George Harrison (1943 - 2001) was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. [1] Often called the quiet Beatle, he developed as a songwriter within the group, wrote "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun", and brought Indian classical instruments and Hindu spirituality into mainstream Western popular music. [2] After the band's break-up he had a substantial solo career and organised the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.
Early life
Harrison was born on 25 February 1943 in Liverpool, the youngest of four children in a working-class family. [1] He attended Dovedale Primary School and the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, where he met Paul McCartney. He took up the guitar as a teenager, and in 1958, at the age of fifteen, joined the Quarrymen, the skiffle group led by John Lennon that evolved into the Beatles.
The Beatles
Harrison played lead guitar through the band's residencies in Hamburg and Liverpool and across their recording career from 1962 to 1970. [2] Initially overshadowed as a writer by the Lennon-McCartney partnership, he contributed steadily from Rubber Soul onward, with songs including "Taxman", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", the last of which became one of the most covered songs in the group's catalogue.
He was central to the Beatles' musical expansion beyond rock and roll. After encountering the sitar during filming in 1965, he studied under Ravi Shankar and used Indian instrumentation on tracks such as "Norwegian Wood" and "Within You Without You", while his interest in Hindu philosophy and meditation shaped the group's 1968 visit to India. [1]
Solo career
Following the Beatles' break-up, Harrison released All Things Must Pass (1970), a triple album drawing on material accumulated over years, which included the single "My Sweet Lord" and became a major critical and commercial success. [3] In 1971 he organised the Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden with Ravi Shankar, a benefit for refugees of the Bangladesh Liberation War that is regarded as the model for later large-scale charity concerts.
He continued to record through the following decades, with albums including Living in the Material World and Cloud Nine, and in the late 1980s joined Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison in the Traveling Wilburys. [1] He also founded the film company HandMade Films, which produced Monty Python's Life of Brian and other British features, and was a keen gardener and motor racing enthusiast.
Later life and death
Harrison survived a knife attack by an intruder at his Oxfordshire home in December 1999. He was treated for cancer in his final years and died in Los Angeles on 29 November 2001 at the age of fifty-eight. [1] The posthumous album Brainwashed appeared in 2002, and a memorial Concert for George was held at the Royal Albert Hall.
Legacy
Harrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both as a Beatle and as a solo artist, holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire with the other Beatles in 1965. [4] His guitar playing, marked by economy and melodic phrasing rather than display, and his role in opening Western popular music to non-Western traditions, are the elements most often cited in assessments of his influence. [2]
