Free The Love You Make by Peter Brown

to the cinema. On the few times John and Cynthia thought they had eluded George for a while, he would suddenly round the corner ahead of them, signaling his arrival with the piercing whistle that was his trademark. The day Cynthia had her appendix removed, she waited in her hospital bed all afternoon for a visit from John, who turned up ten minutes before visiting hours were over. He wasn’t there a moment when George appeared, bounding up the aisle of the ward like a puppy dog. Cynthia was so upset at seeing him she burst into tears. George, for his part, was slightly more generous in his appraisal of Cynthia than she of him. “I think she’s great, John,” he confided one day. “But there’s one thing wrong. She’s got teeth like a horse.”
    If Paul McCartney was a bane to Mimi, then George Harrison was anathema. John tried to smooth the way for George by telling Mimi what a great guy he was before she ever met him, but once Mimi got a look at his pink shirt, she threw him out the door. Worst of all for Mimi, George’s mother, Louise Harrison, was actually encouraging the boys with their band, giving them a place to practice and food when they were hungry. It made Mimi furious.
    George Harrison was the only Beatle whose childhood was not marred by divorce or death. Born on February 25, 1943, he was the youngest in a family of three sons and a daughter. His father, Harold, was a thin, quiet man who was a city bus driver. His mother was a contented housewife and the neighborhood mom all the kids knew. Her reputation was as a jovial, outgoing woman who supported and encouraged her children. The family lived for eighteen years in the same, simple, terraced house on Arnold Grove, Wavertree, before moving to a small council house on Upton’s Green in Speke. George was a bright, independent child, who used to pick up the sausage for dinner at the local butcher by himself when he was only two-and-a-half years old. Like John, he went to Dovedale Primary School, just across Penny Lane from where they lived.
    George first became friendly with Paul McCartney not long after the family moved to Speke. Each morning the two boys would see each other at the corner bus stop and board the same bus headed for the Liverpool Institute, where George had started that year. One morning Paul found himself a few pennies short for his bus fare, and Louise Harrison gave them to him plus some extra for the ride home. Although George was a year behind Paul in school, the two boys found plenty to talk about on the bus: skiffle, rock and roll and guitars.
    By the time George was fourteen, he was already a certifiable guitar fanatic. Like Paul, Lonnie Donegan had sparked his interest in the guitar, and Louise Harrison began to find George’s pockets full of scraps of paper with guitars drawn on them, the way other boys drew jet planes. His first guitar was a used one, bought from another boy at school and financed by his mother for £3. His next was a deluxe model, which he helped pay for by doing chores for the butcher on Saturdays. Louise was a constant source of encouragement to him, telling him that he could master his playing whenever he got discouraged. Upon his meeting with John Lennon, this had not quite happened. George’s playing at the time was far below the standards of the boys in the band, then called Johnny and the Moondogs. Paul introduced George to the band in the winter of 1959 in a basement teen club best remembered for its bare red lightbulbs, called, appropriately, The Morgue. George played for them his best number, an eight-note bass tune called “Ranchee,” but nobody was very impressed. He tagged along after them anyway, hoping that one day he would be asked to play with them. He went to all their shows, where he stood in the back with his guitar. A few times when one of the regular guitarists failed to show up, George was allowed to sit in with the band, and on rare occasions he even got to do his own, breath-holding