I Don't Like Your Tie
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I Don't Like Your Tie
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The story of George Martin's tie refracted through 100 different prisms. BOOK OUT NOW amzn.eu/d/8eWHyLf
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BERT KAEMPFERT: After the session they came over to where the recording machine had been situated. I can still see them now, sitting around on those rickety chairs they always have in schools; Tony at the front, John and Paul behind him, George behind them and poor little Pete at the back. I gave them a bit of a talking to I must admit. I told them it was unprofessional to turn up to a recording session looking like you hadn’t slept, their drummer had been so unsure of himself I’d had to take half his kit away, and that instrumental of theirs hadn’t been up to much. At the end of it all I said ‘You’ve heard a lot from me. Is there anything you’re not happy with?’ George leaned round the side of John so he was looking me in the eye and said ‘Yes. I don’t like your tie.’ I thought this was a great joke and started to laugh but Tony glared at me and I stopped. Tony had…a reputation. Apparently in one fight he tied John Lennon’s legs in a knot. An actual knot.
November 19, 2025 at 9:47 AM
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SIR JOSEPH LOCKWOOD: Once George became head of Parlophone I saw much more of him. We had a weekly meeting in the diary and they were pretty much exclusively very happy, cordial occasions. Just one stands out in my memory as a time when I had cause to haul George over the coals somewhat. It must have been early summer 1962. June, probably. It was the silliest thing, really: each member of management had their own parking space outside the building. George’s was next to mine and he always parked his car in such a slapdash fashion, almost diagonally across the space, that when I arrived I sometimes couldn’t park in my own space. As you can imagine this started to become a bit of a bugbear for me. He started off the meeting with the usual stuff – he’d had some band in from Liverpool who he said were ‘very funny’, which I thought was a bit odd, he’d done a string arrangement for Matt Monroe’s new one, and so on. When finished talking the parking thing was still on my mind and I’m afraid I rather let him have it. ‘Inconsiderate, thoughtless behaviour’…’lack of professionalism’…’typical of your conduct over the years’ and so on. At the end of all this I said to him ‘You’ve heard a lot from me. Anything you’re not happy with?’ George looked at me with a gleam in his eye and said ‘Yes, I don’t like your tie.’ Then he started laughing. It was quite extraordinary. I don’t know why, but I started laughing too, and we both decided to go down to the canteen for a coffee. After that I had the parking spaces re-painted to make George’s diagonal to the others, which he thought was hilarious.
November 12, 2025 at 11:06 AM
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BILLBOARD MAGAZINE 06/08/24 SHOTS FIRED! The ongoing beef between two of rap’s biggest names shows no sign of letting up. Drake and Kendrick Lamar have been trading barbs since the latter took aim on Big Sean’s Control in 2013. From accusations of marital infidelity, to cultural appropriation and underage sex – nothing has been off limits. But Kendrick Lamar has just taken things up a notch with the release of “Knot Like Us”. In the blistering seven-minute track K Dot throws any prospect of a truce out of the window, detailing in a series of vicious bars how he doesn’t like Drake’s tie. The lyrics, which we have decided not to reproduce, include detailed descriptions of the occasions Drizzy has worn the tie, its color, its horse pattern, and its width. Having set out the nature of the tie, Lamar then graphically states that he doesn’t like it. An accompanying video shows Lamar viciously beating a giant tie-shaped piñata with a stick. Appalled commentators and industry figures, many no strangers to incendiary rap rivalries, immediately rallied around Drake, with legendary producer Metro Boomin’ releasing a statement saying: “There is no place for this in the game and our thoughts are with Drizzy at this time. Everyone is with Drake on this. Criticising a fellow rapper’s tie is just…that’s too much.” While threats to kill, allegations of sexual impropriety and references to domestic violence are rife in rap, this is thought to be the first time that a performer has ‘gone there’. Welcoming the decision of prominent rap stations not to play the track, a tearful Drake called a press conference yesterday, stating: “Knockabout references to murder are one thing. But this has absolutely knocked me for six. I’m flabbergasted.” The incident has reminded many rap historians of Tupac Shakur dissing Notorious BIG’s belt on the track “Accessory to Murder”.
