The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (239 page)

‘Love one another.’

George Harrison’s final words

Thursday 29

George Harrison

(Hunt’s Cross, Liverpool, 25 February 1943)

The Beatles

(The Traveling Wilburys)

Had he found himself in any band other than The Fab Four, George Harrison would surely have been the standout musician. A versatile and inventive guitarist, Harrison’s less forceful personality meant that his public had to wait until his later career for his own voice to emerge. He was the quietest and probably the most genteel of The Beatles, and the first to find fulfilment away from music – his spirituality serving him until his final hour.

Harrison’s start in life was suitably humble: he was the son of a Liverpool bus driver and was brought up in a terraced house with an outside lavatory. At school in the fifties, he was a surprisingly mediocre student, music replacing studies when Harrison turned fourteen. By now, Paul McCartney was a friend and, making one of his sager suggestions, recommended his pal purchase a guitar. Harrison became a huge fan of US rock ‘n’ roll (in particular Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins), easily mastering his £3 instrument to join John Lennon and McCartney’s Quarry Men a year on. At the turn of the decade, the rise of the renamed group enabled the guitarist to give up his job as an electrician’s apprentice: by 1962, The Beatles – now with Ringo Starr and Brian Epstein in their respective roles – were the most exciting thing happening in British music.

There are many music fans who maintain that it was George Harrison – despite notable competition from Clapton, Jones et al – whose distinctive lead riffs most informed rock music in the mid sixties. But in the studio, the quietest Beatle had constantly to bend to the wills of Lennon, McCartney and producer George Martin (who later admitted, ‘I was beastly to George’). Harrison, buzzing with suppressed creativity, described the situation as ‘like having diarrhoea and not being allowed to go to the toilet’. So, wedged between the twin behemoths of the band, Harrison was perhaps fortunate that
any
of his songs made the final cut. There were some great moments nonetheless, with ‘Here Comes the Sun’ (1969), which remains a much-covered pop standard; ‘Taxman’ (1966), Harrison’s wittily ironic take on where the group’s phenomenal success had left them financially; ‘Love You To’ (1966); and ‘Within You Without You’ (1967), which showed his burgeoning interest in Eastern mysticism. The most sublime, though, was ‘Something’ (1969) – supposedly written for Harrison’s first wife, Pattie Boyd (and originally offered to Joe Cocker). The song was described by John Lennon as ‘the best on
Abbey Road
‘ while Frank Sinatra went as far as to call it ‘the greatest love song of the last fifty years’. But, as though to remind Harrison of his status in the group, it stalled at number four in the UK charts as The Beatles as a unit slowly began to unravel.

George Harrison: Something in the way he moved us

Harrison came out of the split well: his acclaimed
All Things Must Pass
was the first-ever triple album by a solo artist, Harrison having stockpiled many songs during his time in the band. At the start of the following year, his ‘My Sweet Lord’ single (later the subject of a plagiarism suit) topped the charts for a month on both sides of the pond. Over the next few years, more compositions were to become major hits for others (Starr’s ‘Photograph’, 1973) as well as himself (‘Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)’, 1973), while his 1971 concert in Bangladesh initiated the concept of staging music events for charity. Harrison’s circle of friends at this stage was considered the epitome of cool, Eric Clapton, David Crosby and Bob Dylan being among his closest. Indeed, it had been Crosby who had introduced Harrison (and the other Beatles) to Ravi Shankar in 1966: while Lennon went on drinking binges with Harry Nilsson, his former bandmate adopted fully the spiritual, meditative lifestyle of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It was then that Harrison experienced his first major health problem – he contracted hepatitis in 1976 – provoking a legal furore with A&M (who owned his Dark Horse imprint) when an album,
Thirty Three and 1/3
, could not be completed as a result. Having taken no part in the post-Beatles squabbling, the murder of John Lennon (
December 1980)
shocked and saddened Harrison a great deal, his ‘All Those Years Ago’ hit (1981) instantly modified as a tribute to his departed friend. (Almost two decades after Lennon was shot, Harrison nearly suffered the same fate when crazed Michael Abram, thirty-four, invaded his Henley-on-Thames home on 30 December 1999. The intruder believed that he was ‘on a mission from God’ when he attacked the singer and his wife: unlike Mark Chapman, who had made a similar claim, Abram was acquitted of attempted murder on the grounds of insanity. Harrison – who apparently warded off his intruder with mantras – displayed great courage and humour, adding, ‘I don’t think he was auditioning for The Traveling Wilburys.’)

During the eighties and nineties, George Harrison was to keep a lower profile, having remarried – Olivia Arias, in 1978 – and fathered his only son, Dhani. One of his other successful co-productions during this time was
Life of Brian,
the film made by his
Monty Python
friends for which Harrison’s profitable film company, Handmade, provided financial backing. At the end of the eighties, Harrison broke his musical silence with an album,
Cloud Nine
(1987), and its huge UK/US hit single ‘Got My Mind Set on You’. As ‘Nelson Wilbury’, he was now also a member of supergroup The Traveling Wilburys, alongside Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne (ex-ELO), and Roy Orbison, until the latter’s death (
December 1988).

Although the singer remained philosophical about his condition, it came as a shock to Harrison’s family, friends and followers when he revealed that he was suffering from throat cancer in 1998, growths shortly thereafter occurring in his lung. Despite going into remission, he suffered further metastasis two years later. But, armed with great faith and no fear of death, George Harrison bravely accepted his fate at the Los Angeles home of his friend Gavin de Becker, his last wish that his ashes be spread by the River Ganges. A final album,
Brainwashed,
emerged a year after the singer’s death.

See also
Billy Preston (
June 2006)

DEAD INTERESTING!

NUMBER ONES IN HEAVEN

When George Harrison’s remastered ‘My Sweet Lord’ toppled Aaliyah’s ‘More than a Woman’ in January 2002, it represented the first-ever example of one dead artist following another to number one in the UK.

For twenty-four years, his old buddy John Lennon had been the only artist to have had a posthumous chart-topper replaced by another of his own songs - when ‘Woman’ knocked ‘Imagine’ from the top - until a flurry of reissued Elvis hits bombarded the charts at the beginning of 2005 to mark what would have been Presley’s seventieth birthday. The replacement of ‘One Night’ by ‘Jailhouse Rock’ thus repeated the feat.

DECEMBER

Saturday 15

Bianca Butthole

(Bianca Halstead - The Bronx, New York, 5 May 1965)

Betty Blowtorch

Butt Trumpet

(Various acts)