George deserves recognition. He was always rather overshadowed, there's no other way of putting it, by John and Paul. I mean, to call him "the quiet Beatle," it's like some dopey publicist made that up in 1964. And, of course, he was quite a complicated person. When you say, "Oh, the quiet Beatle," it's like, "Oh, yeah, OK, he sits in the corner." And he wasn't really that. He was very complex, and he was very charming and friendly. I notice that Bob Geldof called him curmudgeonly, which is true, you know, but people are always saying to me - and I don't want to really compare myself to George - but they say, "Gosh, you've got lots of faces." And I say, "Well, yeah, but people are complex."

So George was very friendly, but he also could be quite quarrelsome at times. He had a side of him, which, if he felt you deserved it, so to speak, would lash out at you. But I'm talking about when he was much, much younger; I never saw that side of him later on in life. But when he was the young man around town, I used to see him a lot. We used to see each other in nightclubs and so on and be drinking buddies. I suppose what I'm trying to say is, he wasn't just a retiring person only, in my mind. He could be funny and charming and also quite acerbic. He had the sort of quality that normally people would associate with John.

And then, later, George developed this other side to him. He very much concentrated on the spiritual side of his life, and it was more than a passing fancy. It looked like it was a sort of faddish thing at the time, but it stayed with him. You got the feeling that most people were dabbling in spirituality, but for George it was perhaps the major part of his life once he discovered it. And it's very easy to ridicule someone who does that, and he was ridiculed, there's no doubt about that, especially in England, for being like that. But he did follow through on the courage of his convictions. He stayed with it and never rejected it. And, of course, he made mistakes - anybody following this who was one of the first people of a generation to do that would make mistakes - but not any glaring ones. You've got to start somewhere.

Another thing he did that was groundbreaking was, of course, the idea of rock & roll linked with charity, which was a generous and innovative thing, and was also linked to his generosity of spirit and his spirituality. It was a very innovative thing, even with all the problems that it had. And "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"? It's lovely, plaintive. Only a guitar player could write that; I love that song. And "My Sweet Lord": There's tons of songs with that chord sequence, but that's a very nice one. As a guitar player, he certainly had some nice and memorable licks on those Beatles tunes. Without being a virtuoso, he came up with really nice guitar lines that are integral parts of those tunes. But he had a multifaceted career as a personality. He wasn't just a guitar player. And he did have a sense of humor, and he did take it all with a huge pinch of salt, which is a very English and a very Liverpudlian thing.

I'm sorry if this is a bit rambly and not assembled, but I just found out about half an hour ago. You know I hadn't seen George for a very long time. He came to a concert that the Stones did in a theater in London called the Brixton Academy, in July 1995. And he said to Charlie [in Liverpool accent], "You're very lucky to be in a working band." And it was really nice to see him. We hadn't seen him in a long while at a show. He went through periods of being reclusive, and it was lovely to see him. We would see each other rarely after the Sixties and middle Seventies.

Really, whatever I say about my feelings is ridiculous and inadequate. I was very sad, but of course you're very sad, and then you start thinking of the times you spent, you know? And it's very difficult to depersonalize it. It's like part of your life. But, you know, that's probably what most people think. Because the Beatles were a big part of one's life. And when someone like that dies, in a way, a part of your own life is gone.

[From Issue 887 — January 17, 2002]