November 5, 2025 at 10:20 AM
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Another great ep! Interesting discussion about the routes via which younger fans came to know about the 'Paul is dead' stuff. For me, it was the book below (pub. 1982) which I got out of my local library in 1987. It had a double-page spread about the theories, clues etc.
November 4, 2025 at 9:07 AM
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PAUL McCARTNEY: In the early days I used to treat George a bit like a kid brother. ‘Pipe down son, the grown-ups are talking’, y’know? That all changed when George made his famous joke about George Martin’s tie. That moment was just like…’Wow’, y’know? To take such a tense situation, at the end of a session which maybe hadn’t been great in all honesty and turn it around like that? I saw George in a new light after that, and I know John did too. For years after, whenever he got on my nerves a bit or wanted to do something I wasn’t keen on, a voice inside me would say ‘If George was right about the tie joke, what else might he be right about?’ It’s like, I wasn’t all that keen on putting Isn’t It A Pity on Revolver at first, but then that voice kicked in: ‘He knows what he’s doing.’ So on it went, closing track, and was a great success. A few years later I had this song, Hey Jude. I thought it was great but George wasn’t convinced so we ditched it. Things were getting towards the end by then of course. I still think that final album All Things Must Pass holds up pretty well – I was pleased to get a couple of songs on there alongside George’s; Teddy Boy’s always been a great favourite of mine.
October 29, 2025 at 9:27 AM
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JOHN LENNON: I always remember Pepper as a good time, you know. For most of that period I was staying with Paul at Cavendish Avenue; we’d be in and out of the studio at all hours. It felt like now we were off the treadmill of touring and all the rest of it we could really work on making good records, you know? There was just one evening I remember when things went a bit off. We were a few months into the sessions, must’ve been end of February, early March. I’d brought in a song based on a drawing Julian had done of some kid in his class – you’ll have heard the story a thousand times. Anyway, I’m running through it and I get to the last verse and George puts his hand up. I’m so surprised I stop playing. I mean, we didn’t do this, you know? “Yes George, what is it?” He looks at me. “I don’t like ‘looking-glass ties’.” I wonder if he thought that having pitched in on She Said, She Said on the last album it was open season or something. So just to be nice I say ‘Perhaps I’ll take that out.’ But then Paul jumps in ‘You won’t, you know – that’s the best line in it.’ I never forgot that.
October 22, 2025 at 9:06 AM
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As a child, when it came to art I was top of the class. At eighteen I get an interview at the Slade School of Fine Art. I’m in the tutor’s office and he’s looking through my work. Then I spot it. In the window behind him. A horse. Looking in from Gower Street. The tutor asks what my ambitions are. I start saying I want my art to bring people together, change the world, but all I can see is this horse looking in at me. Completely threw me. I ended up at Tooting College of Design. After that my first job was designing ceramics. At my desk on that first day all I could think of was that interview and how things could have been so different. I ended up working a horse into the design. Long story short, the client didn’t like my work and the agency ‘let me go’. Same thing kept happening. Seat designs for the tube. Wrapping paper for Woolworths. Kiddies wallpaper. Always horses. I wound up doing layout for cheap restaurant menus. Barely design at all. Stuck there almost thirty years. Then in 1954 a miracle; a chap I’d known at Tooting told me he’d just been appointed head of design at a big department store. He offered me a job. I bit his hand off. First day, I’m in the office, just off Regent St, and when I pick up the pencil all I can see is that horse again. But this time I find a way to make it work, interlocking it with another horse head, contrasting colours. It comes out really well. My boss isn’t sure. I say it could work, on a handkerchief or a tie. He’s not sure but says he’ll give it a go. It didn’t work out – they sold a handful over the next couple of months, then discontinued the line. So much for my dreams of changing the world.
