Happy Birthday, George Harrison!

In honor of what would have been George Harrison’s 68th birthday, I thought that I would repost something that I wrote on BeatleLinks Fab Forum back in 2005. I was thinking back to two incidents around the time of George’s death:

The week that George died in November 2001, I bumped into a colleage at work. We commiserated for a while. Feeling a little on the old side, I said to him, “Just think — two of the Beatles are dead.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “and they’re the wrong two.”


Also:


That weekend, I went to my local karaoke bar around the corner from where I live. I don’t sing much karaoke, especially because so many of the participants who show up at the Los Angeles bar are professional singers between jobs who want to keep excercising their vocal chords. So, it’s a rather intimidating situation if you’re not much of a singer yourself.

But that night, I wanted to pay tribute to George, as I was sure that others would want to do. Sure enough, two of the bar’s regulars that night collaborated on a rare duet of “Something.” However, the only other George songs that I could find in the karaoke playlist were “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You” and “Here Comes the Sun.” I decided on the second song.

When my turn came, I took the stage and grasped the microphone. I looked at the karaoke monitor as my song came up. The titles to the song read:

“‘Here Comes the Sun’ done in the style of the Beatles...

...words and music by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.”