After George Harrison wrote "If I Needed Someone" for the Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul, the Quiet Beatle made it all too clear that the Hollies were not the "someones" Harrison was talking about in his song. In fact, his disparaging comments about the fellow British pop group helped solidify a feud already brewing from their competition with one another for the top chart positions around the world.

Of course, that drama is long gone decades (and a few tragic deaths) later. Nevertheless, the memorable pop culture moment reveals just how sharp Harrison's tongue could be when the mood struck him.

The Beatles and the Hollies were contemporary British pop groups and, as such, spent most of their early years competing with one another for top chart positions. These two bands also shared a record label at a time when labels often put out releases in batches, meaning the Beatles and Hollies were competing with one another as soon as their music went public. Their proximity also led to the Hollies covering a version of George Harrison's song, "If I Needed Someone," which the Beatles released on Rubber Soul in 1965.

In December of that year, music writer Alan Smith interviewed Harrison about his songwriting, mentioning the song the Quiet Beatle wrote for the Hollies. "George turned sharply away from the mirror," Smith wrote. "'Tell people that I didn't write it for the Hollies,' he said bluntly. 'It's called "If I Needed Someone," and they've done it as their new single, but it's not my kind of music. I think it's rubbish the way they've done it. They've spoilt it.

Harrison didn't stop there. "The Hollies are all right musically. But the way they do their records, they sound like session men who've just got together in a studio without ever seeing each other before. Technically good, yes. But that's all." Despite the Hollies' version of "If I Needed Someone" garnering Harrison his first chart hit as a songwriter, he clearly wasn't a fan.

Artists can be fickle, emotional people, and one of the world's biggest rock stars will undoubtedly be no different. Alan Smith's comments about George Harrison's song might have perturbed the Beatle for many reasons. The competition between the Beatles and the Hollies was likely stressful, and perhaps Harrison felt like he had shot himself in the foot by giving a hit song to his label mates. Perhaps Harrison didn't want his then-girlfriend, Pattie Boyd, to think he wrote the song about anything but her.

In any case, Hollies frontman Graham Nash was having none of it. "Not only do these comments disappoint and hurt us, but we're sick and tired of everything the Beatles say or do being taken as law," he told New Musical Express, the same publication where Alan Smith worked. "I'll tell you this much: we did this song against a lot of people's advice. We just felt that after nine records, we could afford to do something like this without being accused of jumping on the Beatles' bandwagon. We thought it was a good song."

"About the crack about us sounding like session men," Nash continued, "I suppose he means we don't have any soul in our discs. Rubbish. We don't profess to be a soul R&B-type group, and we never have. My opinion of the Beatles hasn't changed. I still think they're great, and I'm not going to say anything stupid like, 'I'm going to burn all their records in my collection.' No. I like their music. But knocking comments like the one about us are a load of bollocks." And indeed, Nash's comments certainly softened in the decades to come. But things were hot in the British pop music world for a while after that.