"I was in awe and unable to speak": Jeff Daniels recalls a music-filled meeting with George Harrison
On "Everything Fab Four," the acclaimed actor discusses the Beatles, his career and Netflix series "A Man in Full"
Emmy Award-winning actor Jeff Daniels joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about the lesson he learned from George Harrison, the beauty of “Get Back,” his new Netflix series “A Man in Full” and much more on “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.
Daniels, who has lit up the screen for decades in such films as “Dumb and Dumber,” “The Squid and the Whale” and “Arachnophobia,” is also a stage actor and playwright, in addition to being a musician. And his introduction to how music could change the world arrived in elementary school when the Beatles debuted on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. As he told Womack, “You could just feel a change in the room. Here were fourth-grade girls, and they were in love with these British mop tops.”
His own admiration for the band didn’t really take off until a few years later, with the release of their “Sgt. Pepper” album. “It freed them up to chase anything,” said Daniels, “as long as it was different than what they'd done before.” Little did he know that as he continued to buy each album the Beatles released from then on, that one day he would end up in the same room – professionally – with one of his musical heroes.
“In 1988 I got cast in an indie movie called ‘Checking Out,’” he told Womack, which was produced by George Harrison’s company Handmade Films. While shooting in Los Angeles, Harrison visited the set. “A photographer captured a photo of George talking, because he was the only one who could talk. I was in awe and unable to speak.” Daniels had his guitar with him and asked George to sign it, and the former Beatle obliged – and ended up playing 20 minutes’ worth of songs for the people in the room. “He knew he was giving us a gift that we would talk about forever. It was a very giving thing for him to do, and I never forgot that.”
Source: salon.com
