Today I learned that in 1963, a few months before the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show, George Harrison visited his sister Louise, who lived in a small town in southern Illinois.
The Smithsonian magazine wrote it up back in 2020, capturing the bittersweet nature of those weeks in Harrison's life before he was famous, and giving a glimpse of the difference between mid-century English and American life, as Harrison saw them.
The band had just had its first success in England, the screaming was starting, but no one had heard of them or him yet in the U.S.:
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” would be released in November, and by December, the Beatles would have released four singles and two albums, all while appearing regularly on the BBC and playing almost 200 concerts in 1963 alone. For the first time in their young lives, the four working-class boys who’d grown up in a bombed-out city had money, and demands on their time were piling up. Needing a break from touring and recording, in September Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr visited Greece. John Lennon and his wife went to Paris. George chose to visit his sister, in Benton, Illinois (pop. 7,000).
His two weeks there, starting on September 16, might have been the last carefree moments of an increasingly hectic, difficult and arguably tragic life. In America, no one knew who George was or cared.
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