Legendary music icon George Harrison was interviewed in 1986 on The Today Show and remembers how they were beaten up by a mob after they supposedly snubbed Marcos when they didn’t show up to Malacañang Palace. Harrison explains they were not booked to be there and their manager had to give back the money they earned to be allowed to leave the Philippines.
Transcript below:
George Harrison: Well he tried to kill us, President Marcos
Interviewer: You wanna review that? (laughs)
George Harrison: We went to uhm Manila back in the 60s, the Beatles on a tour and we did a concert and the next morning we were in bed and somebody knocked on the door at the hotel suites and said ‘Come on, you’re supposed to be at the Palace!’, and we said no we’re not we didn’t have any engagement anywhere but somebody, you know, some smart guy said, ‘Sure I’ll get the Beatles to go to the Palace.
And we turn on the TV, we turn the television on and there it was this big Palace with lines of people and the guy said ‘Well they’re still not here yet and we watched ourselves not arrive at the Palace.’ But we were never supposed to be there.
And so what they did was they said ‘the Beatles snubbed the First Family’, which I’m glad we did see even in those days we had taste and so consequently set the mob on us and tried to beat us up which they did they beat up a lot of people with us and wouldn’t let the airplane leave Manila until __ our manager had to get off the plane and give back the money in the concert.
And so that’s what I think of Marcos (gives two fingers going up and down motion) and what a twat he was.