October 15, 2025 at 8:27 AM
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It was a bright cold day in June and the EMI clock was striking thirteen. George Harrison, chin nuzzled into his breast, whipped by a vile wind, slipped through the glass doors of Victory Studios. The reception smelt of boiled cabbage and magnetic tape. Enormous at the end of the foyer was a poster. It bore that thin, handsome face, hair slicked back, the eyes seemingly following you around the room. And the familiar words: EMI IS WATCHING YOU. On the telescreen, a prim young woman recited the latest record production figures. Harrison’s job was oiling the versificators, ensuring that the steady flow of automatically generated, unremarkable sentimental songs continued through the telescreens. He noticed McCartney in the line for the stairway. They had both attended the same indoctrination centre. Once, Harrison had heard him singing on the stairway. A great, catchy, sweeping melody about a girl. Dangerous. McCartney caught his eye cautiously. They quickly looked away. From the telescreens, a great voice boomed: TIES ARE PEACE. OPEN COLLARS ARE SLAVERY SARTORIAL UNITY IS STRENGTH A cough behind him and George gasped to find himself face to face with Martin. His eyeline filled with a horse-patterned half Windsor, tightly knotted. “Harrison,” Martin said, speaking with a mild, almost regretful irony, “I’m aware that yesterday I gave you some very clear instructions on the maintenance of these versficators. I need your report.. Is there anything you’re not happy with?” At sight of that face, so intelligent, his heart seemed to turn over. He almost stretched out a hand and laid it on Martin's arm. The old feeling, that at bottom it did not matter whether Martin was a friend or an enemy, had come back. Martin was a person who could be talked to. In some sense that went deeper than friendship, they were intimates: somewhere or other, although the actual words might never be spoken, there was a place where they could meet and talk. O'Brien was looking down at him with a…
October 8, 2025 at 9:02 AM
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NORMAN SMITH: At the end of it all George Martin said to them ‘You’ve heard a lot from me. Is there anything you’re not happy with?’ After a pause George Harrison piped up. ‘Yes. I’m the youngest of four children which, while that’s meant I get the perks of being the ‘baby’ of the family, also means often feel ignored or side-lined.’ The other lads looked at each other, a little confused perhaps, but George Martin said ‘Go on?’ ‘My sister moved abroad a few years back’ continued Harrison. ‘I wouldn’t say we were particularly close, but the sudden absence of a sibling during a crucial developmental period…that’s got to have an effect surely?’ By now Harrison was leaning back in his chair, reclining almost. George Martin had started taking notes on his studio notepad. ‘And what about your professional life?’ he asked. ‘That can be a challenge too’ said Harrison. ‘I got deported during our engagement in Germany a while ago and had to come back home by myself.’ ‘So perhaps you felt…separated from your bandmates?’ ‘Yes, but it’s not just that. When we were solely a gigging band, I was one of three frontmen. Now the emphasis is shifting to songwriting, I’m starting to feel shut out.’ George Martin was nodding now. “Anything else coming to the surface?” ‘Yes’ Harrison said ‘I don’t like your tie.’
