The Beatles explained: Why did George Harrison quit the band?

For a period of time, George Harrison’s role in The Beatles was a relatively straightforward one. He was the outstanding guitarist who stood behind the band’s principal songwriters, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, primed and ready to harmonise whenever he was needed. However, by the time 1969 arrived, the dynamic had altered, and Harrison was no longer content to play second fiddle.

The Beatles’ twelfth and final record, Let It Be, is one shrouded in tension and disappointment. It might be considered one of their best LPs, full of the bouncing rock and roll rhythm that made the group inextricable from the boom of culture in the 1960s. It may also be the encasement of which we find some of the band’s best songwriting, with succinct pop hits delivered with a unique, poised sense of self, one only gains from experience.

But for every professional highly encapsulated within the 12″ diameter of plastic, there was a bucketful of pain and resentment. Of course, in reference to the band’s changing dynamics, it is also worth remembering that the album was a central figure in the eventual disbandment of the Fab Four. It would provide the catalyst for a whole range of emotions that would not be settled until the group had found their own paths away from one another.

Though the record was meant to be an attempt to free themselves from the shackles of precise studio work and once again enjoy the passion of performance, it boasted a similar formula to the band’s previous records: each member of the band would bring something to the table, but the truth is Paul McCartney and John Lennon were in charge. For George Harrison, the sessions became unbearable.

The in-fighting and power struggle would eventually lead to the guitarist quitting The Beatles on January 10th, 1969, slap bang in the middle of Twickenham’s Let It Be sessions. Harrison did so unceremoniously and without much fuss externally. Internally, however, the frustration Harrison was experiencing was beginning to take over his life.

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The irritation was largely born out of Harrison’s growing songwriting talent. He had started to flex his muscles on previous Beatles releases, something which had both impressed and perhaps annoyed the songwriting partnership of Lennon-McCartney. But for Let It Be, Harrison had some big plans.

Having spent much of the latter part of the previous year alongside Bob Dylan and The Band, working on tracks like ‘I’d Have You Anytime’, and with his work on The Beatles White Album so widely loved, Harrison had hope for the collaborative creative future of the Fab Four.

The connection with Dylan would prove to be a major turning point for Harrison. Along with the freewheelin’ troubadour, Harrison had found musical kinship with other performers such as Billy Preston and Eric Clapton, and these connections would suggest to Harrison that The Beatles were not the only way for him to be heard. Dylan would see the struggles of the so-called ‘Quiet Beatle’ later saying: “George got stuck with being the Beatle that had to fight to get songs on records because of Lennon and McCartney. Well, who wouldn’t get stuck? If George had had his own group and was writing his own songs back then, he’d have been probably just as big as anybody.”

However, in truth, the band had been squabbling for some time. McCartney’s dominance over the group had been at its height on Sgt Pepper, and his overbearing nature had already forced Ringo into quitting once before, sending the drummer to Italy with heavy insecurities. Meanwhile, Lennon was falling deeper and deeper into his heroin addiction and was being propped up by Yoko Ono. Regardless, Harrison was hopeful: “I can remember feeling quite optimistic. I thought, ‘OK, it’s the New Year and we have a new approach to recording.’”

The new album was a chance for the band to reconnect with their music. However, things didn’t go smoothly, and Macca quickly took on the conductor role: “At that point in time, Paul couldn’t see beyond himself,” Harrison told Guitar World in 2001. “He was on a roll, but… in his mind, everything that was going on around him was just there to accompany him. He wasn’t sensitive to stepping on other people’s egos or feelings.”

Harrison began to pitch new tracks such as ‘Let It Down’, ‘Isn’t It A Pity’, and even the iconic ‘Something’, Lennon and McCartney continued to shoot down the guitarist in favour of their own songs, not even bothering to listen. It had clearly been pushing Harrison close to the edge as he traded snide remarks with Lennon over the preceding days.

On January 10th, as the cameras continued to swirl around the Let It Be sessions and capture the fraying tensions, something in Harrison snapped. Or as close to “snapped” as can be from Harrison. Michale Lindsay-Hogg remembered the moment George quit, stating: “At the morning rehearsal, I could tell by his silence and withdrawal that something was simmering inside him, and so in my role as documentarian, I’d asked our soundman to bug the flower pot on the lunch table”.

He added: “We’d finished the first course when George arrived to stand at the end of the table. We looked at him as he stood silent for a moment. ‘See you ’round the clubs,’ he said. That was his goodbye. He left.” As was the way with George Harrison, he would channel his emotions into song, writing one of his most iconic tunes on that very day, the brilliant ‘Wah Wah’.

In what is an even clearer indication of the different paths the band had started to travel, Lennon, who only ever reacted with aggression when confronted, responded to Harrison’s departure: “Let’s get in Eric. He’s just as good and not such a headache”. Despite Ringo and Paul not being drawn into the bitching, it was clear that now the group was only ever on the path to disbandment.

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Thankfully, there have been no reported cases of the band physically coming to blows with one another, but it certainly got close. Harrison later remembered the situation: “They were filming us having a row. It never came to blows, but I thought, ‘What’s the point of this? I’m quite capable of being relatively happy on my own and I’m not able to be happy in this situation. I’m getting out of here.’”.

“It became stifling, so that although this new album was supposed to break away from that type of recording (we were going back to playing live) it was still very much that kind of situation where he already had in his mind what he wanted,” shared Harrison. “Paul wanted nobody to play on his songs until he decided how it should go. For me it was like: ‘What am I doing here? This is painful!’ Then superimposed on top of that was Yoko, and there were negative vibes at that time. John and Yoko were out on a limb. I don’t think he wanted much to be hanging out with us, and I think Yoko was pushing him out of the band, inasmuch as she didn’t want him hanging out with us.”

The Beatles members certainly got angry at one another on more than one occasion, but it seems they never truly let their fists fly the way four lads from Liverpool might have easily done under these, and other, circumstances.

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Of course, Harrison would return and contribute a healthy number of tracks to the band’s brilliant Abbey Road, but it was here that the intentions were set. The Beatles would soon be going solo and choosing their own paths.

It’s hard to look past the impact that John Lennon had with his career following the end of The Beatles. The same can be said for Paul McCartney’s continuing legacy in pop music; his numbers in terms of record sales dwarf the other three. But, certainly for a while in the 1970s, the whole world was in praise of George Harrison. All Things Must Pass, the album he released following the band’s disbandment, is one of the best records of all time, and it has been routinely cited as such ever since.

Before Harrison sadly passed away in 2001, the guitarist did share that although the group never truly recovered from this moment, within the year Lennon would leave, and by April 1970, The Beatles were over, the Fab Four did reconcile their differences. “It’s important to state that a lot of water has gone under the bridge and that, as we talk now, everybody’s good friends and we have a better understanding of the past.”