{"id":307978,"date":"2025-12-10T01:19:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T01:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/307978\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T01:19:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T01:19:14","slug":"the-heartwarming-best-day-paul-mccartney-had-with-george-harrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/307978\/","title":{"rendered":"The heartwarming “best day” Paul McCartney had with George Harrison"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Tue 9 December 2025 17:00, UK <\/p>\n

Before The Beatles<\/a> became the Fab Four, revolutionising popular music forever, they were just school kids in Liverpool, absorbing all the rock music they could find and picking up their instruments for the first time.<\/p>\n

Paul McCartney and George Harrison met, naturally, on the school bus. Both recognised a shared love of music: Harrison said that he played the guitar and learned that McCartney, a trumpet player, was going to pick up the guitar, too. They also found a mutual appreciation of the British \u2018King of Skiffle\u2019, singer-songwriter Lonnie Donegan, whom the two realised they\u2019d both seen at Liverpool Empire, the same night, before they met<\/a>. <\/p>\n

McCartney invited Harrison to his house to learn the chords to \u2018Don\u2019t You Rock Me Daddy O\u2019, and the two became bonded for life, solidified when McCartney brought along Harrison to audition for John Lennon\u2019s group, The Quarrymen. McCartney vouched for his friend to a sceptical Lennon, who was unsure due to Harrison\u2019s age, and Harrison\u2019s guitar skills proved stronger. As they say, the rest is rock \u2018n\u2019 roll history.<\/p>\n

While the bond between McCartney and Harrison<\/a> would fray as the former\u2019s with Lennon grew stronger, creative tensions posing a frustration to Harrison, the two would slowly reconcile, albeit not quite the same as before, when they were two kids, practising guitar chords in McCartney\u2019s home. <\/p>\n

But it is moments such as these that remain in McCartney\u2019s mind all these years later, looking back on his memories with Harrison, who passed away from lung cancer in 2001. In the 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living In The Material World, McCartney reminisces on his \u201cbest times with George\u201d, thinking back to a hitchhiking trip the pair took to Wales in the summer of 1959.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hitchhiked to a place in Wales called Harlech; we were kids, before The Beatles,\u201d McCartney remembers. \u201cWe\u2019d heard a song, \u2018Men of Harlech\u2019, and saw the signpost, and said, \u2018Yeah!\u2019 There was a big castle, and we just went there.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Public Domain \/ ingen uppgift)<\/p>\n

The two young musicians, with little plan outside of sheer curiosity, roamed Harlech and met a cast of characters along the way. \u201cWe had our guitars [and] took them everywhere,\u201d McCartney says. \u201cWe ended up in this cafe; we\u2019d try and go to a central meeting place\u2026 they had a jukebox, so this was \u2018home\u2019. So we sat around there, we met a guy, and he started talking. He was into rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, and we went and stayed at his house, so it was great! Me and George, top-and-tailing it in a bed.\u201d <\/p>\n

The pair would stay at the man\u2019s mother\u2019s bed-and-breakfast, where, as McCartney remembers, they forgot to pay. Years later, they received a letter from the woman requesting payment, now that they were \u201cfamous and rich,\u201d in McCartney\u2019s words. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe said, \u2018Oh, sorry!\u2019\u201d McCartney says and, mimicking the writing of a letter, responded, \u201c\u2018Here, with payment.\u2019\u201d McCartney continues to remember the kindness of everyone he and Harrison<\/a> crossed paths with. \u201cWe just had so many laughs with these Welsh guys,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWe sat in with their band, one drunken night in a Welsh pub.\u201d <\/p>\n

As McCartney reflects, the bed-and-breakfast was unlike anywhere they had been before. Going from their estate in Liverpool, Wales, was another world of surprises. \u201cNow, we were in the country, Wales, and there were these spiders, daddy longlegs, in the room,\u201d McCartney remembers with a mock-scared gasp. <\/p>\n

Adding, \u201c\u2018The menace, the spiders!\u2019 So, me, George, or both of us, took a rolled-up newspaper and got them. Then we could sleep safely. We went down to breakfast the next morning, and the mum said, \u2018How did you sleep? Alright?\u2019 We said, \u2018Yeah, fine, thanks, great.\u2019 She said, \u2018Did you see Jimmy and Jemima?\u2019 \u2018Pardon?\u2019 \u2018Two little spiders!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

McCartney and Harrison, pretending not to know a thing, responded, \u201c\u2018No! Jimmy and who?\u2019 Oh my God, so we had many a laugh over that,\u201d McCartney says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Harrison, too, reflected on his and McCartney\u2019s hitchhiking adventures in The Beatles Anthology, remembering such trips as a time with little food or money, yet filled with kind strangers whom they would later immortalise in The Beatles\u2019 songs. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something nobody would dream about these days,\u201d Harrison said of their decision, but still, it is one that the two men would reflect on for the rest of their lives, transporting them back to boyhood.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Tue 9 December 2025 17:00, UK Before The Beatles became the Fab Four,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,26940,6470,10447,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-307978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-george-harrison","11":"tag-paul-mccartney","12":"tag-the-beatles","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}