{"id":38204,"date":"2025-09-02T08:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T08:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/38204\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T08:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T08:29:10","slug":"the-beatles-paul-simon-thought-he-was-closest-to-in-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/38204\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles Paul Simon thought he was closest to in style’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/p>\n

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

Mon 1 September 2025 14:30, UK <\/p>\n

John the smart one, Paul the cute one, Ringo the funny one and George\u2026the quiet one. In hindsight, knowing how George Harrison<\/a> came to feel amidst The Beatles, that silly nickname must have always stung.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 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 \u2018quiet\u2019 probably only ever twisted the knife.<\/p>\n

Though Harrison\u2019s 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 \u2018Don\u2019t Bother Me\u2019<\/a> and immediately making it clear that he\u2019d be more than just a backing player. But even when he was, even if he didn\u2019t pen a single song on a record, everybody knows that The Beatles\u2019 work would be missing a huge amount of impact if it wasn\u2019t for his talent and his broad influences.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere you silent, or where you silenced?\u201d 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 \u2018quiet Beatle\u2019 label felt like a gag. By the band\u2019s 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. \u2018While My Guitar Gently Weeps\u2019<\/a> usurps every other track on the length White Album, as does \u2018Something\u2019 on Abbey Road.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It seemed that the rest of the Beatles themselves were the only ones who couldn\u2019t hear how loud Harrison\u2019s talent was. Paul Simon certainly could though as he said, \u201cThey called him \u2018the quiet Beatle\u2019 but he wasn\u2019t particularly quiet; he simply didn\u2019t demand to be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Harrison, Simon saw a kind of brother in arms when it came to songwriting<\/a>. \u201cHis 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,\u201d he said. In both cases, the artists balanced nuance with depth as he added, \u201cIt all seemed deceptively simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s 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 \u2018Quiet Beatle\u2019 was freed and launched his solo project, that was instantly clear as the simple effectiveness of songs like \u2018My Sweet Lord\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019d Have You Anytime\u2019 is unmistakable now that he was no longer battling to be heard and could simply be loud in his own way.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Mon 1 September 2025 14:30, UK John the smart one, Paul the cute…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[18,117,6879,19,17,337,29442],"class_list":{"0":"post-38204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-george-harrison","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-paul-simon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}