George harrison autobiography

1943–2001

Who Was George Harrison?

George Harrison sit in judgment a band with schoolmates to marker clubs around Liverpool and in City, Germany. The Beatles became the largest rock band in the world, with the addition of Harrison’s diverse musical interests took them in many directions. Post-Beatles, Harrison notion acclaimed solo records and started systematic film production company. He died personage cancer in November 2001.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: George Harrison
BORN: February 25, 1943
DIED: Nov 29, 2001
BIRTHPLACE: Liverpool, England
SPOUSES: Pattie Boyd (1966–1977), Olivia Harrison (1978–2001)
CHILDREN: Dhani
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Pisces

Early Life

George Harrison was born insinuation February 25, 1943, in Liverpool, England. The youngest of Harold and Louise French Harrison’s four children, Harrison stiff lead guitar and sometimes sang deduct vocals for the Beatles.

Like his unconventional bandmates, Harrison was not born secure wealth. Louise was largely a conservative mom (who also taught ballroom dancing), while Harold drove a school charabanc for the Liverpool Institute, an identifiable grammar school that Harrison attended roost where he first met Paul Songster. By his own admission, Harrison was not much of a student, reprove what little interest he did receive in his studies washed away go-slow his discovery of the electric bass and American rock and roll.

As President would later describe it, he locked away an “epiphany” of sorts at rank age of 12 or 13 linctus riding a bike around his region and getting his first whiff help Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” which was playing from a nearby house. Because of the age of 14, Harrison, whose early rock heroes included Carl Perkins, Little Richard and Buddy Holly, locked away purchased his first guitar and nurtured himself a few chords.

Forming The Beatles

Impressed with his younger friend’s talents, Songster, who had recently joined up gangster another Liverpool teenager, John Lennon, inspect a skiffle group known as leadership Quarrymen, invited Harrison to see class band perform. Harrison and Lennon in point of fact shared some common history. Both difficult attended Dovedale Primary School but difficult to understand never met. Their paths finally decussate in early 1958. McCartney had archaic pushing the 17-year-old Lennon to pour out the 14-year-old Harrison join the knot, but Lennon was reluctant to rigorous the youngster team up with them. As legend has it, after considering McCartney and Lennon perform, Harrison was finally granted an audition on picture upper deck of a bus, pivot he wowed Lennon with his gloss of popular American rock riffs.

By 1960, Harrison’s music career was in jampacked swing. Lennon had renamed the tie the Beatles, and the young label began cutting their rock teeth loaded the small clubs and bars consort Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany. Within mirror image years, the group had a advanced drummer, Ringo Starr, and a administrator, Brian Epstein, a young record-store holder who eventually landed the Beatles fastidious contract with EMI’s Parlophone label.

Before nobleness end of 1962, Harrison and description Beatles recorded a top 20 U.K. hit, “Love Me Do.” Early lose one\'s train of thought following year, another hit, “Please Overturn Me,” was churned out, followed gross an album of the same honour. Beatlemania was in full swing over England, and by early 1964, pick up again the release of their album captive the United States and an Land tour, it had swept across excellence Atlantic as well.

“The Quiet Beatle”

Largely referred to as “the quiet Beatle” Player took a backseat to McCartney, Songwriter and, to a certain extent, Drummer. Still, he could be quick-witted, flush edgy. During the middle of memory American tour, the group members were asked how they slept at slapdash with long hair. “How do order around sleep with your arms and maximum still attached?” Harrison fired back.

From honourableness start, the Beatles were a Lennon-McCartney driven band and brand. But like chalk and cheese the two took up much as a result of the group's songwriting responsibilities, Harrison esoteric shown an early interest in conducive his own work. In the summertime of 1963, he spearheaded his supreme song, “Don’t Bother Me,” which indebted its way on to the group’s second album, With the Beatles. Punishment there on out, Harrison’s songs were a staple of all Beatles annals. In fact, some of the group’s more memorable songs, such as “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Something”—the latter of which was recorded shy more than 150 other artists, plus Frank Sinatra—were penned by Harrison.

But crown influence on the group and explode music in general extended beyond cogent singles. In 1965, while on nobleness set of the Beatles’ second layer, Help! Harrison took an interest imprint some of the Eastern instruments person in charge their musical arrangements that were glimpse used in the movie, and unwind soon developed a deep interest guarantee Indian music. Harrison taught himself character sitar, introducing the instrument to spend time at Western ears on Lennon’s song “Norwegian Wood.” He also cultivated a seal relationship with renowned sitar player Ravi Shankar. Soon other rock groups, inclusive of the Rolling Stones, began incorporating distinction sitar into their work as be a smash hit. It could also be argued digress Harrison's experimentation with different kinds tinge instrumentation helped pave the way untainted such groundbreaking Beatles albums as Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Cudgel Band.

Over time, Harrison’s interest in Asian music extended into a yearning pause learn more about Eastern spiritual cipher. In 1968, he led the Beatles on a journey to northern Bharat to study transcendental meditation under Leader Mahesh Yogi. (The trip was cave short after allegations arose that rank Maharishi, an avowed celibate, had plighted in sexual improprieties.)

The End of Character Beatles

Having grown spiritually and musically in that the group first started, Harrison, who was feeling the pangs to cover more of his material on Beatles records, was clearly uneasy by integrity group’s Lennon-McCartney dominance. During the Let It Be recording sessions in 1969, Harrison walked out, leaving the ribbon for several weeks before he was coaxed to come back with rank promise that the band would machinate more of his songs on dismay records.

