![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/George-Harrison-Sitar-1960s-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Apple Corps LTD)<\/p>\n
Wed 14 January 2026 6:00, UK <\/p>\n
It\u2019s all very well being a member of the most successful band of all time, but for The Beatles<\/a>, is it possible that you can simply have it too good to the point where listening to the music of others becomes a chore?<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to say that the band didn\u2019t know how to appreciate good music when they heard it, but because they were often regarded as having been such a cut above everyone else, there would undoubtedly have been times when it was a struggle to find inspiration from their peers, and where other popular music felt like a void of creativity.<\/p>\n Of course, there were also times when they were strong in their praise of certain other contemporaries of theirs, and it\u2019s no secret that Paul McCartney<\/a> has always been the sort of person to champion new artists, and regularly those operating in fields different from where he was best known.<\/p>\n However, the same can\u2019t necessarily be said about the other three, and despite this not necessarily being the case during their time as a group, one member endured a period of struggling to find other artists who inspired him in the same fashion after they\u2019d disbanded and gone their separate ways.<\/p>\n One could argue that George Harrison<\/a> arguably had the broadest range of influences, but that came as a result of dissatisfaction with the general landscape of how popular music sounded during the years that immediately followed the end of The Beatles.<\/p>\n This is perhaps why he ended up turning towards the music he was hearing in India as one of his go-to ways of escaping the world of Western pop, and his unending support of musicians such as Ravi Shankar<\/a> came in lieu of him being able to find something closer to home that he found a morsel of comfort in listening to.<\/p>\n However, despite the drought in inspiring pop from the Western world, there was one artist in particular who he chose to celebrate for just how good it made him feel in comparison to the rest of what he was hearing, which he divulged in a 1975 interview with New York radio station WNEW-FM.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a whole other train of thought that comes from the music,\u201d Harrison argued. \u201cIn simpler terms, there\u2019s people, I like people who just convey in their music some sort of sincerity. I\u2019m a big fan of Smokey Robinson<\/a> just because musically he is so sweet, he makes you feel nice, he makes me feel good, whereas a lot of music I listen to, which is popular music, just makes me uptight.\u201d<\/p>\n