8:08 AM George Harrison | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
George Harrison============================================================
This article is about the musician. For his eponymous album, see George Harrison (album).
George Harrison,[nb 1] MBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the band's primary songwriters, most of their albums included at least one Harrison composition, including "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", which became the Beatles' second most-covered song. Harrison's earliest musical influences included Big Bill Broonzy, George Formby and Django Reinhardt; Chet Atkins, Chuck Berry and Ry Cooder were significant later influences. By 1965 he had begun to lead the Beatles into folk rock through his interest in the Byrds and Bob Dylan, and towards Indian classical music through his use of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)". He developed an interest in the Hare Krishna movement and became an admirer of Indian culture and mysticism, introducing them to the other members of the Beatles and their Western audience by incorporating Indian instrumentation in their music. After the band's break-up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, from which two hit singles originated. He also organized the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh with Ravi Shankar, a precursor for later benefit concerts such as Live Aid. Harrison was a music and film producer as well as a musician; he founded Dark Horse Records in 1974 and co-founded HandMade Films in 1978. Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer, and in 1988 co-founded the platinum-selling supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. A prolific recording artist, he was featured as a guest guitarist on tracks by Badfinger, Ronnie Wood and Billy Preston, and collaborated on songs and music with Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Tom Petty, among others. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Harrison's first marriage, to Pattie Boyd, ended in divorce in 1977. The following year he married Olivia Trinidad Arias, with whom he had one son, Dhani. Harrison died in 2001, aged 58, from lung cancer. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India, in a private ceremony according to Hindu tradition. He left almost £100 million in his will. Contents1943–57: early yearsFurther information: The Quarrymen
Born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, on 25 February 1943, Harrison was the youngest of four children of Harold Hargreaves Harrison and his wife Louise (née French).[3] He had one sister, Louise, and two brothers, Harry and Peter.[4] His mother was a shop assistant from a Catholic family with Irish roots, and his father was a bus conductor who had worked as a ship's steward on the White Star Line.[5] His future wife, the model Pattie Boyd, described Harrison's parents as "quite short and very Liverpudlian".[6] According to Boyd, Harrison's mother was particularly supportive: "All she wanted for her children is that they should be happy, and she recognized that nothing made George quite as happy as making music."[6] An enthusiastic music fan, she was known among friends for her loud singing voice, which at times startled visitors by rattling the Harrisons' windows.[7] While pregnant with George, she often listened to the weekly broadcast Radio India. Harrison's biographer Joshua Greene wrote, "Every Sunday she tuned in to mystical sounds evoked by sitars and tablas, hoping that the exotic music would bring peace and calm to the baby in the womb."[8] Harrison was born and lived the first six years of his life at 12 Arnold Grove, Wavertree, Liverpool, in a terraced house in a cul-de-sac.[9] The home had an outdoor toilet and its only heat came from a single coal fire. In 1949 the family was offered a council house and moved to 25 Upton Green, Speke.[10] In 1948, at the age of five, Harrison enrolled at Dovedale Primary School.[11] He passed his 11-plus examination and attended the prestigious Liverpool Institute from 1954 to 1959.[12] Harrison's earliest musical influences included George Formby, Cab Calloway, Django Reinhardt, Hoagy Carmichael, and Big Bill Broonzy. In early 1956 he had an epiphany: while riding his bicycle, he heard Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" playing from a nearby house, and the song piqued his interest in rock and roll.[13] He often sat at the back of the class drawing guitars in his schoolbooks, and later commented, "I was totally into guitars".[14] Although apprehensive about his son's interest in pursuing a music career, in late 1956 Harrison's father bought him a Dutch Egmond flat top acoustic guitar.[15] A friend of his father's taught Harrison how to play "Whispering", "Sweet Sue", and "Dinah", and inspired by the music of Lonnie Donegan, Harrison formed a skiffle group called the Rebels with his brother Peter and a friend, Arthur Kelly.[16] On the bus to school Harrison met Paul McCartney, who became a member of John Lennon's band the Quarrymen, and the pair bonded over their shared love of music.[17] 1958–70: the BeatlesMain article: The Beatles
