re: George Harrison would have been 80 today......

So edgy

Then how do you know all there songs?????

What???? I don’t get the hate??

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I was like 10 I couldn’t exactly drive to the cd store

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That explains a lot

A while back I found this story about when George visited his sister who was living in southern Illinois at the time. This was a short time before the Beatles hit it big in the U.S.

Funny to think of him playing the local VFW hall and experiencing typical early 60's small town America right before they blew up over here.

He was the first Beatle to visit the United States. His sister, Louise, just recently passed away at age 91, in a nursing home in Florida.

Smithsonian Magazine - George's Visit to Small-town America

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On a late summer afternoon more than half a century ago, Chris and Monty Field, teenage brothers, found a spot on the courthouse square in Harrisburg, Illinois, to watch a Shriners parade. By some accounts, 12,000 people had gathered for the festivities, even though the population of this farm town was only about 9,000. As 40 marching units, some in their characteristic fezzes, came down the street, Chris and Monty engaged in conversation with a striking blonde in her early 30s who spoke with an English accent. Her name, she said, was Louise. She was there with her children and two brothers. Louise did most of the talking, but the younger of the two brothers, whose name was George, made an impression all the same. “He had a funny haircut, kind of long and stringy,” Monty recalls. “Most of the boys at that time had flattops.” George was wearing jeans, he noticed, with a hole at the knee.

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That’s not surprising. In September 1963, almost no one in America had heard of the Beatles, much less of George Harrison, their quiet lead guitarist. Back in England, things were different. The Beatles’ first LP, “Please Please Me,” had been released the previous March, and the single “She Loves You” had come out in August. That summer, the four of them had moved from Liverpool to a hotel in London’s upscale Bloomsbury neighborhood. Screaming girls were fainting at their performances. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” would be released in November, and by December, the Beatles would have released four singles and two albums, all while appearing regularly on the BBC and playing almost 200 concerts in 1963 alone. For the first time in their young lives, the four working-class boys who’d grown up in a bombed-out city had money, and demands on their time were piling up. Needing a break from touring and recording, in September Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr visited Greece. John Lennon and his wife went to Paris. George chose to visit his sister, in Benton, Illinois (pop. 7,000).

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George’s time in Southern Illinois was wonderfully ordinary. Louise took him to the Marion Drive-In (which no longer exists), where they saw Wonderful to Be Young. George was impressed. “You drive your car in and you see all these little things like parking meters,” he explained in an interview when he returned to England, “but they’re not parking meters; they’re speakers, and you pull them in the car and wind your window up, and it’s great.” The concept wouldn’t work in England, he went on, because “all you would see of the movie would be the windshield wipers going back and forth.”

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One Sunday in early February 1964, the people of Benton turned on their television sets along with a record-breaking 73 million other viewers to watch “The Ed Sullivan Show.” George’s second trip to America was proving to be very different from his first. His band was staying at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, where they needed dozens of police officers to provide round-the-clock protection. Onstage, George, already known as “the quiet Beatle,” looked a little lost standing between charismatic Paul and John as the girls in the audience screamed deliriously.

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For his own part, George never said much about his visit beyond noting somewhat wistfully in a letter to Louise shortly after his return to England that he’d enjoyed her friends and neighbors: “They’re great people. They were glad to see me—not because I’m a Beatle, but because I’m me.”

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Pic of George, his sister Louise, brother Peter, and niece Leslie while visiting Illinois in the Fall of 1963.

Correct Clapton played lead on Weeps. But the writing was really good. But what Petty and company did that rendition of Weeps at the 2005 HOF ceremony showed even more evidence on how great that song was. Prince was exceptional that night. And George’s son was behind Prince and when it was his turn to solo the smile on the sons face was priceless.

Great story.

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and I am still mad at this woman for what she did to music in this country....

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I’m mad at this one:

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Correct Clapton played lead on Weeps. But the writing was really good. But what Petty and company did that rendition of Weeps at the 2005 HOF ceremony showed even more evidence on how great that song was. Prince was exceptional that night. And George’s son was behind Prince and when it was his turn to solo the smile on the sons face was priceless.

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Yeah that’s a great rendition. Dhani’s face watching Prince shred his dad’s song was great. He was in awe and enjoying every second of it.

And Prince killed that solo.