George Harrison - Perfect Peace (1987)

 George Harrison:  The Only Thing I'd Like to Accomplish is Perfect Peace

By Charles Bermant

Special Features Syndicate

October 25, 1987

         George Harrison has expended more recent energy as a movie producer on such films as Mona Lisa and many Monty Python ventures than as a musician. The about to be released Cloud Nine is his first album in five years. Harrison, 44, thinks the record produced by the Electric Light Orchestra's Jeff Lynne, reflects a new spirit of collaboration.

 Charles Bermant: If I had read every Beatles book and seen every documentary, what would I still be missing? 

George Harrison:   A lot of the stuff in the books is just wrong. Factually. A lot of them were written out of malice or by people with axes to grind for one reason or another, and they've perverted certain things for their own gain. Not many are factual and honest. There's a saying in Latin inscribed on the old house that I live in. Translated. It says, "Those who tell all they have to tell tell more than they know." So you probably know more about the Beatles from reading those books than there actually was. Basically, the Beatles phenomenon was bigger than life. The reality was that we were just four people as much caught up in what happened at that time as everybody else.

C.B.: How did you pick this time to reemerge? 

G.H.:  I never stopped writing songs and putting them on tape. Not putting out a record gave me a chance to get away from it for a bit. Then I felt much better about the idea of doing it. Then there was a question of a producer. It's handy to have someone to bounce ideas off. I really miss that part of being in a group where you can come up with all your own ideas, and you have other people's ideas, and they all mix together, and they become even a different idea. So the whole burden isn't on just myself. Does this smoke bother you?

C.B.:  I'm just surprised you're still smoking.

G.H.:  Well, off and on, you know, something like this. It's ah... on. 

C.B. You've recently been a filmmaker, and now you're making your first video (of Harrison's cover version  "Got My Mind Set on You", originally recorded in the '60s by rhythm and blues artist James Ray).  How is that coming? 

G.H.  It's difficult to make a video that doesn't look like all the others. Occasionally, there's a really nice one, like ones by Dire Straits or Peter Gabriel, but you can't say, 'oh, I'm going to make one like Peter Gabriel', because he's already done that. It's difficult to come up with something that's new.

C.B.  How will your experience with feature-length films affect your videos? 

G.H.  This isn't going to make be me making a movie. Gary Weiss is making the video. I knew him from the Rutles (a 1978 satire on  The Beatles co-written by Wiese and Monty Python's Eric Idle. Harrison made a cameo appearance in the film.) Gary has a really good sense of humor. He's done the Saturday Night Live stuff as well. The problem is how to present it so it's funny, but at the same time, the song isn't particularly a comedy song.  Neither was "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon, but Simon and Chevy Chase gave the video a comical flavor.

C.B.  The Rutles is probably the best Beatles movie.

 G.H. I think so. 

C.B.  I don't think the Complete Beatles (a documentary film with old footage and interviews with music industry people that was released in the early '80s) did you justice.

G.H., The Complete Beatles is like taking all the footage they can scrounge and then trying to do a serious thing. The great thing about the Rutles is that even though it was a parody, it was the nicest thing about the Beatles, it was done with love, even though it was a send up, and because Eric Idle is a friend of mine, it gave him access to things that any other potential Beatle filmmaker wouldn't have. I showed him footage that was obscure and was satirized in the film.

C.B.  Have you listened to The Beatles CDs? 

G.H.  I did buy a CD player when they issued them. Yeah, I've listened to some of them. I still prefer the old versions of how I remember them on vinyl. There's a lot of stuff you can hear now that's good. In some cases, there's a lot of stuff you shouldn't hear so loudly that has somehow come out in the mix. On Sgt. Pepper, I kept hearing this horrible sounding tambourine that comes out of the right speaker. It was obviously in the original mix, but it was never that loud.

 C.B.  There are still about 30 songs on CD. How would you make them available?

 G.H.  Well, it's not our business anymore. When our contract expired, we lost any control we had over the Beatles' product. But I suppose if you took all the songs, you could put them in order in sequence of years as they were recorded. Then, as the technology advanced and our technique progressed, you'd hear them in proper order, or you could put all the singles on one or the B sides on the other 

C.B.. How'd it happen that the Beatles' song "Revolution" is being used to sell Nike sneakers? 

G.H.  From what I understand, Nike was going to use the song and re-record it with Julian Lennon. But Yoko Ono got really ticked off by that idea because I don't think she likes Julian. And she insisted it be the Beatles version. She has no right to insist that it's the Beatles and the record company's (Apple) interest not to have our records touted on TV commercials. Otherwise, all the songs we made could be advertising, everything from hot dogs to ladies' braziers. 

We never accepted advertising. We could have done our Coca-Cola commercial, just like everybody else. We tried to have a little discretion and keep a little taste. That's what we felt. The four of us tried to keep our songs in running order on the records. We tried to make good records. We tried to do something of quality, something to be proud of. When it's out of our hands, it's as if we've been made into prostitutes. This is the problem of not having any control anymore. It's unfortunate. 

C.B.  In the book you co-wrote with Derek Taylor, I Me Mine (Simon and Schuster, 1980), he said that you crave your own space and have a long memory. How do you reconcile this with being in the music business, which seemed to violate those traits by nature?

 G.H.  I still keep my own space, even though, on occasions like this, when I do an album, I come out and say hello to people. What he meant was that I couldn't live in a house full of journalists and have them ask me questions all the time. What was the other question? 

C.B. What is your long memory?

 G.H.   Ah, the memory.  Maybe, sort of more in the past, a lot of brain cells are missing now. Sometimes you don't want to remember things, sometimes you can't, and sometimes they just pop out there. 

C.B.   Are there many Beatles outtakes and unreleased songs?

G.H.  No, not that I know of. When we made records, everything we made came out. The only thing that never came out was stuff that wasn't supposed to be a record. That is to say, if we were rehearsing things and someone happened to tape it, it's not supposed to represent the Beatles or the music. But I don't know, people seem to want to scrape the barrel for anything. 

C.B.  What's next for you?

G.H.   Pretty much more the same. Our film company will keep jogging along. There are a lot of projects. It's a company that doesn't make a lot of blockbuster movies. They seem to be the sort of films that nobody else wants to make. It still doesn't mean they shouldn't be made.

C.B.   In a broader sense, what would you like to accomplish that you haven't done?

G.H.   The only thing I would like to accomplish is perfect piece, which is more of a spiritual sense. I'd also like to be able to consciously leave my body