This tape recording of George Harrison composing his first song for The Beatles was one of the most popular entries on this blog when first posted a couple of years ago.
The earlier clip has long since been withdrawn but now it's back!
Confined to his room at the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth during their week-long summer season at the Odeon next door from 19 to 24 August 1963, George coughs and splutters his way through the makings of what would become Don't Bother Me, his first Beatles song and featured on the With the Beatles album, the cover of which was photographed downstairs in the Palace Court restaurant that same week.
The tape was made by Beatles' driver Alf Bicknell on the reel-to-reel recorder given to him by John Lennon and surfaces from time to time as a bootleg.
Bill Harry, founder-editor of the Merseybeat newspaper, who was with The Beatles in Bournemouth that week, says he had been on at George for ages to get him to write a song for the group. George, who later dismissed the song as 'not very good' in his autobiography, finally gave in and used it to pass the time after Brian Epstein had sent him to his room for the day to keep his fresh for the shows that night.
(In fact, George had previously co-written In Spite Of All The Danger with Paul McCartney in 1958 when they were in The Quarrymen and recorded it as a demo with Buddy Holly's That'll Be The Day.)
The 2009 stereo remastering of Don't Bother Me can be seen and heard below.
