George Harrison’s older sibling manages a tribute band in Midwestern America and lives on welfare after being cut off by her brother’s widow
Me To You, Twist & Shout, Please Please Me and She Loves You.
“In the middle of all that craziness George enjoyed a holiday in the US where he could feel human again,” she says.
Louise had moved with her husband to America early that same year and was living in Benton, Illinois, when George, 11 years her junior, came to visit. “George and I went camping out in the wilds, barbecued sausages and roasted marshmallows,” she recalls.
“He was happy roughing it. He was always very down-to-earth. He spent hours playing with my kids and their train set. When George grew up we never had any toys like that.”
She took her brother to gawp at diner waitresses on roller-skates, his first drive-in and shopping at record stores. “We went to Saturday night dances at the Veterans’ Hall, drinking and having a good time. He loved being just George again rather than a Beatle.”
Local band The Four Vests were playing at the Veterans’ Hall in Eldorado, Illinois, and hearing that George was a British musician invited him on stage. Together they played Roll Over Beethoven and a Hank Williams song – the first performance by a Beatle in the US.
“The audience suddenly began cheering, shouting, dancing like crazy,” says Louise. “George set the place on fire. Everyone said that he had to join the band but he explained he already had a group in England.” Invited to accompany The Four Vests the following week the Beatle played for 90 minutes at a birthday party at the Boccie Ball Club in Benton.
He left America as quietly as he had come but when he returned five months later it was to an explosion of Beatlemania.
“It was absolutely crazy,” recalls Louise, who joined up with The Beatles in New York. “Fans were crawling over our limousines wherever we went. Out of the rear window we would see the road strewn with clothes, shoes, bags and fallen fans.
“George told me, ‘If we’d known what was waiting for us we’d never have got off the plane.’
“I met the rest of The Beatles for the first time and it was like having three more brothers. Paul was the group’s best PR, always signing autographs, making fans happy. Jolly old Ringo never had a bad word to say about anyone. John was always commenting on society’s inequalities.
“After the Playboy Club gave us dinner on the house, John said: ‘When we didn’t have money for a threepenny cheese sandwich nobody gave us anything but once we have money everybody wants to give us something for free.’
“George earned a reputation as the quiet Beatle on that trip but he actually had a sore throat and could hardly talk. I spent much of that visit nursing him.”
GEORGE and Louise grew up together in a terraced house with an outside toilet. “He was born at home and I held him in my arms. His fingernails were fully grown and he had a little tuft of hair and wide eyes. It was love at first sight.
“George was a loving and compassionate child. I would often babysit him or take him to movies. Times were tough. My bus driver dad and our mum were always singing but we had no musical instruments and we had no idea George would become a musician.
“When George first saw Elvis on TV he asked our dad to buy him a guitar. He said, ‘You know that guy on the TV last night? That’s the kind of job I can do.’”
The siblings stayed close through the years and Harrison flew Louise to join him when he visited the US.
George lived at the palatial 120room Friar Park mansion on his 62-acre estate in Oxfordshire and left a £112million fortune when he died in 2001, aged 58, after a long battle with cancer.
Yet twice-divorced Louise was bequeathed nothing in her brother’s will and struggles to make ends meet. She lives in a trailer, relies on welfare payments and manages a Beatles cover band, The Liverpool Legends.
“George promised he would look after me as long as I lived,” she says. “When I turned 60 he began paying me $2,000 a month. It wasn’t a fortune but all I needed to get by. My needs are simple.
“But a year after his death his widow Olivia cut off the payments. I was good friends with George’s first wife Pattie Boyd but Olivia… I haven’t any words!”
Louise shrugs off her difficulties, saying: “It’s only money. My brother’s love was more important. When he was dying I went to his hospital in New York and we made our peace.
“He had no fear of dying. He was looking forward to whatever came next. We both believed in reincarnation and came up with a secret signal so that we would recognise each other in future lives.
“I love and miss him but I’m not sad that he’s gone. He was ready to move on and was excited about what life after death had in store.”