose, got his hair going groovy like James Dean, so she went mad for him. And their group used to really like Stuart. I think it went: Stuart, John, George, me, Pete Best. That was their order of preference. They took some great photos of us.
- Paul McCartney interview in Paul Du Noyer, Conversations with McCartney (2015) pp.34-35
"On the subject of coloured landscapes, I was the last in the group to take LSD. John and George had urged me to do it so that I could be on the same level as them. I was very reluctant because I'm actually quite straitlaced, and I'd heard that if you took LSD you would never be the same again. I wasn't sure I wanted that. I wasn't sure that was such a terrific idea. So I was very resistant. In the end I did give in and take LSD one night with John. I was pretty lucky on the LSD front, in that it didn't screw things up too badly. There was a scary element to it, of course. The really scary element was that when you wanted it to stop, it wouldn't. You'd say, 'Okay, that's enough, party's over,' and it would say, 'No it isn't.' So you would have to go to bed seeing things." - Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, 2021
George Harrison interviewed for Good Morning Australia in 1982.
“A very sincere gentleman. He’s got a great philosophy, a wonderful sense of humor. And I didn’t find him the quiet one.” - Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Good Morning Australia, 1982
“Ex-pop star, peace-seeker, gardener, ex-celeb, until now.” - George Harrison (on how he would describe himself in 1982), Good Morning Australia, 1982
Kerri-Anne Kennerley: “Do you think life is all predetermined?” George Harrison: “In some respects it is, although we do have control over our actions right at this moment. I think that what we are now is the result of our past actions. What we’re going to be is going to be the result of our present actions. As again, they said in the Bible, ‘God is not mocked, whatsoever man soweth that shall he also reap.’ That means the law of karma — action/reaction. There’s certain things that maybe there’s no way out, like, there’s no way I wasn’t going to be in The Beatles, even though I didn’t know it. In retrospect I can see that’s what it was — it was a set-up. At the same time, I do have control over my actions and I can do good actions or bad actions or I could try being a pop star forever and going on TV and do concerts and be a celebrity, or I can be a gardener.” - Good Morning Australia, 1982 (x)
Do with this what you will. I’ve been busy lately and went on a trip so a large majority of this was done while waiting in airport/museum bathrooms. It was very entertaining to read about these stories though.
edited some of William's facial expressions for. reasons.
When my uncle told Lennon that I was born near Frankfurt, the son of a Jewish-American father and a German-Protestant mother, John quipped that I was lucky to belong to both the Chosen People and the Master Race. He then began peppering me with German phrases he remembered from his early days in the red-light district of Hamburg with the Beatles, for instance: “Um zweiundzwanzig Uhr müssen alle Jugendliche den Saal verlassen” – At 10:00 p.m. all minors must leave the premises – and “Ficken, lecken, blasen!” – fuck, suck, blow.
John Lennon: Living on Borrowed Time, Frederic Seaman (1991)
Paul and George aren't married because Ringo and John WOULDN'T have them.
How George and Paul met Being childhood friends George and Paul knew each other the longest. Meeting when they were 12 and 13. They met on the bus. They would take the same bus route into town, they both went to Liverpool Institute of High School, it wasn't common to have younger or older friends, you would stick to your own year, but on the outside it was different. This is where they’re paths would cross.
George says Paul struck him as odd. When George was getting on the bus, he thought Paul was laughing at him, but then realized Paul wasn’t laughing at anyone around him, he was giggling at his own reflection.
“Q: How did you first meet Paul?
A: On a bus coming home from school. He was sitting by himself and laughing! thought we had a real nut on our hands!”