George Harrison

George Harrison played lead guitar and wrote occasional songs for the Beatles; he also was the group's only convert to Eastern religion. Since the Beatles broke up, he has had an uneven solo career.

Born into a working-class family, Harrison attended Dovedale Primary School, three years behind John Lennon. In 1954 he entered Liverpool Institute, a grade behind Paul McCartney. In 1956, at the height of Britain's skiffle craze, Harrison formed his first group, the Rebels. He started jamming occasionally with his new acquaintance McCartney, and in 1958 McCartney introduced him to Lennon. Soon all three were playing in the Quarrymen, who later became the Silver Beetles and then the Beatles.

Besides playing lead guitar, Harrison sang backup vocals and an occasional lead (“Roll Over Beethoven,” “If I Needed Someone,” “I’m Happy Just to Dance With You”) in the Beatles. In the mid-’60s he was one of the first rock musicians to experiment with Indian and Far Eastern instruments; he studied with Bengali master sitarist Ravi Shankar. Harrison first played sitar on 1965’s “Norwegian Wood” and later on “Within You Without You,” “The Inner Light,” and other songs. Harrison wrote songs as early as 1963 (“Don’t Bother Me”), but it was difficult for him to get the group to record his material, one of the problems that led to the Beatles’ breakup. Harrison’s compositions include “I Need You,” “You Like Me Too Much,” “Taxman,” “Love You To,” “Piggies,” “Savoy Truffle,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Here Comes the Sun,” and “Something” (#3, 1969), the only Harrison song to become a hit single for the Beatles.

After the Beatles officially disbanded in early 1970, Harrison continued his solo career, which he’d begun in November 1968 with the electronic sound collage soundtrack Wonderwall Music. In November 1970 he released his three-record set All Things Must Pass (#1), produced by Phil Spector and featuring guests such as Eric Clapton and Traffic’s Dave Mason, which included the #1 hit single “My Sweet Lord.” (A 1976 lawsuit successfully established that Harrison “unknowingly” plagiarized the song’s melodic structure from the early-’60s hit by the Chiffons, “He’s So Fine.”) In late summer 1971 Harrison sponsored and hosted two benefit concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden for the people of Bangladesh. With guests including Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, and Bob Dylan, the concerts, the documentary film, and the Grammy-winning three-record set, Concert for Bangla Desh, were a resounding success, although funds raised by the proceedings were impounded during a nine-year audit of Apple by the IRS. (In 1981 a check for $8.8 million was finally sent through UNICEF; $2 million had been sent in 1972 before the audit began.) Harrison’s song about the plight of the refugees, “Bangla Desh,” hit the pop Top 25 in late 1971. Living in the Material World produced a #1 hit in 1973, “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth).”

In 1974 Harrison formed his own Dark Horse Records (with distribution via Warner Bros.), releasing a gold album of the same name late in the year (the title track of which hit #15 as a single), and touring America to support it. The sales of Extra Texture (Read All About It), were disappointing, a trend that continued unabated with 33 1⁄3 and George Harrison. A tribute to the slain Lennon, “All Those Years Ago,” went #2 in 1981. Starr and Paul and Linda McCartney also appear on the record. Gone Troppo was a commercial flop, and Harrison stopped recording for several years, to concentrate on gardening, auto-racing, and other pursuits.

Harrison began producing albums in the late ’60s by Apple Records protégés Jackie Lomax, Billy Preston, and Badfinger; he also participated in sessions by artists signed to his Dark Horse label in the mid-’70s. He has been regularly involved with members of the Monty Python comedy group axis as executive producer of film projects, including The Life of Brian and Time Bandits.. Harrison also appeared in the Python Beatles parody film, All You Need Is Cash, as a reporter. In 1979 he privately published an autobiography, I Me Mine (a mass market edition was published in 1982).

Harrison ended a five-year hiatus from recording with Cloud Nine (#8, 1987), which went platinum and yielded the #1 hit single “Got My Mind Set on You” (a cover of an oldie recorded by Rudy Clark). The album, produced by Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra, spawned a Top 25 hit in “When We Was Fab,” an evocation of the Beatles’ cello-driven “I Am the Walrus” sound, which had been so influential on ELO. Harrison went on to join Lynne in the Traveling Wilburys [see entry]. In 1992, with his old friend Eric Clapton, Harrison embarked on his first tour in 18 years; that April Harrison played his first-ever U.K. solo concert (which also served to raise awareness of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s new Natural Law party, then seeking seats in British Parliament).

He met his first wife, model Pattie Boyd (born Mar. 17, 1945), in early 1964 on the set of the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night (in which she briefly appeared). They were married on January 21, 1966, but their marriage began coming apart a few years later, and they separated and eventually divorced in 1977. Boyd later married guitarist Eric Clapton and was the subject of Clapton’s “Layla.” Harrison married Olivia Arias in England in September 1978, a month after their son, Dhani, was born.

After touring in the early ’90s, Harrison mostly stayed out of the news. He joined Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney for 1995’s “new” Beatles songs “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love.” He and Starr attended Linda McCartney’s funeral in June 1998. It was the first time the surviving Beatles had made a public appearance together in almost three decades. That same year, Harrison announced that he was battling throat cancer. Then, on December 30, 1999, Michael Abram, a mentally ill former heroin addict, stabbed and nearly killed Harrison after breaking into his Friar Park estate in Oxfordshire; Harrison was saved by his wife, Olivia, who managed to hit the assailant over the head with a poker and a table lamp.

His solo career on hold since Cloud Nine, he remastered All Things Must Pass for a January 2001 reissue; the five extra tracks included “My Sweet Lord 2000,” which featured his son, Dhani.

In late 2001, Harrison's throat cancer worsened and metastasized to his brain. He finally passed away on November 29 at the age of 58. Brainwashed, which he had been working on with Dhani just before his death, was released one year later in 2002 to warm critical reception. He was twice inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: once for his role in the Beatles in 1988 and once for his solo work in 2004. After his death, his family issued a statement saying, “He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death and at peace, surrounded by family and friends. He often said, ‘Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.’”

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)