October 1, 2025 at 10:28 AM
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GEORGE MARTIN: It was a great honour of course to be asked to host a segment of 2002’s Party At The Palace for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. The organisers had booked a really first-rate line-up of acts, starting with Brian May playing his guitar up on the roof of the palace, an image I think no-one who saw it will ever forget! When it was time for me to make my appearance on stage, the ASM came up to me in the wings and said ‘Sir George…I don’t like your tie.’ Now, a lot of people have made this joke to me over the years, an awful lot of people in fact, but one tries to be tolerant so I smiled and did a little laugh. I turned to walk on stage but the fellow grabbed my arm and said it again. ‘I don’t like your tie.’ By this point I’d had just about enough of this, and ‘Handbags and Gladrags’ was finishing so I shrugged him off and strode out onto the stage. Only later did I learn that the fine-striped tie I’d chosen for the occasion strobed terribly on camera and the poor fellow had just been trying to warn me. Apparently the BBC received over eight hundred complaints about it, and two viewers reported that they’d been physically sick. I felt so bad for that poor ASM – I made enquiries and found out his name was Ben. In my next score, which turned out in fact to be my last, the string arrangement of While My Guitar Gently Weeps for the ‘Love’ show, I put in a little ostinato figure for the ‘cello, about two and a half minutes in. It’s Morse code, spelling out ‘S-O-R-R-Y-B-E-N’. I hope that made amends in some small way.
September 17, 2025 at 8:54 AM
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NORMAN SMITH: Then he said ‘You’ve heard a lot from me. Is there anything you’re not happy with?’ I remember Harry Harrison paused and replied ‘Seeing as you’ve asked, I don’t like your tie.’ Of course Harry was only about fifteen years older than George Martin but back in those days that still felt like a real gulf. George was very respectful – he apologised to Harry and took the tie off. I can still see them now, sitting around the mixing console; Julia lounging back in her chair, still plucking that banjo and grinning, Jim next to her, like a ball of nervous energy. George had taken issue with pretty much everything: their playing… their songs (apart from Walking In The Park, which he said showed ‘some promise’)…Jim’s pipe. He said they were hardly in the first flush of youth and they’d really have to sharpen up their act if they were going to have any future in music. All through this I could see Mona just seething – turns out she was the one who’d made contact with George in the first place and got him to give them a hearing. What’s more, her drumming had been the best thing about the session. I sometimes wonder… they ended up massive as we all know, but if Harry hadn’t said the tie thing – would George have respected them as much as he did? Funnily enough their kids are on the tribute circuit now. I saw them in Blackpool. Imagine living in the shadow of that.
September 10, 2025 at 9:36 AM
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INTERNAL MEMO: EMI 7th June 1962. MANAGEMENT EYES ONLY. It has happened again. Yesterday evening Mr Martin was addressing the musical act in Studio 2 when he asked: “Is there anything you’re NOT happy with?” Fortunately he did not see the rolling of eyes and exasperated expressions of the engineers behind him. “Are you happy with everything?” would suffice surely? Or “Everything OK?” This is to my knowledge the 29th occasion Mr Martin has expressed simple concepts by phrasing them negatively in a needlessly complex manner. Recent examples include: “Can you please make sure that fader isn’t not in the up position?” “By the end of the day, please ensure Mr Preuss hasn’t not received this note about the canteen.” And “I’m not picking up the absence of a hiss from Paul’s amplifier.” The studio environment is a place for clarity. This habit is confusing and costly. Fortunately the engineers’ discomfort was quelled by the young guitarist Harrison, who quite confidently stated: “It isn’t the case that I like your tie.” Mr Martin found this very funny and the mood lifted. Nevertheless, we need to address this matter as the band shows great potential. Mr Martin is not, repeat NOT, to be permitted to change the titles of any of their songs. Someone of his longstanding in this industry should know that record buyers WILL NOT BUY a disc entitled Hate Me Don’t.
September 3, 2025 at 12:32 PM
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😠😠😠 Can't believe this. Get your OWN idea
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A screenshot of a BlueSky account called 'Not Your Drummer'. The profile pic is a black and white shot of The Rolling Stones' Charlie Watts. There is a sonnet, with (37) at the top. Sonnet reads: So Mick gets drunk and grabs the telephone. He calls the switchboard, asks for Charlie’s room. While waiting on the line he sits alone The booze transmuting bonhomie to gloom. The phone rings several times then Charlie’s voice Comes on, all drowsy. ‘I was having a kip. ‘Who is it – what d’you want?’ Mick is annoyed. ‘I want my drummer - get up here, and quick.’ But Charlie takes his time, selects a suit Then washes, has a shave and combs his hair, He spends a minute polishing his boots Then goes up to Mick’s room and finds him there. And Charlie’s punch lands just before the zinger: ‘I’m not your fucking drummer. You’re my singer.’
