The BEATLES
George Harrison
 George Harrison, MBE was born on
February 25, 1943 and died on November 29, 2001. He was better known as
a member of the Beatles. playing lead guitar for the band, he was a
popular English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter and film producer.
Often referred to as “the quiet Beatle”, Harrison embraced Indian
mysticism, and helped broaden the horizons of the other Beatles, as well
as those of their Western audience. Following the band’s break-up, he
had a successful career as a solo artiste and later as part of the
Travelling Wilburys, and also as a film and record producer. Harrison is
listed at number 21 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “100 Greatest
Guitarists of All Time”.
Although most of the Beatles’ songs were written by Lennon and
McCartney, Harrison generally wrote one song per side from the Help!
album onwards. His later compositions with the Beatles include “Here
Comes the Sun”, “Something” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.
By the time of the band’s break-up, Harrison had accumulated a
backlog of material, which he then released as the acclaimed and
successful triple album All Things Must Pass in 1970, from which came
two singles: a double A-side single, “My Sweet Lord” backed with “Isn’t
It a Pity”, and “What Is Life”.
In addition to his solo work, Harrison co-wrote two hits for Ringo
Starr, another former Beatle, as well as songs for the Travelling
Wilburys-the supergroup he formed in 1988 with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty,
Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison.
Harrison embraced Indian culture and Hinduism in the mid 1960s, and
helped expand Western awareness of sitar music and of the Hare Krishna
movement. He organised a major charity concert with Ravi Shankar in 1971
which was a concert for Bangladesh, and is the only Beatle to have
published an autobiography, with ‘I Me Mine’ in 1980.
Besides being a musician, he was also a record producer and
co-founder of the production company HandMade Films. In his work as a
film producer, he collaborated with people as diverse as the members of
Monty Python and Madonna.
He was married twice, to the model Pattie Boyd in 1966, and to the
record company secretary Olivia Trinidad Arias in 1978, with whom he had
one son, Dhani Harrison. He was a close friend of Eric Clapton. Harrison
died of lung cancer in 2001. American film director Martin Scorsese has
announced that he is making a George Harrison documentary titled ‘Living
in the Material World: George Harrison’. |
