The Summertime Project That Signaled the Beginning of the End for The Beatles

No matter how much you might like to, it’s impossible to force someone to care about something as much as you do, and that’s especially true when you’re in a band. This was a lesson Paul McCartney and George Harrison were experiencing in real time during the making of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Both men felt disillusioned and disgruntled, but for opposite reasons.

In a 1990 interview, McCartney threw his ex-bandmate under the bus with accusations of flippant—and sometimes all-around absent—behavior during the recording process for Sgt. Pepper. “During the making of Sgt. Pepper, George hadn’t shown for most of the album, which was unusual, as we normally showed for our recording sessions.” McCartney said that the album didn’t interest Harrison, adding, “I think he was building a swimming pool.”

McCartney’s brow furrowed as he mentioned the summertime project he believed was taking up most of Harrison’s time, as if to further emphasize how much less important something like that would be in the face of the next Beatles album. McCartney said that although he made the choice not to say anything, he thought it was a “bit dodgy.”

George Harrison Had a Different Perspective From Paul McCartney

To Paul McCartney, George Harrison was remarkably absent from the recording process of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The guitarist appeared preoccupied with other life experiences, whether building a swimming pool, as McCartney suggested, or marinating in his recent adventures through India, as Harrison might’ve said. In any case, Harrison had a much different perspective on Sgt. Pepper—one that would justify his not being there.

“It was becoming difficult for me because I wasn’t really that into it,” Harrison said about making Sgt. Pepper in Anthology. “Up to that time, we had recorded more like a band. We would learn the songs and then play them. Although we were starting to do overdubs and had done a lot on Revolver. Sgt. Pepper was the one album where things were done slightly differently. A lot of the time it ended up with just Paul playing the piano and Ringo [Starr] keeping the tempo, and we weren’t allowed to play as a band so much.”

Harrison likened the recording process to an assembly line where the song came together in small individual pieces. He remarked on how revolutionary the general public considered Sgt. Pepper and how that contrasted with his own opinion of it being a regressive album for the band. “For me, it was not as enjoyable as Rubber Soul or Revolver,” Harrison said. “I had gone through so many trips of my own, and I was growing out of that kind of thing.”

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