August 27, 2025 at 10:53 AM
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[100] TRANSCRIPT: ‘Sir George Harrison at 80’, BBC One 25th February 2023 GEORGE HARRISON: [ctd] always expanding. You know? It’s something we should all take very seriously, because if we don’t…[LAUGHS] it’ll be the end of us. SAMIRA AHMED: Looking back over the past twenty years what are you most proud of? GEORGE HARRISON: If you’re talking about something which did some good in the world it’s probably the foundation’s work in India – you know, it takes so little, comparatively I mean. Clean water. You pay for a few classrooms. It’s relatively straightforward. SAMIRA AHMED: You surprised everyone during the early stages of the pandemic… GEORGE HARRISON: The Zoom thing? That was enjoyable to be fair. Getting the three of us together to bring a bit of …‘fabness’ to the world [LAUGHS]… SAMIRA AHMED: How did you decide which songs to do? GEORGE HARRISON: For me, it was the ones I could remember. Which was none of them. [LAUGHS]. Opening with ‘Misery’ was Paul’s idea, I remember. Ringo was dead keen to do Yellow Submarine. All My Loving, of course. I was glad we got to do The Inner Light. I’d always wanted to do Every Little Thing live, as that’s one we never got to do when we were together. SAMIRA AHMED: And ending on All Together Now just felt very…right. That gig…those thirty minutes meant so much to people around the world. GEORGE HARRISON: If there’s any point to this …thing the three of us have, or are, or whatever, that’s it surely? Cheering people up when they need it. SAMIRA AHMED: So Sir George Harrison, you’ve reached the milestone of eighty. So many Beatle moments have become iconic. They get reinterpreted again and again. Is there any one incident that … sticks in your mind? Perhaps from the early days? Something that summed up that phenomenal confidence The Beatles had? GEORGE HARRISON: No. Not really.
August 22, 2025 at 9:08 AM
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[99] GEORGE HARRISON: “Everything was kind of falling apart. I went to Haight Ashbury. It wasn’t all these groovy people having spiritual awakenings and being artistic. It was like any addiction. “So I took LSD one last time. I put some under a microscope while I was high and it was like… a bit of old rope. Then I realised, it wasn’t old rope. I could see the little red pattern on black. It was a tie. It was THE tie. “I saw us back there in Studio 2’s control room – and realised it was kind of the start. The sun was coming up and I just sat there, thinking about that moment, seeing all these various different ways it could have happened. “Strange that it came to me at that moment - when it was all getting too complicated. A tie. The A tie. The ties between us, the ties we made for people. They’ll last. “It is not dying” as the song says. “Then a Scottish hybrid of John and Paul offered me Ringo’s suitcase from Rishikesh and I went to bed." The Beatles Anthology, episode seven
August 20, 2025 at 9:09 AM
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[98] BEATLE WINDFALL FOR LOCAL CHARITY Henley Standard June 16, 1995. A LOCAL cat charity got the cream earlier this week thanks to a mysterious donation… Staff at the Cats’ Protection League shop in Henley are well-used to donations being left on their doorstep, but one box last Tuesday was rather different. Shop manager Mark Stapleton said: ‘It caught my eye at once. The top was open and you could see it was full of Beatles albums, still in the cellophane - the one where they’re a brass band, that one where they’re a drawing. A full set.’ Mark got in touch with auction house Tappins, who will be putting the collection under the hammer on 28th July. Asked if there was anything else Mark said: ‘Just an envelope with a faded note in reading ‘To George. A gift. Seeing as you liked it so much, GM' pinned to an old-fashioned silk tie with a sort of horse pattern. ‘I binned the letter and put the tie on the racks for 75p. It's still there. If I'm honest I wouldn't buy it either.'
