George Harrison He was dubbed the “quiet one,” the Beatle who made music on his own gentle terms. If John was the headline-grabbing radical, he was the press-shy recluse.
He was dubbed the “quiet one,” the Beatle who made music on his own gentle terms. If John was the headline-grabbing radical, he was the press-shy recluse. If Ringo was the class clown, he was the studious mystic. If Paul was the pop star, he was the anti-pop star.
But George Harrison was hardly a silent force in the band that's been hailed as rock 'n' roll's greatest. In many ways, the guitarist, singer and songwriter was the artist who best represented The Beatles' multilayered legacy, with his ear for melody, his eagerness to experiment and his fervent belief in the power of love.
And it's that same potent combination he brought to the table in his post-Beatle career that spanned more than three decades, a stretch that included the release of a landmark solo debut album and the concert that became the blueprint for all major musical charitable endeavors.
That career came to a sad but expected ending in Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon: After years of battling cancer, Mr. Harrison died at a friend's home, surrounded by his wife, Olivia, and son, Dhani. The former Beatle was 58.
“He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death, and at peace,” the Harrison family said in a statement.
As the news spread Friday, testimonials poured in from the two remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as Yoko Ono, widow of slain Beatle John Lennon. Recognizing Harrison's role as the group's youngest member, McCartney called him “my baby brother” and said, “I am devastated and very, very sad. He was a lovely guy and a very brave man and had a wonderful sense of humor.” Starr called him “a best friend,” adding, “I loved him very much and I will miss him greatly.”
Ono remarked that Mr. Harrison's life was a “magical” one. “Thank you, George. It was grand knowing you,” she said.
But such sentiments of grief were almost dwarfed by those of millions of music lovers worldwide who recognized the event for what it was: a humbling recognition of their own mortality. The once-mighty Beatles, those mop-topped symbols of youth, are now a band eroded by age.
“We're down to two of them,” said Randy McElrath, a Fort Lauderdale-based executive with Clear Channel Entertainment, the nation's largest concert promoter.
Mourning in Strawberry Fields
It was a mantra repeated throughout a day in which radio stations and VH1 aired tributes, Internet message boards were overrun with condolences and fans flocked to any Beatles shrine they could find, from the streets of Liverpool, England, where the group got its start in the early '60s, to New York's Central Park, where Lennon is remembered with a garden named after his song, Strawberry Fields.
Even in South Florida, the sense of loss was palpable, as everyone from rock greats to everyday fans contemplated Mr. Harrison's passing.
Dion DiMucci, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who lives in Boca Raton, recalled meeting Mr. Harrison in the '60s when they crossed paths at a New York deli. He said the young guitarist took note of his hit, Ruby Baby, which was fueled by that quintessential American rock 'n' roll sound that shaped The Beatles' early music. “They were cutting their teeth on some of those records,” DiMucci said, adding that Mr. Harrison always struck him as the calming force behind the group.
“He wasn't too much of a contrived guy,” DiMucci said. “He just played what he knew.”
For Robert Stricklin, a Wellington resident who was born and raised in New York, it was a chance to see The Beatles in person when the group made its triumphant return to The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965 that left an indelible impression. He remembers the line of shrieking girls waiting outside the theater, a line that Mr. Harrison was able to elude when a policeman helped him find a cab.
“It's not just the passing of a musical hero,” Stricklin said with emotion. “It's (also) sad to know that these people are not immortal. We're all going to die.”
And Woody Graber, a veteran South Florida music publicist, added that the real tragedy might be that Mr. Harrison, because of his quiet nature, was often overshadowed by his colleagues, especially Lennon and McCartney.
“I really don't think George got the credit he deserved as one of the leading guitarists in rock music,” said Graber, a onetime folk musician who credited The Beatles with turning him on to rock. “People always said he was good, but when you really listened to an album like Revolver or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or even some of the early stuff he did, that was exceptional work.”
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Indeed, Mr. Harrison's country-tinged guitar stylings - he claimed Chet Atkins as an important influence - shaped The Beatles' exquisite melodies. No rock group before had placed such value on the music's depth and flow, bringing an almost classical sensibility to the pop song.
Although Lennon and McCartney wrote the bulk of the group's hits, Mr. Harrison was perhaps the foursome's most able musician, even if the band didn't encourage lengthy solos or jams. And yet because Mr. Harrison was willing to put personality aside, it often didn't matter to him that his role was confined.
“No other guitarist would have done it the way he did. He could keep his ego in check, for sure,” said E. Michael Harrington, a music professor at Nashville's Belmont University who has lectured widely on The Beatles.
At the same time, Mr. Harrison could stand on his own as a writer, even if, in his words, there was a “quota” on his contribution to each Beatles album. Those that made the cut included such memorable songs as Taxman, Here Comes the Sun, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Something, the latter described by no less an artist than Frank Sinatra as the greatest love song of all time.
But Mr. Harrison brought something else to the group's artistic palate: As a result of his explorations into Indian culture and religion, he pioneered the idea of merging Eastern music and Western pop, creating what might be called the predecessor of today's “world music” genre. His initial effort was Norwegian Wood, a Lennon song that almost became identified as Mr. Harrison's because of his use of the sitar, an Indian stringed instrument similar to the guitar. Mr. Harrison followed that with other Indian-influenced songs, giving The Beatles' music a truly international frame.
