Reuters Posted online: Friday, November 30, 2001 at 1651 hours IST Updated: , hours IST
London, November 30: Beatles lead guitarist George Harrison found fame under the
shadow of the Lennon-McCartney song writing team -- but carved his own niche as a song writer and later as a solo artist and film backer. Though known as the quiet Beatle, compared to John Lennonand Paul McCartney, who had been his schoolmates in Liverpool, and drummer Ringo Starr, Harrison penned such Beatles' hits as "Here Comes the Son",
"Something" and "Taxman".
During the height of the Beatles' fame, he also was behind the band's embrace of Oriental mysticism. It was he who persuaded the others to fly to India and sit at the feet of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Harrison learned to play the sitar, using it on "Within You, Without You", on "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". But the guitarist was only really liberated by the band's bitter breakup in 1970. He was the first ex-Beatle to make his mark with a number one hit single -- "My Sweet Lord". As an associate said, it was "like recovering from a six-year-dose of constipation".
His triple album "All Things Must Pass", cemented his reputation as both guitarist and song-writer. His 1971 New York concert to relieve famine in Bangladesh with Shankar, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan raised more than $9 million. In the 1980s Harrison produced films through his company, Hand Made Films, and joined fellow rockers Dylan, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty to found the Traveling Wilburys in the 1980s.
His post-Beatle path was not always smooth. He fought a long and tough battle against throat cancer, which he blamed on smoking. In 1999, a man broke into his country home West of London and stabbed him in the chest. He was saved only by the swift reaction of his wife Olivia, who hit the attacker on the head with a poker and a table lamp. Harrison was said to have spent a fortune improving security at the mansion, reported to have over 100 rooms, after a crazed fan shot Lennon dead in New York in 1980.
Like the other Beatles, Harrison came from a working class family in Liverpool in north-west England. He was born on February 25, 1943, the youngest of three sons. Harrison showed no interest in music until he was 14. When the skiffle group craze hit Britain in the 1950s he learned a few chords on a second-hand guitar, teaming up with Lennon and McCartney soon afterwards. As The Silver Beatles, the group played successful gigs in Hamburg, Germany, until it was discovered that Harrison, 17, was too young to have a work permit and they were forced to go home.
Back in Liverpool, they were discovered by record storeowner Brian Epstein, who later became their manager. Hit singles and albums from 1962 onwards turned the Beatles into the most famous rock and roll group in the world. As Harrison later quipped: "I guess if you've got to be in a rock group it might as well be the Beatles." "Beatlemania" -- unrelenting media coverage and concert audiences' hysterical screaming -- led the four to give up touring in 1966 to concentrate on recording. In 1966, Harrison married British model Patti Boyd, whom he had met on the set of the film "A Hard Day's Night".
MYSTICAL AND MOVIES
Boyd was an early British convert to transcendental meditation and in summer 1967, all four Beatles, their wives, girlfriends and entourage went to India, where they retired to a sanctuary in the Himalayan foothills with their guru. Harrison immersed himself in mystical philosophy, became a vegetarian and gradually withdrew from the public glare, earning the nickname "the Howard Hughes of rock". In 1970, Patti fell in love with his long-time friend Clapton. She finally left her husband in 1974, but the two guitarists remained friends. Harrison even attended the wedding.
Four years later, Harrison and business manager Denis O'Brien set up Hand Made Films, rescuing a film by the zany British comedians Monty Python, all old friends of Harrison.
"Life of Brian", which scared its original backers by parodying events surrounding the life of Christ, became Hand Made's first hit, launching Harrison into the film industry. In the same year, Harrison married Mexican-born Olivia Arias, who gave birth to his only child, son Dhani. Harrison shied away from publicity and sometimes refused topromote his own
albums or films, preferring a quiet life in the privacy of the mansion in southern England he bought in 1969.
"I'm Really quite simple," he wrote in his 1980 autobiography "I me mine". "I don't want to be in the business full-time because I'm a gardener." "I plant flowers and watch them grow. I don't go out to clubs and parties. I stay at home and watch the river flow." Harrison emerged to promote his new album "Cloud Nine" in1987. He said the failure of two previous albums, after he refused to promote them had made him wonder if he had fans left. The album was a hit, as was dance number "Got My Mind Set On You", spurring
Harrison to tour Japan with Clapton in 1992. Harrison's last single, "Horse to the Water", co-written with Dhani, 23, featured on a Jools Holland album released in Britain this month.
