Following The Beatles’ performance in Manchester in 1963, George Harrison’s mother, Louise, had some reservations, which she shared in one of twenty-five letters addressed to a fan, Janet Gray. “Nobody with any sense would pay and queue for a ticket just to stand on a seat and scream and not hear one sound from the stage,” she wrote.
The letter, which Janet had, will be sold at the Liverpool Beatles Memorabilia Auction on August 26 and is expected to fetch up to $100. Other notes included Louise giving updates about The Beatles’ tours in the ’60s, checking in on Gray as she grew from a young girl into adolescence, sharing ups and downs, and simply being a great pen-friend to Gray.
What’s in the letter?
As a supportive mother to the former Beatles star, Louise made it a duty to respond to Beatles fans in writing from all over the world. For three years, she regularly exchanged correspondence with Gray, and in one of her letters, she expressed that she was “disgusted at the way the so-called fans just screamed.”
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Aside from sharing her thoughts about The Beatles with Gray, Louise encouraged the then-teenager to emulate her good mother-son relationship with George. “I hope you will try and remember that your mum is your best friend, even if you don’t see eye-to-eye on some issues. Thank God I get on fine with all my four children, and they with each other.”
Louise found responding to mail overwhelming
Louise was very friendly and open in her letters, as though she conversed with a friend. In other letters, she told Gray about George’s car crash in 1964, which he survived uninjured. “George was there five days before I came home. He is very thin but OK,” she wrote after seeing him in Surrey much later.
She also told Gray how tasking it was responding to thousands of letters. “I’m so busy I could scream. 3,000 letters to answer, at least. So I’ll say cheerio for now,” she wrote in the conclusion part of one of her letters. George’s song “Deep Blue” is said to be inspired by Louise when she fell ill a year after The Beatles split. Sadly, she died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 51.