George Harrison

George Harrison was born on February 25, 1943, in Liverpool, England, the youngest of four children of Harold Harrison, a bus conductor, and Louise Harrison, a shop assistant ^[1]. The family lived in a small terraced house at 12 Arnold Grove in the Wavertree district before moving to the suburb of Speke. Money was tight, but the household was warm, and his mother in particular encouraged his early interest in music ^[2].

As a boy Harrison attended Dovedale Primary School and then the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, where he showed little enthusiasm for academic work. What did capture him was the skiffle craze sweeping Britain in the mid 1950s, driven by Lonnie Donegan's hit records, along with the American rock and roll of Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley ^[1]. His mother bought him his first guitar when he was around thirteen, and he practiced obsessively, sometimes until his fingers bled, copying chord shapes from records and from other local players ^[2].

On the bus to school Harrison befriended an older pupil named Paul McCartney, who shared his fixation with guitars. McCartney had recently joined a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, led by John Lennon, and in early 1958 he introduced the fourteen year old Harrison to the band. Lennon initially thought him too young, but Harrison's confident playing, reportedly demonstrated on the instrumental piece Raunchy, won him a place in the group ^[1].

The Quarrymen evolved through several names before settling on the Beatles in 1960. That summer the group, with Harrison on lead guitar, traveled to Hamburg, West Germany, for the first of several long residencies in the city's club district ^[3]. The Hamburg engagements were grueling, with sets stretching for hours night after night, but they transformed a rough amateur band into a tight professional unit. Harrison, still only seventeen on the first trip, was eventually deported for being underage, a detail that later became part of Beatles lore ^[1].

Back in Liverpool the band built a devoted following at the Cavern Club, where local record shop manager Brian Epstein saw them in late 1961 and became their manager. Epstein secured an audition with producer George Martin at EMI's Parlophone label, and in 1962, with Ringo Starr replacing Pete Best on drums, the classic lineup was complete ^[3]. The single Love Me Do reached the British charts that autumn, and Please Please Me topped most UK listings early in 1963.

Beatlemania followed with astonishing speed. By the time the group appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, watched by an estimated 73 million American viewers, Harrison had become one of the most recognizable young men in the world ^[4]. Within the band he was often labeled the quiet Beatle, a tag he found reductive, though it reflected his position alongside the dominant songwriting partnership of Lennon and McCartney. His guitar work, influenced by Carl Perkins and Chet Atkins, shaped the sound of the early records, from the chiming twelve string Rickenbacker on A Hard Day's Night onward ^[3].

Any account of George Harrison achievements has to begin with his growth as a songwriter inside a band that already had two of the most successful composers of the century. His first recorded composition, Don't Bother Me, appeared in 1963, and by the mid 1960s he was contributing one or two songs per album, including Taxman, the biting opener of Revolver in 1966 ^[3]. On the group's final recorded album, Abbey Road, his songs Something and Here Comes the Sun were widely judged among the strongest tracks; Frank Sinatra later performed Something regularly and praised it lavishly in concert ^[4].

Harrison also changed the sound of Western pop by introducing Indian classical music into it. After encountering a sitar on the set of the film Help! in 1965, he played the instrument on Lennon's song Norwegian Wood, then studied seriously with the Indian virtuoso Ravi Shankar ^[5]. Compositions such as Love You To and Within You Without You brought Indian instrumentation and philosophy to a mass audience and helped spark broad Western interest in Indian music and thought.

His solo career opened spectacularly. All Things Must Pass, released in 1970, was a triple album built from the backlog of songs the Beatles had passed over. It topped charts in Britain and America, and its single My Sweet Lord became the first number one hit in the United States by any solo Beatle ^[4]. In 1971 Harrison organized the Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden with Ravi Shankar, gathering Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, and others to raise money for refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War. The event is generally regarded as the model for later large scale charity concerts, and its album won the Grammy for Album of the Year ^[5].

Harrison married the model Pattie Boyd in January 1966 after meeting her on the set of A Hard Day's Night. The marriage dissolved in the mid 1970s, and Boyd later married Harrison's close friend Eric Clapton; remarkably, Harrison and Clapton remained friends throughout ^[2]. In 1978 Harrison married Olivia Trinidad Arias, a secretary at his Dark Horse record label, shortly after the birth of their son Dhani, his only child ^[1].

Religion shaped his adult life more than that of any other Beatle. From the late 1960s Harrison was a committed devotee of Hindu spiritual practice, particularly the Hare Krishna tradition, and he chanted, meditated, and studied Indian scripture for the rest of his life ^[5]. He financed the UK Hare Krishna movement's headquarters at Bhaktivedanta Manor and often said that his central concern was preparing for death and seeking God, themes that run through songs from My Sweet Lord to his final album.

Away from music he cultivated unexpected passions. He was a dedicated gardener who spent decades restoring the grounds of Friar Park, the Victorian Gothic estate in Henley on Thames he bought in 1970, and he described himself in his memoir as a gardener before a musician ^[2]. He also loved Formula One motor racing, attending grands prix around the world and befriending drivers, and he had a lifelong fondness for the comedy of Monty Python.

Harrison's recording pace slowed after the 1970s, but he kept finding new outlets. When Monty Python's film Life of Brian lost its funding in 1978, Harrison mortgaged his house to finance it, founding HandMade Films with his business partner Denis O'Brien. The company went on to produce notable British films of the 1980s, including Time Bandits, The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa, and Withnail and I ^[6].

His music enjoyed a late resurgence. The 1987 album Cloud Nine, produced with Jeff Lynne, returned him to the top of the American singles chart with a cover of Got My Mind Set on You. The following year he formed the Traveling Wilburys with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Lynne, a good humored supergroup whose debut album sold in the millions ^[4]. In the mid 1990s he reunited with McCartney and Starr for the Beatles Anthology project, completing two unfinished Lennon demos as new Beatles singles.

His final years were shadowed by illness and violence. Harrison was treated for throat cancer in 1997, which he attributed to years of smoking. In December 1999 an intruder broke into Friar Park and stabbed him repeatedly; Olivia Harrison fought the attacker off, and Harrison survived wounds that had punctured a lung ^[7]. The cancer returned, and despite treatment in Switzerland and the United States he died of complications from lung cancer on November 29, 2001, in Los Angeles, at the age of 58 ^[1]. His ashes were scattered in India in accordance with Hindu custom, and his final album, Brainwashed, completed by Dhani Harrison and Jeff Lynne, appeared posthumously in 2002.

Anyone asking who was George Harrison beyond the Beatles will find a career of unusual range: pioneering guitarist, hit songwriter, film producer, philanthropist, and the musician who did more than any other to open Western pop to Indian music. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, with the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 2004, and Rolling Stone has ranked him among the greatest guitarists in rock history ^[4].

His songs remain in constant circulation. Something is one of the most covered Beatles compositions, Here Comes the Sun has become the band's most streamed track in the digital era, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps, featuring Eric Clapton's guest solo, is a staple of guitar canon lists ^[3]. The Concert for Bangladesh established the template that Live Aid and countless benefit concerts later followed, and the Material World Foundation he created in 1973 continues his charitable giving ^[5].

Tributes have kept his memory current. A year after his death, friends including Clapton, McCartney, and Starr staged the Concert for George at the Royal Albert Hall, and Martin Scorsese's 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World examined his life for a new generation ^[6]. Among the more affectionate George Harrison facts: a variety of dahlia and a Liverpool airport thoroughfare bear associations with the Beatles' quiet member, whose reputation as the band's most spiritually searching figure has only grown since his death.