The Top 5 Hottest George Harrisons Ever

BY LAURA JANE & LIZ

LJ: Today is George Harrison’s birthday, and it’s a heavy George Harrison’s birthday for me, since lately I’ve been feeling closer to George Harrison than ever. In the year that has passed since last George Harrison’s birthday, I have started writing a Beatles-themed novel, which I was self-deprecatingly referring to as a work of “literary fanfiction” until about a day ago, when I decided Fuck it— it’s rock and roll fiction, and nothing but. I have cast George Harrison as my novel’s romantic lead, which was a very astute call on my end, as writing shit down about “cute, cool, weird and sometimes assholey things I can imagine George Harrison doing while participating in an emotionally complex on-again/off-again relationship” always sounds like the most appealing thing I could possibly be doing. And so begins the story of how I managed to finally finish a novel, which is a pretty boring story. The novel itself, however, is a fucking romp. “An undeniable romp!” That’s the pull-quote, for the front cover— hopefully it’ll be from Paul McCartney. Hopefully he’ll naturally think up those perfect words on his own. If anyone could do it, it for sure would be our Paul.

I used to have a joke where I’d blog or Tweet or whatever about wishing I had a t-shirt with the words I’D RATHER BE HAVING SEX WITH GEORGE HARRISON written across the front, which isn’t true because wow what a weird way to sexualize myself wearing that t-shirt would be, but is true in that, yeah, I’d rather be having sex with George Harrison. I just would! He’s the hottest dude! Facially, he's about as hot as hot gets, hot veering into beautiful and then back into hot and then beautiful hot beautiful hot beautiful hot beautiful like one of those things a business guy has on his desk where the one silver ball smacks against the other silver ball eternally, I guess I could have said a pendulum; he experiments with his hair a lot but it always works out perfectly so it’s literally impossible to choose one as being my favourite George hair era, dresses like a fucking insane person but always looks like he’s wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, even in the early-seventies when he’d wear, like, overalls with an Om sign embroidered onto the chest pocket, even circa Sgt. Pepper when they made him wear the orange silk tri-cornered hat with a lime green feather (So easy! like a Red Sox cap on Ben Affleck…), has a cool India twist to him, was the guitar player of the Beatles, wrote a kicky song about dessert, and so on and so forth. I changed tenses over the course of that list but I think it works. It’s sobering. He died, guys.

George is the perfect Beatle to have a crush on. Having a crush on John checks out because he’s a genius and that's a score but you know in real life he’d be a huge sketch-o, consistent only in his inconsistency, and all your girlfriends would “You deserve better than this bullshit!” the hell out of the situation and you’d brazenly ignore them but eventually come to that realisation on your own. The whole shitshow would fuck you up so bad, though- it would be one of those situations where you have to sit down with your next boyfriend and solemnly tell him about it while probably tearing up a little.

Meanwhile, over in the “dating Paul”-i-verse, Paul would be his cute Jim Halperty nice guy self and you’d be like “This is amazing!” and then you’d be like “But… I need more” and then get bored after… four months? Six max. And Ringo is not really sexually attractive in my opinion, so that one's off the table.

But George! George is the perfect asshole/nice guy-hybrid: you know he is capable of being either, since he’s complex and a Pisces and has lived a thousand lives and died in 2001 and has probably been reincarnated as the sky by now. I have devoted a significant chunk of my life to blatantly objectifying this beautiful man constantly; in fact I consider my ability to do so one of my great strengths, as a writer. And, let’s face it, as a human.

So, in celebration of today being George Harrison’s seventy-second birthday, I’m just going to keep on objectifying him. I already got his name tattooed on my wrist and saw God once, which was totally in his honor, so let’s just take it easy this year and get Liz on board for writing down some weird jokes about what a babe he was.

5. SMOKING 1964 GEORGE WITH DELICATE BONE STRUCTURE (These George Harrisons are in no particular order. The reality of the situation is that all George Harrisons are equally hot.)

