Our Encounter

"George Harrison The Man And His Guitar" honours to publish the meeting by chance that our friends Javier

Estrach and Silvia Marelli, resident in Argentina, had with the popular member of The Beatles, George Harrison, in Spring 1999.

After the sad end with his fight against the illness, this interview with George becomes especially relevant and here we see the simple and natural George who all of us would like to have met.

the article is published under its authors´consent and any copy of it without their consent is strictly forbiden..

Joan Pedrol i Petit

We got to Friar Park on May 23th in the afternoon without a clear idea about what could we do but wait. We took pictures at the house for a while

And we waited for really.. I don't know what .We were going 'round and round until, a few minutes later we decided to walk by the street beside the stockade on the right side to Friar Park, so we walked away from the main gate. After a few minutes to be walking we heard a noise in the woods inside the house, a sound like footsteps over dried leaves, so we looked over our shoulders and we saw a man very quiet standing in the shadow watching us up very close to the stockade by among the woods (we were talking in spanish,

-"George, some months ago I sent you by mail from Argentina, a Juan Manuel Fangio video ( the old F1 car racer ) do you remember?, I know you received it because a couple of months ago I received from your office this badge and a card as response, please George give us just one minute..please!!!";

then he smiled and said the magical words...

-"OK.., go down to the gate"

-"Oh really?"

- "Yeah, go down to the gate"

and I can't describe it, simply it was one of the most emotional moments of our whole life, we got almost running down to the gate and meanwhile thinking... I can't believe it!, it's true!!!, I'm not dreaming, I'm here!!!.

We were just about to meet face to face one of the men who change our life forever.

Of course, we got to the gate in first place, so we had time to calm ourselves, and after just a minute we could see one of those little electric golf carts coming , getting closer to the gate and to us: It was him!!, he got out of the little cart with a big smile on his face and we said:

-"Nice car George!!"

-" Yes it is". Then he opened a smaller gate beside the big one and shook our hands ( terrific!!) we were thrilled and knowing that we were living one of the greatest experiences of our life.

He was dressed with jeans, a white T-shirt, plaid shirt and a dark red jacket, he looked very healthy and with a light maybe ten days beard ( a yellow goatee style).

We started to tell him how important he is for us and how important was through the years for us not only his music but his words and his way of thinking, and that we learnt to be better persons with him.

He smiled and said:

" Thank you very much, thank you for listening, many people hear stupid music now, music without any sense".

Then We were talking about the video that I sent him earlier in the year and the "Ohm" badge and the card that he sent me back and he told me that sometimes he prefer to send something better than a simple autograph, and the Ohm and the Swami Sivananda's words help people to feel better inside because everyone is special and we were.

Then smiling he asked jokingly:

-"How is Gardel?" (the old famous argentinian tango's singer)

And we responded

-"Every day sings better!!, it's an old saying in our country", we said, and he smiled.

Then we gave him the T-shirt for him and he looked at it very carefully and he asked us what it was the drawing on it and we explained him that it was a drawing of one of the main very tipical streets of....and he added :

" Ah!.. From Buenos Aires?"

I sent him a little magnet for the fridge and he's got it.on his fridge. After to be talking with him for a while we asked for apologies if our english wasn't so good as we would like (we were a little bit nervous), but he said:

-"Don't worry, your english is very good, you speak much better english than I spanish",

and he asked how long and where we were staying in Henley and what places we had been visiting in Europe, he laughed when we told him that we went to Hamburg and we talked of the Reeperbham and the Grosse Freiheit

-"That was a long time ago,"

We talked about the similarity between the "Red light district" in Amsterdam and the Red District in Hamburg but the most important point is that we could feel that we were keeping a very confortable chat with him and he was confortable with us and always smiling.

He asked what is like life in Buenos Aires

-"I've never been to Argentina, I've only been to south america when I was to Brazil many years ago"

-"Yeah, we remember, it was In Guaruja with Emerson Fitipaldi in 1979."

-"Yeah, Emerson is a good friend of mine", and then in the middle of our chat I asked him:

-"What about your health?, how are you now ?"

-"Oh fine, thank you!, I was in America to make a lot of studies and doctors said I'm OK. papers are always saying a lot of silly things but I'm fine".

And he showed grateful to us to be worried (isn't it lovely?)

After all those minutes at the gate of his house we felt it was time to start to say goodbye,(we asked for just one minute and he was very nice and gave us a lot more) but first we asked if we could take us a picture with him:

-"Because our friends won't believe us George"

-"Oh yeah, sure!!, one picture with each one"

-"Yeah, very good George!", and he told us :

" Thank you very much, but.. you don't need to give me anything"

-" We know but.. we live very far away from here and this is just a way to feel us a little bit closer to you"

-"OK, Thank you"

and by the way, I reminded about another little present that I sent him for his last birthday, so I asked him:

-" Did you receive the magnet that I sent you for your birthday? "

-"For the fridge?", he said laughing

-"Yeah, that one!!

a foreign language for him so I suppose that this called his attention ) and we recognized that so familiar silhouette, it was him!, so I started to call him..."George..George !!!", then he said very quiet : -"huh !, who's there?"

-"George.. we come from Argentina just to try to see you, we have a present for you from our country,please,could you give us just one minute?, please just only one!"

and he said :-"What kind of present?"

- "It's a T-shirt, it's for you George!"

-"But..I don't want a T-shirt"

-"Why not? It's a nice one!", ( I think he still wasn't so sure about our feelings or what kind of people we were), then I reminded him about another present that I sent him earlier in the year :

so, my wife Silvia took my photo with him first and when I was ready to take the picture to him with my wife I don't know what happened but the damned authomatic camera didn't work, I tried two more times but without any luck, and George says:

-"There's no more film at the camera"

-"No George the film it's OK..I don't know what the hell is going on!", so very kindly he decided to take a look to the camera by himself, he pressed the red button and...Magic!!, it worked (he took the best picture to my wife's feet) so I took the camera again and proved to take the damned picture but again, simply the camera didn't work.(the day after we discovered the camera had a problem with the batteries)

-"I can't believe it George!!"

And he said joking:

-"There's no good photographers in these days"

Fortunately we had two cameras with us, so I decided to use my old "sixties" Asahi Pentax and this time: yes, I took with that camera one of the quickest photos of my life.

Now, finally it was time to say goodbye, he shook his hands with us and I couldn't help my impulse, so I embraced him strongly and he embraced me very warmly as well, and so did my wife Silvia and George embraced her and gave her a kiss.

After so matchless moment for us I said him :

-"For you,this one is maybe a very little moment in your life but, not for us, this is.. something that we'll never forget in our whole life!"

-"Oh! Isn't That too much?"

-"No, it isn't at all"

-"OK.Thank you..., bye bye"

-"Bye George, take care!"

He got back inside,closed the small gate and just before to get into the little golf cart he turned around with our gift in hand and said thank you again.

"Thanks to YOU!!!" we said, and we could see the little car moving away into the woods.

The day after I wondered why I didn't ask him so many things!,but now I think that after all... it was OK., we had a very spontaneous and relaxing chat with him about anything special, we demonstrated to be interested in the Man, not only the legend or the musician, we didn't even asked him for an autograph, and maybe many people will think we're crazy but I feel happy, and I speak for my wife Silvia as well, we lived one of the most wonderful turning points in our whole life with a very kind, sensible and sincere man, more of that I dreamed when I was a tiny kid playing to have four brothers and one of them was George.

Javier & Silvia