5. (Carol has a new job, and she and George have lost touch for several months. The following is probably one of the most bizarre telephone conversations ever
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I wonder about that offer of a place in the states. What year was that 72'? 73'? If this was an actual offer from George I don't think it's terribly odd that he'd do so through Mal. Since throughout the snippets you've so kindly posted here for people to read that George was quite and even socially inept at times. I even respect the fact that she didn't jump at the 'opportunity'. I do wish they would've spoken about it.
Yeah, 1972. George's social ineptness was fascinating, given the part he had to play in the Beatles. I guess he was never really that far removed from the boy in school who sat in the back of the room and never looked up from his desk, no matter what life experiences he later went through, the world-wide fame, etc. His uncertainty and insecurity around women was quite sweet. I couldn't believe that phone call, where he's asking Carol if she remembered him. It's like he had little concept of himself as a Beatle.
You'd think the phone call would be the other way around with Carol wondering about George remembering her. This is the side of George that I always find to be incredibly interesting. He could seemingly be so unaware at the time of himself and others quite aware.
Yes, and then he could turn around and do something completely inexplicable, like the Maureen incident, I guess we'll never know just what mentally prompted him into that situation. Interestingly, though I have no doubt the encounters with Maureen (and Krissie Wood) were sexual, both Maureen and Krissie, independent of one another, described the encounters as "spiritual, not physical." And then too George must have had an incredibly naive childlike side, such as when he's giggling about having had to disrobe at the doctor's office.
I must admit the most believable part for me is the unpleasantness (to use a somewhat euphemistic term) with Mal. Because we do have various testimonies that Mal (and I assume Neil as well) was getting a lot of the girls who wanted to have sex with the Beatles during touring and after, and that point the sense of entitlement must have been very strong. (I'm already reminded of that incredibly disturbing scene from John's 31st birthday party in New York where the bodyguards were gangraping the girl who'd come with Phil Spector and asked guests passing by "wanna have a go?")
Clarifying: it's not that I disbelieve Carol's report of her interactions with George, it's that the disquieting incident with Mal makes me think "so she didn't make that up, because otherwise, given Mal's reputation as a gentle giant, she wouldn't have added this detail".
I do agree with there being a certain truth to some of her accounts, but I do question aspects of her story. If the majority of what she's saying is to be believed (and people around at the time dispute a lot of it) I wonder why George was drawn to her.
I was commenting these entries in reverse order, so you'll see more sceptical comments earlier on.:) (I just finished with the start.)
Re: veracity in general (to more particular claims, see my other comments), unless someone kept a diary I'm very sceptical about people's ability to recall pages and pages of dialogue from decades past. Which goes not only for Carol in these excerpts but a lot of Beatles memoirists. My conclusion is "this is where the ghost writer build an entire scene by novelistic fleshing out around what was probably two or three actually remembered lines".
(Whereas when you get the occasional memoirist who doesn't use a ghostwriter and has a individualistic narrator voice, like Michael Lindsay Hogg or Mike McCartney, it's telling that they don't do these long dialogue passages. They remember the occasional line that stood out for some emotionsl reason, but not the entire conversation before or after, which in my own experience is now human memory of events long past works.)
That was my main problem, that she presented this information with conversations 'verbatim'. I think I would've been more inclined to believe certain things if as you said from you examples of Hogg and Mike McCartney that a line or two might be mentioned by the general feeling is of importance and not the words so much. Any thoughts on why George might've been drawn to her? I didn't see that in your previous comments to the passages posted.
There are pics of Carol at George's Esher house, the normal pics the fans took of one another, he's in some posing with them too. None of him at her bedsit though. Once the Scruffs got close to the Beatle of their choice, it was considered amateurish to want to keep taking pics of them, like any visiting tourist. By then they felt they knew their Beatle on a deeper level and didn't have to keep bothering them with requests for pictures. There are two letters Carol reproduces, the last George wrote to thank her after she wrote him saying she liked Extra Texture. But the letter the other Scruffs felt betrayed George's trust was one which began "Dear Carol, Kathy and Lucy" and he thanks them for being all there during the making of All These Must Pass, how he was overwhelmed by their love even though he didn't understand why they loved him, and he ended the letter with "Please don't use this against me" and when Carol wrote the book, and included the letter, the others (and George, no doubt) felt she had betrayed that trust. Even
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Oh, and the part about the gap between her and George's religious fanaticism was so much greater than the gap between fan and pop star was perceptive, I thought. As was the part where she tried to urge him to try moderation in his pursuits. I'm not sure how much of the account was embellished or how much poetic license was used for effect, but she seemed quite a level-headed, self-possessed person.
"the real me is something else entirely" kind of reminds me of something Olivia said, that once in awhile she'd run across an article about something he'd done during Beatlemania days and read it to George and he'd dismissively say, "Oh, that was Beatle George"! As if he was so compartmentalized that Beatle George was someone completely removed from who George Harrison was. I found that interesting.
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Clarifying: it's not that I disbelieve Carol's report of her interactions with George, it's that the disquieting incident with Mal makes me think "so she didn't make that up, because otherwise, given Mal's reputation as a gentle giant, she wouldn't have added this detail".
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Re: veracity in general (to more particular claims, see my other comments), unless someone kept a diary I'm very sceptical about people's ability to recall pages and pages of dialogue from decades past. Which goes not only for Carol in these excerpts but a lot of Beatles memoirists. My conclusion is "this is where the ghost writer build an entire scene by novelistic fleshing out around what was probably two or three actually remembered lines".
(Whereas when you get the occasional memoirist who doesn't use a ghostwriter and has a individualistic narrator voice, like Michael Lindsay Hogg or Mike McCartney, it's telling that they don't do these long dialogue passages. They remember the occasional line that stood out for some emotionsl reason, but not the entire conversation before or after, which in my own experience is now human memory of events long past works.)
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"the real me is something else entirely" kind of reminds me of something Olivia said, that once in awhile she'd run across an article about something he'd done during Beatlemania days and read it to George and he'd dismissively say, "Oh, that was Beatle George"! As if he was so compartmentalized that Beatle George was someone completely removed from who George Harrison was. I found that interesting.
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