In March 1958 Harrison auditioned for the Quarrymen at Rory Storm's Morgue Skiffle Club, playing "Guitar Boogie Shuffle", but Lennon felt that Harrison, then 14, was too young to join the band.[18] During a second meeting, arranged by McCartney, he performed the lead guitar part for the instrumental "Raunchy" on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus.[19] Soon afterwards he began socializing with the group, filling in on guitar as needed,[20] and by the time he turned 15 they had accepted him as a member.[21] Although his father wanted him to continue his education, Harrison left school at 16 and worked for several months as an apprentice electrician at Blacklers, a local department store.[22] In 1960 Allan Williams arranged for the band, now calling themselves the Beatles, to play at the Kaiserkeller club in Hamburg, owned by Bruno Koschmider.[23] The impromptu musical education Harrison received while playing long hours with the Beatles, as well as the guitar lessons he took from Tony Sheridan while they briefly served as his backing group, laid the foundations of his sound and of his quiet, professional role within the group; he was later known as "the quiet Beatle".[24] The band's first residency in Hamburg ended prematurely when Harrison was deported for being too young to work in nightclubs.[25] When Brian Epstein became their manager in December 1961, he polished their image and secured them a recording contract with EMI.[26] The group's first single, "Love Me Do", peaked at number seventeen on the Record Retailer chart, and by the time their debut album, Please Please Me, was released in early 1963, Beatlemania had arrived.[27] Their second album, With the Beatles (1963), included "Don't Bother Me", Harrison's first solo writing credit.[28] 
By 1965's Rubber Soul, Harrison had begun to lead the other Beatles into folk rock through his interest in the Byrds and Bob Dylan, and towards Indian classical music through his use of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)".[29][nb 2] He later called Rubber Soul his "favourite [Beatles] album".[31] Revolver (1966) included three of his compositions: "Taxman", "Love You To" and "I Want to Tell You".[32] His introduction of the drone-like tambura part on Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows" exemplified the band's ongoing exploration of non-Western instruments.[33] The tabla-driven "Love You To" was the Beatles' first genuine foray into Indian music.[34] According to the ethnomusicologist David Reck, the song set a precedent in popular music as an example of Asian culture being represented by Westerners respectfully and without parody.[35] Harrison continued to develop his interest in non-Western instrumentation, playing swarmandal on "Strawberry Fields Forever".[36] By late 1966 Harrison's interests had moved away from the Beatles, as reflected in his choice of Eastern gurus and religious leaders for inclusion on the album cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.[37][nb 3] His sole composition on the album was the Indian-inspired "Within You Without You", to which no other Beatle contributed.[39] He played sitar and tambura on the track, backed by musicians from the London Asian Music Circle on dilruba, swarmandal and tabla.[40][nb 4] In 1968 his song "The Inner Light" was recorded at the EMI Studios in Bombay, featuring a group of local musicians playing traditional Indian instruments.[42] Released as the B-side to McCartney's "Lady Madonna", it was the first Harrison composition to appear on a Beatles single.[42] Derived from a quotation from the Tao Te Ching, the song's lyric reflected Harrison's deepening interest in Hinduism and meditation, while musically it embraced the Karnatak discipline of Indian music, rather than the Hindustani style of his previous work in the genre.[43] Dylan and the Band were a major musical influence on Harrison at the end of his career with the Beatles.[44] He established a friendship with Dylan and found himself drawn to the Band's sense of communal music-making and to the creative equality among the band members, in contrast with Lennon and McCartney's domination of the Beatles' songwriting and creative direction. This coincided with a prolific period in his songwriting and his growing desire to assert his independence from the band.[45] During the recording of The Beatles in 1968, tensions ran high, and drummer Ringo Starr quit briefly.[46] Harrison's songwriting contributions to the album included "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", which featured Eric Clapton on lead guitar, "Piggies", "Long, Long, Long", and "Savoy Truffle".[47] Tensions among the Beatles surfaced again during the filming of rehearsals at Twickenham Studios in January 1969 for what became the album Let It Be.[45] Frustrated by the poor working conditions in the cold and sterile film studio, as well as by what he perceived as Lennon's creative disengagement from the Beatles and a domineering attitude from McCartney, Harrison quit the group on 10 January, but agreed to return twelve days later.[48] Relations among the Beatles were more cordial, though still strained, during sessions for their final recorded album, Abbey Road.[49] The LP included two of Harrison's most respected Beatles compositions: "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", which became one half of the Beatles' first double-sided number one single, Harrison's first A-side, and his first chart topper.[50] In 1969 Frank Sinatra recorded "Something", and later dubbed it "the greatest love song of the past fifty years".[51] Lennon considered it the best song on Abbey Road, and it became the Beatles' second most covered song after "Yesterday".[52] Author Peter Lavezzoli wrote: "Harrison would finally achieve equal songwriting status … with his two classic contributions to the final Beatles' LP".[53] In April 1970 when Harrison's "For You Blue" was released in America as a double A-side with McCartney's "The Long and Winding Road", it became the band's second chart-topping double A-side and "For You Blue" became Harrison's second number one hit.[54] His increased productivity and the Beatles' reluctance to include his songs on their albums meant that by the time of their break-up he had amassed a stockpile of unreleased compositions.[55] While Harrison grew as a songwriter, his compositional presence on Beatles albums remained limited to two or three songs, increasing his frustration, and significantly contributing to the band's break-up.[56] Harrison's last recording session with the Beatles was on 4 January 1970, when he, McCartney and Starr recorded the Harrison song "I Me Mine".[57] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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