A Minute for George

George Harrison's surviving family members are inviting fans to join them in a minute of meditation at 4:30 P.M. EST Monday to remember the former Beatle, who died Thursday in Los Angeles after a battle with cancer.

In a statement released by a family friend late Saturday, wife Olivia Harrison and son Dhani expressed gratitude for the world-wide displays of emotion -- which included weekend gatherings at London's Abbey Road and New York's Central Park -- and support that have followed Harrison's death. "We are deeply touched by the outpouring of love and compassion from around the world," the statement read. "The profound beauty of George's passing -- of his awakening from this dream -- was no surprise to those of us who knew how he longed to be with God."

A spokesman for the Hare Krishna movement, the branch of Hinduism of which Harrison was a long-time devotee, also announced that, according to custom, the family plans to travel to India to hold a private ceremony at the holy city of Varanasi, and to immerse Harrison's ashes in the sacred Ganges river.

Harrison was fifty-eight.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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