When George Harrison slammed Elton John, David Bowie and Rod Stewart
While George Harrison was known as the “Quiet Beatle”, he liked to have his voice heard. This nickname perhaps stuck because of Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s creative dominance in the band and Ringo Starr’s comparatively clownish and gregarious demeanour. Harrison was known for his kindness, but an essential adage to his spiritual side was a degree of honesty that wouldn’t yield to personal feelings.
Among The Beatles, Harrison was the most enthusiastic about their Eastern influences. Embracing the sitar, the guitarist yearned to separate the Fab Four from the trends of contemporary pop music. Therefore, Harrison was particularly picky when it came to pop music, usually pandering to lyrically expressive and instrumentally progressive artists.
Speaking to India Today in 1976, several years after the Beatles’ breakup, Harrison appraised some of the decade’s popular artists. After claiming that pop music had fallen from grace over the previous few years, Harrison noted that Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder were crumbs of comfort. He also gave a shout-out to one of his famous friends, “of course, anything Dylan does is worth a listen.”
With these isolated exceptions marked, Harrison launched a candid attack on some of the pop artists he was less fond of. First on the list was Elton John, whom Harrison “never thought much” of, despite writing perhaps “one good song many years ago.” The Beatle’s main gripe was that John’s material was too samey. “His music is made to a formula: throw in lyrics, throw in four chords, shake well, and there it is, the new Elton John super-hit,” Harrison added.
It seems Harrison may have woken up on the wrong side of his bed on the day of his 1976 interview. If not, Rod Stewart must have done something to upset the former Beatle. While admitting that Stewart’s music had “improved” since 1975, when he started collaborating with producer Tom Dowd, Harrison took aim at the ‘Maggie May’ singer’s personality. “The guy himself, he’s got a brain that’s as small as a marble,” Harrison asserted.
Last on Harrison’s pop-star hit list was David Bowie. Earlier in the 1970s, Bowie surged to global fame under his glam-era guise, Ziggy Stardust, and by 1976, he had teamed up with John Lennon on 1975’s ‘Fame’ and had his Thin White Duke masterpiece, Station to Station on the boil.
For some reason, Harrison could never quite get on board with Bowie’s music but took greater issue with his glamorous costumes and flitting catalogue of alter egos. “David Bowie ought to make up his mind what sex he is and then decide what kind of music he wants to play,” Harrison concluded, irked by Bowie’s capricious creativity.
Undoubtedly, Harrison and Bowie met several times through the years, but they never established a warm relationship. The Monty Python star Eric Idle was fond of both and tried to get his close friend Harrison on board with Bowie. “I would say to George, ‘[Bowie is] wonderful and brilliant and funny,’ but then George would become very much a Beatle, ‘Oh, Bowie,’ he would say contemptuously to rhyme with ‘Bowwow,’” Idle remembered in his 2018 memoir, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography.
Watch George Harrison perform with Elton John, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton in the video below.