The group, however, wouldn't last; the band succumbed to infighting and what Mr. Harrison described as a feeling of being held captive by fame.
“There was never any doubt. The Beatles were doomed,” he wrote in his 1979 book, I, Me, Mine. “Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed, because we didn't have any. We were like monkeys in a zoo.”
Musical potential finally realized
Even before the band's official breakup in 1970, Mr. Harrison had started on his solo career. Once the separation became public, however, his musical potential could be fully realized, especially as a songwriter. The result was what some have called the greatest solo album by any Beatle - the 20-plus-song magnum opus known as All Things Must Pass, which marked Mr. Harrison's debut in 1970.
It's an album whose lush sound anticipated the grand era of rock recording in the '70s. Less influenced by Indian music, still it reflected the deep spiritual lessons Mr. Harrison had learned from his years studying the Eastern world, particularly in the song that's forever associated with his solo career, My Sweet Lord. And the project's sheer size established Mr. Harrison as an artist of significance.
So did one of Mr. Harrison's first post-Beatle live ventures, the 1971 benefit performance he organized called The Concert for Bangladesh. Featuring a who's who of rock stars of the era, including fellow ex-Beatle Starr, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan, the concert showed the galvanizing effect that music could have on a charitable cause - in this case, raising money for the starving victims of the war between Bangladesh and Pakistan. The recording of the performance won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and the concert was credited with inspiring such events as Live Aid and Farm Aid.
Not bad work for a musician whose background would never have suggested the greatness that awaited him. George Harrison was born on Feb. 25, 1943, one of four children raised by working-class parents in Liverpool. A poor student, he started playing the guitar in his teens and found a musical soulmate in McCartney, a classmate at the Liverpool Institute. Later, he joined forces with a band that McCartney had formed with Lennon, another local musician.
The group became The Beatles and traveled to Hamburg, Germany, where it began to develop its sound and style - that is, until it had to head back to England when it was discovered that Mr. Harrison, then under 18, was too young to be legally working abroad. Eventually, Ringo Starr was brought into the group to replace the original drummer, Pete Best. The Fab Four was set.
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The Beatles broke big first in England, releasing a hit single, Love Me Do, in late 1962. A year later, they followed that up with what would eventually become their first U.S. chart-topper, I Want to Hold Your Hand. But it was the group's performance in February 1964 on The Ed Sullivan Show that forever changed the history of rock. The Beatles marked a new, British-dominated era in music, and with the group's later successes, it took rock to an artistic height that few could have imagined. Take your pick - Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper's, The Beatles (the “White Album”), Abbey Road - The Beatles' albums are all classics.
Mr. Harrison will forever be identified with the group's meteoric rise - in one poll, American audiences named him the most popular Beatle - and the triumphs of his early post-Beatle career.
The later years proved more problematic. For every critically acclaimed album, there were many disappointments. And the legal allegations that he plagiarized The Chiffons' hit, He's So Fine, when writing My Sweet Lord, clearly damaged his name.
Still, he found success with The Traveling Wilburys, a group he formed with fellow veteran rockers Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty in the late '80s. And in his 1987 solo album, Cloud Nine, he was able to return to the top of the charts with Got My Mind Set on You. Mr. Harrison also did well in an entirely different creative endeavor - as a film producer. His company, Handmade Films, was most notably responsible for Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Stabbed, nearly killed in '99
Mr. Harrison's life was also marked by happiness offstage. While a first marriage to model Patti Boyd failed (she later hooked up with Harrison's friend Eric Clapton), a second one to Olivia Arias, whom he met at the Los Angeles office of his record company, proved an enduring partnership. “I fell for her straight away,” Mr. Harrison once said. The couple had their first and only child, Dhani, in August 1978 and wed four weeks later.
In his final years, Mr. Harrison suffered other kinds of setbacks. In 1998, the chronic smoker revealed he had been treated for throat cancer. A year later, he was nearly killed when a crazed intruder broke into his home near London and stabbed him several times. By July of this year, he revealed he was being treated for cancer again.
While almost all who heard the news of Mr. Harrison's passing remarked that his was a life cut short, the former Beatle probably would have dismissed such sentiments. With his faith in a higher power, he no doubt saw his time on earth as a brief stop on the road to a more important destination. His songs, while often masterful, spoke to his humility: Mr. Harrison would have been the first to admit there are things bigger than The Beatles.
And yet it's heartwarming to know that just a year ago, Mr. Harrison could take pride in the fact that his former group was atop the charts again - when a compilation of its No. 1 hits, simply titled 1, became a huge seller with Beatles fans new and old.
“They liked it then, and they like it now for the same basic reasons,” Mr. Harrison told Billboard this year. “The songs are catchy, they're fun, and they still have whatever it was then. It's in those grooves.”
And thanks to this quiet Beatle, those grooves will live on forever. Palm Beach Post wire services contributed to this story.
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Photo: Luis Ariza
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