August 18, 2025 at 9:40 AM
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[97] Yahoo News US 23rd May 2023 Over fifty years since the break-up of The Beatles, it seems Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still best buddies. The two were spotted together last Thursday in Los Angeles at a star-studded party hosted by Paul's fashion designer daughter Stella McCartney. Onlookers say Paul (80) and Ringo (82) chatted animatedly for most of the night, even taking time to bust some moves at the edge of the dance floor. “They were thick as thieves’ says one attendee. “I was standing about ten feet away from them for the whole thing. At one point I could see Ringo leaning in close to Paul, whispering in his ear like he was asking him something. He looked really serious. Paul straightened up and looked really surprised. Then he whispered something to Ringo. “Straightaway Ringo’s rocking back on his heels, absolutely in fits of laughter. Just laughing and laughing. That set Paul off too, of course. The pair of them could barely stand by the end."
August 8, 2025 at 9:09 AM
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[96] 6th June 1962. Back to work after 2 days’ sick. Don’t want to make waves while I’m still quite new. Plus of course since x and I got together it’s not like going into work, not really. Hard though, working at opposite ends of the building; me in the typing pool at the Abbey Road end, x right over the other side in the kitchens. We manage a moment here and there though. The tape library, that stationery store, we find somewhere to steal a minute or two most days. Together. This evening it was the storeroom just over from Two. Mr Martin had a band in; I’d heard some of their session through the door earlier. x really down. Crying. Saying there’s no way it will ever work out for us. I was just about to say let’s stop then let’s just leave it there’s nothing either of us can do but just as I opened my mouth there was this burst of laughter from Two’s control room. Hearing that sound…I can’t explain, but it changed something. We kissed. I think things are going to be all right.
August 6, 2025 at 1:51 PM
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[95] NORMAN SMITH: Here’s the thing. It didn’t actually happen. When the Beatles got big people started asking me what it was like meeting them for the first time and I... spiced it up a bit? Feels good to get that off my chest… come clean, I suppose. In reality they just ran through the songs then came up for a chat and George gave them a bit of a talking to. I’d experienced the same thing – he played hell with me once when my Bugatti blocked his space in the car park! After they left I remember him saying what nice lads they seemed, but we weren’t in stitches like I said we were. Certainly nothing like as funny as the time I went on holiday to Paris with Sammy Davis Jr. For a while I was afraid of getting found out, the way I imagine someone who uses a fake CV to get a job in a recording studio might feel, but no-one cottoned on. Like I said, the tie thing’s always been on my conscience; I’d hate people to think I just go around making things up. That’s completely untrue.
August 4, 2025 at 8:56 AM
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[94] CHRIS NEAL: It’s gone down in history, that line about the tie. I never thought it was funny. I decided there and then I’d get Harrison for that. 5 years I waited, until late in 67 I mentioned to an acquaintance who worked in the City that Clive Epstein didn’t seem to be relishing running NEMS to the same extent his brother had. Clive turned down Triumph Investment Trust’s first approach but I told them to give it a year then try again. I didn’t spend that year idle; I knew the Stones slightly and planted the notion Mick recommend John meet with Allen Klein. Triumph came back to Clive with their offer, and he accepted. This led to the chain of events which ended with the Beatles missing out on the chance to acquire NEMS, taking their eye off the ball with the Northern Songs situation and ultimately losing the rights to their own catalogue. By that point Klein was managing all of them apart from Paul; that caused a massive rift and that was basically it for them.
August 1, 2025 at 8:44 AM
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Copies of the book are once again available in Dig Vinyl on Liverpool's Bold Street, as of about an hour ago...