LJ: Today I listened to a Vampire Weekend song for the first time; his hair here sort of reminds me of that experience. I really like his cigarette. I’m not sure if George actually died from cigarette-related cancer or if that’s just propaganda I made up to motivate myself to quit smoking, but either way, people trying to quit smoking should probably never look at this picture. We should put it behind one of those blurry Buzzfeed “NSFW” filters.

        Too late! You saw it. Deal with it. His chin looks really pointy and long. Good “skinny face in a selfie," George. I’m trying to think of one of those, like, meme-style jokes to make about his expression in this picture. You know what I mean? It would be, like, “When you run into your ex at the gym and he’s lifting an impressive amount of weight” or "When bae... does something" or “When you figure out your crush has a Samsung Galaxy.” Actually, this is exactly what I’d look like if I figured out my crush had a Samsung Galaxy. But with a less-elfin “hair covering my ear” effect going on.

Did you know that George Harrison was sick when the Beatles first came to America? Like, physically ill. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. He was fluish on the plane, and was probably kind of denying his sickness to himself, all “Oh Christ, George— you can’t be sick on Ed Sullivan; hey Paul, you got any Oil of Oregano?” except, British people don’t say “sick” like that. That’s a North American thing, which I didn’t realize until I moved to England. They say “poorly,” in this weird way I’m afraid I can’t make any linguistic sense of or even attempt to replicate.

        So yeah, poor George had to stay in bed and rest up while the other three Beatles romped around in Central Park, participating in a merely-eh Central Park-themed photoshoot. They probably did some other things too— met the Ronettes, maybe? So that’s what was up with George Harrison in February of 1964, and I really love that detail of the Beatles’ story: it’s something you’d never think to write in if you were making it up as a fiction. As a frequent haver of eye infections, there is nothing I relate to more than having cool moments in my life thrown off-kilter and/or straight-up disrupted by an unpleasant physical ailment. So, shout-outs to Beatlemania-era George for putting up with that shit. It really must have sucked for you.

4. GEORGE IN HIS FRANCE SHIRT

LIZ: Last Friday morning I went to a Vons on Laurel Canyon Boulevard to buy a banana, and behind me in line was an interesting-looking red-haired boy most likely in his mid-20s. He was a cross between Jessica Chastain and the scrawniest, most pasty-faced stoner metalhead boy in my high school or anyone's high school; his outfit was floral-patterned black shorts, Vans with socks, a gray cardigan over an unremarkable T-shirt. Stoner Jessica Chastain's grocery basket was full of so many healthy foods: plain yogurt, cage-free eggs, a box of spinach, a pint of blueberries, a little plastic carton of pineapple, all of it organic. I watched him unload his basket and kept waiting for the wild card, some sort of treat to offset the boring purity and righteousness of the rest of his foods. Like maybe a box of ice cream sandwiches, or strawberry shortcake ice cream pops, or Little Debbie Zebra Cakes. Or a gallon of Heavenly Hash, or a stupid pint of the Jimmy Fallon Ben & Jerry's, which is amazing. Or the sunshine-flavored variety of Hostess Cupcakes or, oh my god, AN INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED LEMON-FLAVORED KNOCK-OFF HOSTESS FRUIT PIE. Maybe even just a Twix or a Milky Way or - more appropriately - a Milky Way Dark.

My point is that Stoner Jessica Chastain's fave Beatle is definitely George, and that George would have pulled that wild card and gotten himself a treat. It all comes back to "Savoy Truffle," the previously referenced kicky song about dessert, and George's cool adorable passion for sweets. In this pic he looks like he's doing yoga but really he's just sitting by a pool, wearing a necklace and his cute France shirt, and maybe he's going to go for a swim and then have a nice ice cream. I want to take France George out to one of these prestige ice cream shoppes we've got here in L.A., and buy him a big cone of Salty White Chocolate Honey, or Cinnamon Cardamom Coffee, or Freckled Woodblock Chocolate, or Avocado Banana. I want to open an ice cream shoppe with France George Harrison and limit the menu to flavors mentioned in "Savoy Truffle." My favorite flavor would be Cool Cherry Cream.

