George was 14 when he met John. John was 17. George was a little boy in comparison. He looked up to John, and that was always their dynamic.
Paul and George were only a year apart, and they were at school together. George saw Paul as an equal, so it was very hard for him to accept that Paul was a genius in comparison to himself. He was able to accept that John was a genius, but with Paul it was just too bitter a pill to swallow.
George wanted to be John’s writing partner, but John wasn’t interested in working with him. John loved George, but he saw him as a kid, not an equal. And he definitely didn’t rate him as either a songwriter or a musician.
John and Paul had massive egos, but so did George. He was surrounded by people who told him how wonderful he was, and he struggled to accept himself as a lesser talent. I suppose he’d be very happy now with the revisionism that puts him on a pedestal, but that’s what it is - revisionism. The truth is that George wrote four memorable songs, with a lot of help, mostly from Paul. John and Paul wrote the songbook of all time - it doesn’t compare.
John was besotted with Paul until his dying day. He may have been on ‘the boat called Yoko’, but that’s only because he got off ‘the boat called Paul’ when he thought that Paul was about to leave him for Linda. Because of his abandonment issues, he had to be the one to leave first.
John’s diaries from the 1970s were all about Paul. Many of the songs he wrote were written to Paul - he was obsessed. George had been in the middle of that for years and felt pushed out. When your hero rejects you (and thinks you’re a rubbish musician, even though everyone else says you’re great), it hurts. George’s method of coping was to take it out on Paul.