George Harrison says he bought his first guitar with 'a lot of money' loaned to him by his mother

A “lot of money” borrowed by George Harrison landed him his first musical instrument.

Even before he bought his first guitar, Harrison was obsessed with the instrument. His attention at school would suffer because he was “drawing guitars” and he eventually managed to convince his mother to purchase him his first guitar. It marked quite an expensive purchase too, with the £3.10 loaned to Harrison for a “little acoustic” instrument. The Beatles‘ Harrison said: “When I was thirteen or fourteen I used to be at the back of the class drawing guitars, big cello cutaway guitars with F holes, little solid ones with pointed cutaways and rounded cutaways.

“You know, I was totally into guitars. I heard about this kid who had a guitar and it was £3.10 it was just a little acoustic round guitar and I got the £3.10 off my mother, that was a lot of money in those days.” It was a similar story for McCartney, who shared early musical influences with Harrison and would end up trading his way to a guitar.

McCartney said as much on the Anthology documentary, and recalled his early years of musical influences. He said: “My dad bought me a trumpet for my birthday, at Rushworth & Draper’s (the other music store in town), and I loved it.

“There was a big hero-thing at the time. There had been Harry James – The Man With The Golden Trumpet – and now, in the Fifties, it was Eddie Calvert, a big British star who played Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White – all those gimmicky trumpet records. There were a lot of them around back then, so we all wanted to be trumpeters.

Source: Ewan Gleadow/cultfollowing.co.uk

Read More>>>