3. GEORGE WITH A MAN BUN

LJ: I posted this picture to Twitter last Christmas Day, accompanied by the caption “Merry Christmas! Here is George with a man bun” (No punctuation, since that’s my Twitter “brand.” So bored! So un-intense! So done.) I felt that this was very generous of me, the number one move I’ve ever made most closely aligned with the spirit of Christmas itself. George Harrison with a man bun. It all comes together.

        As a rule, I hate man buns. Once my old boss was like, “I basically married my ex-husband because he had a man bun,” and I was like “I’ve never related to any statement less in my entire life,” and then changed the subject, since I didn’t want to rip her crappy taste to shreds and get fired in one fell swoop. But this picture opened my eyes up to the fact that my problem with man buns isn’t the man bun’s fault, it’s the men who wear man buns’ faults. (It was so hard for me to write that sentence! The inside of my head was all "Men? Man? Fault? Man’s? Men buns?" I am so confused about where apostrophes go, at this point.) 

        It’s Jared Leto’s fault, basically. Jared Leto is a living, breathing, walking, talking man bun. But once upon a time, there was no Jared Leto, and no words “man bun”! There was only George Harrison, in jeans and a white button-up, biting his nails. He probably invented the man bun, on this day, out of sheer practicality—in the middle of a longer George Harrison hair phase, George was in the middle of, let’s say, playing a raga about God on the electric guitar, and his hair was falling in his eyes and it was bugging him, and so he stopped the raga sesh to ask his gang of raga friends, “Does anyone have a rubber band?” and then some Swami was like “All I have is this piece of twine.”

        Classic George Harrison! Holding your man bun in place with a piece of goddamned twine. 

PS: Here is a bonus pic of man bun George, where he appears to be sitting in some sort of dicey-looking classroom, emanating palpable Rasputin-y vibes. 

2. GEORGE LISTENING TO CREEPILY DRUNK JOHN TELL HIM A CREEPY DRUNK SECRET

LJ: I feel like this photograph would be a great jumping off point for, possibly, the greatest caption contest of all time? Please feel free to prove me right.

LIZ: According to the internet, this is the last known photograph of George Harrison and John Lennon together. It was taken at the Troubadour in 1974, a month before the Listen to This Balloon incident, which you can read all about here. A cool thing about the site I just linked to is that all names are italicized, so the story of the Listen to This Balloon incident contains cool lines like: "George got pissed and called him and John wouldn't come to the phone and had May Pang take the call" - and we're all like, "Oh shit, May Pang? Well, what did George say?"

Anyway. I'm annoyed that I found out about the picture being taken at the Troubadour, as I'd imagined John and George hanging out off in the corner at some boring and glamorous party. I mean they just look so glamorous, with their beautifully shining hair, and they also look bored but briefly absorbed in their little secret-telling. I hope whatever John's telling George is super-bitchy and drama-y. I like the idea of 1974 John being "drama," and 1974 George being into it. More than that I like the idea of the 70s Beatles not really hanging out much but when they do they're bitchy and drama-y and off in corners at parties, whispering, hair shining, holding the rest of the room in their orbit and not actually caring, being Beatles, being better than everything.

Another point I'd like to make about this photo is that LJ once placed all the Beatles into Hogwarts houses and made John be in Slytherin and George be in Ravenclaw, and I feel that this picture really captures their Slytherin/Ravenclaw essence. If it was ol' Gryffindor Paul and Hufflepuff Ringo, they'd just look like they're whispering naughtily about sneaking another piece of plum cake or treacle tart or rhubarb crumble with custard.

PS, FROM LJ: Here is another stunning photo of the dynamic duo in happier times, or stern-er times at least. But John is the real star of the hotness show here, with his sideburns and turtleneck and jacket the colour of an orangey-red lipstick that would make your teeth look yellow. George's face looks really tan, which is hot, but his outfit reminds me of the part of a Project Runway episode where they all go to Mood to buy fabric. I mean, he looks like a fabric store. He looks like his tie is some sort of deep sea anemone.