“I suppose, all in all, the people who really influenced me most [as songwriters] are John and Paul because I had day-to-day contact with them for ten years. At the same time I realized where all their influences were coming from and I could see that they got their material from everywhere. It was very different being on the inside, to being on the outside like the public.
I felt a bit overshadowed at first when I began writing because they’d produced so much, and in the beginning I had to get one song squeezed in here and another one there, but gradually I got more confident and I actually got to a point where I had more songs written than I could possibly get on to a Beatles album.” - George Harrison, Record Mirror, 1972
“George was such an underrated guitarist, partly because everything he did was so subtle and complementary to the song. But when you try and play them you find those parts are much harder than they sound.
George was my first musical hero, when I was about five or six. I suppose I’m a guitar player now because of him. […]
As far as most musicians in the UK were concerned, until The Beatles arrived, there was no such thing as a lead guitar. George Harrison defined that role. His parts on all those records are definitive; when I was playing with Paul [McCartney], with Beatles songs I was very faithful to those parts because it’s difficult — impossible, maybe — to improve on them. They’re fantastic. Things like Fixing A Hole, All My Loving, are beautiful, perfect solos. […]
Then there’s his slide playing, which is unique; his pitching is absolutely second to none.” - Robbie McIntosh, MOJO, January 2002 (x)
May 2023 interview with Robbie McIntosh. Robbie played with Paul from 1988 to 1993 (and at the benefit for Montserrat in 1997).
A couple of highlights:
The great thing about Paul is that he said, “If we’re doing it unplugged, we’re doing it completely unplugged.” None of those acoustic guitars were plugged in. They just have microphones on them.
--
We had a nice stay with me and my wife and my kids hanging out with Paul and Linda at their house. It was a beautiful day. Stella and Mary were there. James was still quite young. They had these plastic plates you could paint on and put them in the oven. We still have them.
[why is this so endearing to me?]
--
He seems like such a lovely guy. Here are a couple more great Robbie moments:
[bluegrass version of Can't Buy Me Love -- starts at 20:35]
youtube
[Paul always seems to lean on Robbie during live performances of Hope of Deliverance, eg around 2m:]
Some musicians surprise us by doing what they should not have done. For instance, Talk Talk shocked us this way – yes, you heard the story before in here, but I like that tale. They had an opportunity to do anything they wanted, which they transformed into both Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock. One continues to be baffled by how they changed their previous styles, even though one can notice the traces of that in the previous records. Sure, they were not as pronounced as they could've been, but they were there. Moreover, their post-rock continues to be stronger than that of a lot of players in this genre. The thing is I believe Talk Talk used the emotional palette the style provides more than many who followed them.
“George was such an underrated guitarist, partly because everything he did was so subtle and complementary to the song. But when you try and play them you find those parts are much harder than they sound.
George was my first musical hero, when I was about five or six. I suppose I’m a guitar player now because of him. […]
As far as most musicians in the UK were concerned, until The Beatles arrived, there was no such thing as a lead guitar. George Harrison defined that role. His parts on all those records are definitive; when I was playing with Paul [McCartney], with Beatles songs I was very faithful to those parts because it’s difficult — impossible, maybe — to improve on them. They’re fantastic. Things like Fixing A Hole, All My Loving, are beautiful, perfect solos. […]
Then there’s his slide playing, which is unique; his pitching is absolutely second to none.”