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Expanded memories of quiet Beatle

Harrison’s widow and son re-release quasi-autobiography

By Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times
Published: March 5, 2017, 6:00am

To hear Olivia Harrison tell it, it wasn’t unusual for George Harrison to stroll through their house spouting words at random — a process that could cause an outsider to wonder whether the ex-Beatle was speaking in tongues.

“George would throw out words one after another,” she said in a recent interview. “He knew he’d find the word. He was good at that. Sometimes he was quiet and just thought about it, sometimes he just kept writing down words that began with ‘S’ until he got the right one. … It didn’t matter what they were — he knew he would get to something.”

In fact, that method is exactly what helped him get to “Something” — and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Give Me Love, Give Me Peace on Earth,” “My Sweet Lord,” “Awaiting on You All,” “Brainwashed” and so many other songs he wrote in the Beatles and as a solo artist.

Olivia Harrison had good reason to recall that detail. She’s been deep in her husband’s writing for months, culling scraps of paper, notebook entries, scribbles on hotel stationery, napkins and other bits of writing surfaces for the new “extended edition” of Harrison’s 1980 quasi-autobiography, “I Me Mine.”

The new version was published Feb. 25 on what would have been “the quiet Beatle’s” 74th birthday.

And even after all these years, the project held at least one surprise for Harrison’s former bandmate and lifelong friend, Ringo Starr.

At a private reception Feb. 25 at artist Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects gallery in Echo Park, Starr was perusing the lyrics to one of the previously unpublished songs included in the new volume, one that name-checked him, “Hey Ringo.”

After smiling at a rhyme about “my guitar sounds so bare/when your drums aren’t there,” the 75-year-old drummer became choked with emotion by the next line: “Hey Ringo, there’s one thing that I’ve not said/I’ll play my guitar with you till I drop dead.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes misting and turning back toward his wife, actress Barbara Bach.

Other celebs at the reception included Olivia and Dhani Harrison, Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh, Monty Python alum Eric Idle, Jakob Dylan, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Bangles members Susanna Hoffs and Debbie Peterson, producer George Drakoulias, and Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler.

The expanded edition of “I Me Mine” arrives in conjunction with a massive box set — a hefty 18 pounds’ worth — that gathers newly remastered vinyl pressings of Harrison’s solo albums. Additionally, the Austrian Pro-Ject audio company has created a limited-edition George Harrison turntable that retails for about $540 in the U.S.

“George Harrison — The Vinyl Collection” spans Harrison’s two pre-Beatles breakup efforts — “Wonderwall Music,” the soundtrack of a film that went unreleased in 1969, as well as his Moog-synthesizer exploration, “Electronic Sound,” the same year — through his 1970 blockbuster three-disc set “All Things Must Pass” and on up to his final studio collection, “Brainwashed,” released in 2002 after his death at 58 from cancer a year earlier.

“It’s kind of a no-win,” said Dhani Harrison with an impish smile at Subliminal Projects gallery. He has worked closely overseeing the box set for more than a decade. “If you do it right, nobody notices and everybody says, ‘Yes, the great George Harrison.’ And if you screw it up, you’re the guy who screwed up George’s music.”

Olivia Harrison said the impetus behind the updated edition of “I Me Mine” was simply that the original version had gone out of print.

“At first we thought of doing a digital version,” she said, “but then I said, ‘No, we need to do it right.’ ”

The original 399-page book wasn’t so much a formal autobiography as an annotated scrapbook, culling 48 photos and numerous reproductions of many original sheets along with fully printed lyrics to 83 Beatles and solo songs.

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It was the first celebrity-driven book for Genesis Publications, the British literary publisher that had assembled collector’s editions of journals from the HMS Bounty and other esoteric historical volumes. The new edition of “I Me Mine” is the 100th book Genesis has published.

The re-release has grown to 632 pages with 52 photos and lyrics for 141 songs. Fairey’s portrait of Harrison is featured on the cover.

“The book is mainly lyrics and text,” Olivia said, “so I didn’t think it was fair to add a lot more photos.”

Instead, she focused on gathering more lyrics for songs he never released, such as “Mother Divine” — “It’s a lovely sentiment,” she said, “and something he did sing over the years, maybe as a mantra.”

Her goal was to spotlight the songs Harrison released after the original book came out. “Several albums came out after that book was made in 1980, which was pretty early on. I really started looking for songs recorded after that.”

“I have a story for you,” Starr said shortly after arriving at Fairey’s gallery. “When he originally was doing the book, he called me up and said, ‘Ringo, did you play on ‘All Things Must Pass’? And I said, ‘I don’t remember.’ People were on a lot of medication in those days.”

Starr continued: “So he checked and called me back and said, ‘You were on about two-thirds of it!’ Then he wrote that in the book — that I didn’t remember whether I’d played on that album — but he didn’t say he forgot, too!”

The original text remains as it was, a virtual conversation between Harrison and old Liverpool pal and longtime Beatles publicist Derek Taylor. Harrison’s narrative covers his childhood in the hardscrabble seaport, the heady days of Beatlemania and life after the breakup.

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