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(Credits: Far Out \/ Bradford Timeline \/ Motown Records)<\/p>\n
Sat 20 December 2025 16:00, UK <\/p>\n
People think that the members of The Beatles, particularly George Harrison<\/a>, were a law unto themselves in the 1960s, but that isn\u2019t strictly true. <\/p>\n It does have certain aspects of salience. Put simply, you can\u2019t ignore any part of culture within the decade without the influence of the Fabs creeping in somewhere, but that sometimes makes it seem like they were the only act of the decade worth mentioning, which is far from the case. What about The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Who?<\/p>\n That\u2019s only covering the British exports, too. When you crossed the Atlantic to America, it was a whole different ball game, with everything from The Beach Boys to The Monkees trying to have a shot at the rock and roll crown. But then you got to Motown, and the world seemed to spin on a completely different axis. <\/p>\n It\u2019s where casual fans of The Beatles fail to understand the band as a whole, because to say that they were solely influenced by the Buddy Hollys and the Elvis Presleys of the world, with a bit of Merseybeat thrown in for good measure, only tells a small part of the story. Particularly when it came to George Harrison, his influences were as diverse and multicultural as they come. <\/p>\n \u201cPersonally, I think Indian music is where it\u2019s at. There isn\u2019t too much going on in Pop that I seem to like,\u201d he later said, not really coming as any surprise to anyone, given the extent to which\u00a0Indian culture<\/a>\u00a0permeated into the most prolific sections of the band\u2019s back catalogue. But that was a long way off from where they started, when it was actually Motown that provided the holy grail.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the Beatles started off, our influences were Tamla-Motown and Chuck Berry, and that\u2019s the music I still like,\u201d Harrison continued. \u201cMy favourites are Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder.\u201d The fact that the guitarist was The Beatles\u2019 self-proclaimed special correspondent when it came to the cutting edge of the latest Stateside releases made the greatest sense, as he was most in tune with Motown.\u00a0<\/p>\n