George
was born the youngest of the four children of Harold Harrison
and Louise French, who married in 1930. His father drove the bus
that brought both Harrison and Paul McCartney to the Liverpool
Institute. Harrison was generally
disenchanted by school until he took up the guitar, his main outlet
for rebelling was dressing in the flamboyant Teddy Boy style -
tight trousers, elaborate coats, long greased-back-hair, that
parents found menacing, or at least irritating. Unlike Lennon
and McCartney, who approached the guitar as something to accompany
their singing, Harrison was drawn to the solos on early rock records.
He did have some band experience before the Quarry Men: he and
his older brother, Peter, had a band called the Rebels. He also
made it a practice to bring his guitar to dances in the hope that
one of the bands would let him sit in or even join. Even after
he joined the Quarry Men - whose performing dates were few - he
continued playing with other groups. When
George was six, the Harrisons, after eighteen years on a waiting
list, moved to a larger, government-subsidized house in nearby
Speke. "We got by well enough," his father, Harold, said. "But
life was never easy." Material inadequacies were compensated for
by emotional warmth and togetherness. The children "always knew
the comfort and security of a very close-knit home life," said
George's Brother Harry. Young George was the only Harrison child
to make it as far as grammar school, enrolling at the prestigious
Liverpool Institute, but he found he had only disdain for his
teachers - "Useless, the lot of them," he later huffed - and he
rarely paid attention or applied himself. He duly failed all his
classes except art and eventually accepted a job as an electrician's
apprentice at a Liverpool department store.
By
early 1958 the Quarry Men's personnel had stabilized, with Lennon,
McCartney and Eric Griffiths on guitars, Colin Hanton on drums,
Len Garry on bass, and John 'Duff' Lowe as an occasional pianist.
As the skiffle boom faded, Lennon and McCartney were pushing the
band's repertory toward Elvis and Little Richard, a taste their
band mates did not all share. Within months, Griffiths and Garry
left, and MrCartney brought in a guitarist he knew from the Liverpool
Institute, George Harrison. Harrison was a year younger than McCartney
but was obsessed with the guitar and was making quick headway.
When he turned up at a performance on February 6, 1958, a few
weeks short of his fifteenth birthday, he struck Lennon as a child,
and a sullen one at that. But Harrison found his way into the
band the same way McCartney did: by showing that he could play
things that Lennon could not. With McCartney's encouragement,
he tagged along with the band to a few engagements, and by mid-year,
he was a member. In 1960, when the
group went to Hamburg, on one occasion George was deported back
to England, when the local authorities discovered that he was
only seventeen, and performing in a club where minors were not
allowed.
George became a better song writer than John
and Paul had thought he was capable of over the years. Some of
George's early compositions were 'Don't Bother Me', 'I Need You',
'You Like Me Too Much', 'Think For Yourself', 'If I Needed Someone',
'Taxman', 'Love You To', and 'I Want To Tell You'. George met
model Pattie Boyd on the set of 'A Hard Day's Night', George and
Pattie were married January 21, 1966. George
later met Ravi Shankar, an accomplished sitar player. From Ravi
Shankar, George learned to love Indian music and became interested
in the Indian instrument, the sitar. Soon after being introduced
to Indian culture, George and the other Beatles became involved
with the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In February, 1968
the Beatles made a much publicized journey to Maharishi's Meditation
center in India. Even though the they came away doubting that
he was as holy as they first thought, George contented to practice
the meditation that they had learned while in India. George learned
spiritual inner peace and meditation from the Maharishi. George's
later works include 'Within You Without You', 'Blue Jay Way',
'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', 'Piggies', 'Long Long Long', 'Savoy
Truffle', 'The Inner Light', 'Only A Northern Song', 'Here Comes
The Sun', and 'Something'. For George Harrison, the breakup of
the Beatles was a golden opportunity. He had come of age as a
songwriter, and his contributions to Abbey Road were among that
album's highlights. He had also become quite prolific, and now
he could record his songs without competition or criticism from
Lennon and McCartney. George's
first collection, All Things Must Pass, was a triple album - two
discs of new songs plus a collection of session jams.
In 1971
Harrison helped arrange an all-star benefit concert at Madison
Square Garden, in New York, to raise relief money for Bangla Desh.
Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and dozens
more musicians played in this precursor of Live Aid and other
rock charity concerts, and the performance yielded an album and
a film, The Concert for Bangla Desh. Disputes over everything
from distribution rights to taxes kept the proceeds from being
put immediately toward the relief efforts. Harrison took a three-year
break from the music world after 'Thirty Three and a Third'. He
had been estranged from his wife Pattie for some time: she had,
in fact, become romantically involved with Eric Clapton, whom
she later married. The Harrison's divorce was finalized on June
9, 1977.On
September 2, 1978 Harrison married Olivia Arias. He also began
to dabble in the film world, bailing out Monty Python's troubled
'Life of Brian'. Because this first experience as a film producer
proved both pleasing and lucrative, he formed his own company,
HandMade Films, which made twenty-seven films before Harrison
sold his interest in 1994. By 1982 it seemed as though Harrison
was finding his battles in the music business utterly dispiriting.
When he released 'Gone Troppo' that year, he did nothing whatsoever
to promote it, and it barely registered in the charts - a pity,
really, since it was full of bright, humorous, energetic songs,
rich in melodic charm. Once again, he stepped away from music,
not returning until 1987, when 'Cloud Nine' brought him his biggest
success since 'All Things Must Pass'. Recorded at his home studio,
with contributions from Starr and Clapton, and co-produced by
Jeff Lynne of the Beatles-influenced Electric Light Orchestra,
the album was refreshingly spirited, and included a nostalgic skewering of the Beatles myth, 'When We Was Fab'.
Now
back in the limelight, he teamed up with Dylan, Lynne, Roy Orbison
(the 1950's legend) and a younger rock star, Tom Petty, to record
'The Traveling Wilburys' in 1988. The album, collaboratively composed
and recorded in short order, was brimming with spontaneity and
humor. Orbison died soon after the record was released, but others
kept the Wilburys alive, recording a second album, quirkily named
'Volume 3', in 1990.