July 30, 2025 at 12:30 PM
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[93] TOM PETTY: I got the call from George mid ’86. He said he was putting together a group and would I be interested? I asked George who else was in it and he said Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne. My jaw just about hit the floor. Dylan and Orbison in the same band? With George Harrison? Wow. He explained that he’d noticed a lot of people in rock were funny. He’d done his famous tie joke, Dylan had had a big hit with ‘What are your songs about?’ ‘Most of them are about four minutes’ and of course people just loved Roy’s ‘Mercy!’ on Pretty Woman. George added that he’d got Jeff Lynne in cos he thought that vocoder on Mr Blue Sky was hilarious. So the next day I got my guitar and headed over to Roy’s place for the first rehearsal. They were all there when I arrived and before long we got going - them all doing their comedy bits and me on guitar and…it was awful. So I suggested we scrap it and make an album of likable country-tinged rock instead. Worked out pretty well.
July 30, 2025 at 9:30 AM
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[92] BBC Archive. Newsnight BBC 2, 7th April 1992. JEREMY PAXMAN: Ha Ha Mr Wilson. Ha Ha Mr Heath – so sang The Beatles in the song Taxman. Well could it soon be a case of Ha Ha Mr Harrison? The former Beatle’s support for “The Natural Law Party”, culminating in a Royal Albert Hall gig last night, has led to a surprise poll boost for the mystic yogic flyers. George Harrison, how exactly will bouncing along on your bottom on a big mattress create jobs? HARRISON: Well we’ll need more mattresses. PAXMAN: Does that old ‘60s interview schtick really wash now? Let’s move on. You used to be known as “The quiet Beatle”? You’re not that quiet about personal freedoms, are you? Freedom of choice when it comes to…neckwear. HARRISON: I intend to reshape our manifesto to take a position on dubious, some might say ‘offensive’ neckwear. PAXMAN: Should a former pop star - HARRISON: I HAVEN’T FINISHED. FOUR SIMPLE BOYS, CONFRONTED WITH… THAT! How can it be right Jeremy? HOW CAN IT BE FAIR? [ctd over]
July 28, 2025 at 9:39 AM
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[91] ARTHUR KELLY: I’ve been friends with George since we both started at The Institute. Even at the age of eleven George stood out. He was wearing school uniform, obviously, but he’d modified bits of it; cap on sideways, huge fat knot in his tie and he’d found some way, God knows how, of making his school trousers look like drainies. All the same, he was good as gold - always first to put his hand up when one of the masters asked a question and all that. One day early on we were out in the yard and his master comes over. Looks down at us and he says ‘What do you think you’re wearing, Harrison?’ and George looks down at the floor and just sort of mumbles ‘Don’t know, sir.’ And this bloke really lays into him, y’know: ‘How dare you come to school looking like that' and all this. George’s head is still down and I’m not sure if he’s crying. ‘And another thing' says the master ‘I don’t like your tie.’ And that was it for George and school. Pretty soon after that he got his first guitar.
July 25, 2025 at 9:16 AM
dontlikeyourtie.bsky.social
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[90] That joke of George’s summed up The Beatles for us. I wrote about that night in one of the little printed sheets we used to pass round. Moments like that gave you a bit of hope… Liverpool was a prime target in The Blitz – right through to 1947. The whole country was… exhausted. They just rolled over us. All we knew was the occupation. You could pull off little resistance gigs. Band would arrive, local teenagers would rush out, it was like… a village fete. “John was doing his Hitler thing when the Gestapo arrived. The big man pulled out George in front of everyone. Pistol in hand. Going on about degenerates. “I don’t like your music.” That’s when George said it. Nazis don’t like being laughed at. So he raised the gun. He didn’t see Pete Best creeping up behind him from the kit, and in a flash Pete stuck him with his Fairbairn-Sykes. The crowd turned on the Germans and The Beatles lived to play another day. Britain under the Nazis: 1949 – 1961. Chapter 9: The Beat Resistance
July 23, 2025 at 10:24 AM