(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Mon 1 September 2025 14:30, UK
John the smart one, Paul the cute one, Ringo the funny one and George…the quiet one. In hindsight, knowing how George Harrison came to feel amidst The Beatles, that silly nickname must have always stung.
I’m sure they all did. Starr potentially always thought his was simply another way his contribution to the band was minimised. McCartney perhaps resented that Lennon was celebrated for his intellect while he was degraded to his appearance. But for Harrison, the enduring labelling of him as ‘quiet’ probably only ever twisted the knife.
Though Harrison’s annoyance at the label would grow in correlation with his feelings of being ignored in the band, it was wrong from the start. George Harrison was never quiet. From the first album, he already had a self-written song on the tracklisting, making his mark as a writer with ‘Don’t Bother Me’ and immediately making it clear that he’d be more than just a backing player. But even when he was, even if he didn’t pen a single song on a record, everybody knows that The Beatles’ work would be missing a huge amount of impact if it wasn’t for his talent and his broad influences.
“Where you silent, or where you silenced?” the online meme goes as Oprah Winfrey asked Meghan Markle. As the years went on for Harrison, he started to feel more and more silenced and the ‘quiet Beatle’ label felt like a gag. By the band’s final albums, Harrison was arguably their ultimate secret weapon. Any time he managed to get a song on the tracklisting, battling past the blockage of Lennon and McCartney, it was a huge one. ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ usurps every other track on the length White Album, as does ‘Something’ on Abbey Road.
It seemed that the rest of the Beatles themselves were the only ones who couldn’t hear how loud Harrison’s talent was. Paul Simon certainly could though as he said, “They called him ‘the quiet Beatle’ but he wasn’t particularly quiet; he simply didn’t demand to be heard.”
In Harrison, Simon saw a kind of brother in arms when it came to songwriting. “His songwriting, too, which I always thought to be stylistically close to mine, was gentle and sad with country and skiffle influences rippling beneath his often sardonic lyrics,” he said. In both cases, the artists balanced nuance with depth as he added, “It all seemed deceptively simple.”
But that’s the key to a secret weapon. What Lennon and McCartney often shrugged off or shut up was an unassuming hit, neglecting to see that and instead focussing on their own work and failing to hear Harrison out. When the ‘Quiet Beatle’ was freed and launched his solo project, that was instantly clear as the simple effectiveness of songs like ‘My Sweet Lord’ or ‘I’d Have You Anytime’ is unmistakable now that he was no longer battling to be heard and could simply be loud in his own way.
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