By the end of the 1960s, the last thing The Beatles wanted to do was to be in the same room as each other. Even if their split wasn’t as nasty as people made it out to be at the time, the years of being intertwined in each other’s lives had slowly made them drift apart, and it was anyone’s guess as to whether they would get back together or not later down the line. If there was one friendship that seemed irrefutable damaged, it was between George Harrison and Paul McCartney.

This is strange, given how much McCartney and John Lennon are intrinsically linked. ‘The Nerk Twins’ had fallen out hard and even made diss tracks towards each on their first major solo outings, but after years of being treated like the kid brother of the group, Harrison was never willing to get back on the same page with McCartney, especially when he was still treated like an afterthought on some of their greatest works.

Even their careers seemed to be going in different directions. After the band broke up, George Harrison was the last person most thought of to have the breakout success, but hearing him stake his claim as the most popular solo Beatle on All Things Must Pass is still the best project any of them have put out. At the same time, hearing Macca struggle to find his footing on his solo outings was a bit strange coming from the one famously known as the perfectionist of the group.

Once Harrison had settled into his groove as a rock and roll solo act, McCartney had started to spread his Wings across the world, turning himself into a stadium act all over again. But now that they were on an equal footing in the rock world again, was there still a chance for Harrison to show some love to his former bandmate?

So what did George Harrison really think of Paul McCartney’s solo career?
All of those fights and petty complaints during the Get Back sessions were practically water under the bridge by the late 1970s, but Harrison was in a much different place than before. He had his heavy moments like ‘Wah-Wah’ on his first record, but the end of the 1970s saw him calming himself back down on his self-titled record. While it’s not exactly yacht rock, tunes like ‘Love Comes to Everyone’ are some of the best middle-aged music Harrison made before The Traveling Wilburys.

And since he was on a softer kick, his taste only catered to a few of McCartney’s solo tunes, saying, “I think it’s inoffensive. I’ve always preferred Paul’s good melodies to his screaming rock & roll tunes. All the noisy, beaty things I’m not into at all. But then that’s not only with Paul’s music that goes right across the board. I’m not a fan of that sort of punky, heavy, tinny stuff.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that, either.

Going back through Harrison’s albums, like 33 and ⅓, it was clear that he had no intention of ever listening to a punk album in full in his life. He was much more content with making music with his friends, and when he did gravitate towards a newer act like Tom Petty, it was always around the time the heartland rocker was making more downtempo records like Full Moon Fever.

Even if it wasn’t to Harrison’s taste, there was still a place in rock history for many of McCartney’s greatest rockers. He does get the tag of being the soft-hearted balladeer of The Beatles most of the time, but would anyone want to live in a world where they couldn’t appreciate tunes like ‘Live and Let Die’ or ‘Hi Hi Hi?’