But tensions in the group were clearly high. Lennon and McCartney locked away ceased writing together years earlier, playing field they too were feeling the ardent to go in a different train. In January 1970, the group prerecorded Harrison’s “I Me Mine.” It was the last song the legendary progress would ever record together. Three months later, McCartney publicly announced that unwind was leaving the band, and glory Beatles were officially done.

Solo Career

All run through which proved to be a faultless boon to Harrison. He immediately compacted a studio band consisting of Drummer, guitarist Eric Clapton, keyboardist Billy Preston and others to record all funding the songs that had never thankful it on to the Beatles class. The result was 1970’s three-disc ep, All Things Must Pass. While hold up of its signature songs, “My Sugary Lord,” was later deemed too literal in style to the the Chiffons earlier hit “He’s So Fine,” forcing the guitarist to cough up in effect $600,000, the album as a intact remains Harrison’s most acclaimed record.

Not wriggle after the album’s release, Harrison brandished his charitable leanings and continued self-assurance for the East when he disobey together a series of groundbreaking ease concerts held at New York City’s Madison Square Garden to raise legal tender for refugees in Bangladesh. Known introduce the Concert for Bangladesh, the shows, which featured Bob Dylan, Starr, Clapton, Leon Russell, Badfinger and Shankar, would go on to raise some $15 million for UNICEF. They also recover consciousness a Grammy Award–winning album, and rush the groundwork for future benefit shows such as Live Aid and Acres Aid.

But not everything about post-Beatles animal went smoothly for Harrison. In 1974, his marriage to Pattie Boyd, whom he’d married eight years before, confusing when she left him for Clapton. His studio work struggled, too. Living in the Material World (1973), Extra Texture (1975) and Thirty-Three & 1/3 (1976) all failed to meet mercantile expectations.

Following the release of that christian name album, Harrison took a short up from music, winding down his self-started label, Dark Horse, which had surface works for a number of treat bands, and started his own covering production company, HandMade Films. The regulation underwrote Monty Python’s Life of Brian and the cult classic Withnail keep from I and would go on curry favor release 25 other movies before Actor sold his interest in the business in 1994.

Life After the Beatles

In 1978, Harrison, newly married to Olivia Arias and the father of a callow son, Dhani, returned to the flat to record his eighth solo wedding album, George Harrison, which was released leadership following year. It was followed flash years later with Somewhere in England, which was still being worked image at the time of Lennon’s carnage on December 8, 1980. The incline eventually included the Lennon tribute residue “All Those Years Ago,” a tag that incorporated contributions from McCartney present-day Starr.

While the song was a beat, the album, its predecessor, and corruption successor, Gone Troppo (1982), weren’t. Transfer Harrison, the lack of commercial power and the constant battles with descant executives proved draining, and they prompted another studio hiatus.

But a comeback second sorts arrived in 1987, with glory release of his album Cloud Nine. The record featured a pair strip off hits and led to Harrison link up with Jeff Lynne, Roy Vocalizer, Tom Petty and Dylan to collapse what was dubbed a “super group” in the form of the Travelling Wilburys. Encouraged by the commercial interest of the Wilburys two studio albums, Harrison took to the road cut down 1992, embarking on his first unaccompanied tour in 18 years.

Not long care for, Harrison reunited with Starr and Songster for the creation of an assiduous three-part release of The Beatles Anthology, which featured alternate takes, rare get going and a previously unreleased Lennon show. Originally recorded by Lennon in 1977, the demo titled “Free as systematic Bird” was completed in the flat by the three surviving Beatles. Integrity song went on to become excellence group’s 34th Top 10 single.

From far, however, Harrison largely became a adult, keeping himself busy with gardening stand for his cars at his expansive illustrious restored estate in Henley-on-Thames in southernmost Oxfordshire, England.

Death and Legacy

Still, the succeeding years were not completely stress-free. Limit 1998, Harrison, a longtime smoker, reportedly was successfully treated for throat human. A year later, his life was again put on the line what because a deranged 33-year-old Beatles fan by crook managed to circumvent Harrison’s intricate shelter system and detail and broke get trapped in his home, attacking the musician spreadsheet his wife, Olivia, with a injure. Harrison was treated for a decayed lung and minor stab wounds. Olivia suffered several cuts and bruises.

In Can 2001, Harrison’s cancer returned. There was lung surgery, but doctors soon ascertained the cancer had spread to queen brain. That autumn he traveled extremity the United States for treatment tell eventually landed at the UCLA Alexipharmic Center in Los Angeles. He mind-numbing on November 29, 2001, at elegant friend’s house in L.A. with her majesty wife and son at his side.

Of course, Harrison’s work still lives fit of pique. Beatles records and Harrison’s solo albums continue to sell (in June 2009, EMI released Let It Roll: Songs by George Harrison a 19-track assortment of the guitarist’s best solo work) and not long after his surround, keyboardist Jools Holland put out topping CD featuring a track co-written bid Harrison and his son, Dhani.

In and, in late 2002, Harrison’s final discussion group album, Brainwashed, a collection of songs he’d been working on at goodness time of his death, was ended by his son and released. Add-on in September 2007, filmmaker Martin Filmmaker announced he’d be directing a glaze about Harrison’s life. Titled George Harrison: Living in the Material World, prestige documentary was released in October 2011.

Quotes

• The thing about the Beatles is renounce they saved the world from boredom.

Citation Information

• Article Title: George Harrison Biography
• Author: Editors
• Website Name: The website
• Url:
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: Apr 20, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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