Remembering George Harrison on the 80th Anniversary of his Birth

Karma:  The Hindu belief that a force generated by a person’s actions perpetuates transmigration and its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person’s next existence.   As with any religious belief, the nature of the karma that influenced the course of George Harrison’s existence during his time here on earth, and perhaps his spirit in the here or the hereafter, remains a mystery.  

Unquestionably, some unknown force channeled Harrison’s life that carried him on a seismic tidal wave of fame and fortune despite of or perhaps because of humble beginnings. A retrospective on his well-documented life reveals the signposts that placed him on a path of rare fame, and common foibles.  

Early Days.

Harrison was born on the 25^th of February 1943, the youngest of four children.  His father Harold served as a steward for the nautical White Star line before settling for a landlubber’s job as a bus driver in Liverpool.   Mother Louise of Irish Catholic descent worked as a shop assistant.   

Liverpudlians were known as Scousers, a name derived from a stew called scouse, a staple of the city’s seafaring sailors.  The future fab four all grew up in England’s rough and tumble international seaport, which provided them with a worldview and a local dialect.  The soft-spoken, youngest member of the future Beatles retained the most pronounced Liverpudlian accent of the four.

Chance circumstances steered his ship’s course.   Harrison grew up in an historical milieu of British minstrels and troubadours, and a then current vogue called skiffle—a form of British folk music with a blues or jazz flavor—that provided fertile ground for aspiring musicians.  The young Scouser possessed an instinctive touch on the guitar that impressed a fellow bus commuter and string strummer named Paul McCartney who introduced him to John Lennon.   George sufficiently impressed John with his playing of Guitar Boogie Shuffle so that the bandleader asked the lad to join the novice group.

The Beatles newly adopted member was just shy of his 15^th birthday, nearly three years younger than Lennon, a year younger than McCartney.  Significant adolescent age differences established an early pecking order that carried forward to the days of Beatlemania, and on through to Let It Be.   If age differences were not enough, the teen guitarist played in the shadow of the overriding egos and talents of his two elder band mates. 

However, age and personality differences also provided advantages. Lennon’s assertive persona provided protection allowing the younger, slightly built teenager with a safe haven to hone his craft and emerge as the band’s lead guitarist while serving as his mates’ wingman.  Two years later, the 17-year old demonstrated a measure of grit when he left home for Hamburg to perform with the band full-time.  The teen musician soon got the boot out of Germany when authorities learned that he was underage.  The other Beatles departed with him; their lead guitarist proved too important to the group to carry on without him.

After George’s 18^th birthday, the fledgling band returned to Bruno Koschmider’s Indru club in Hamburg’s red light district where raucous crowds demanded mach schau.  The Beatles performed a hard day’s night playing covers eight days a week.  Within this crucible of 250 live performances, the lads crammed ten years of lessons in as many months thereby accelerating the development of their craft.   The band’s lead guitarist learned a beaucoup of musical covers that ranged from country, jazz, blues and rock, all of which fused into a fluid guitar style that he creatively employed in future Beatle songs.

Fab Four Fame.

The Beatles returned to Liverpool’s Cavern Club, and finally scored a record label that ultimately led to unforeseen and unsurpassed fame called Beatlemania.  Twin-towers Lennon and McCartney stood at the forefront with voice and composition. Yet, Harrison contributed substantially to the band’s meteoric rise both in terms of live performances as well as studio productions. 

On stage, his guitar strumming blended with John’s until George stepped forward with punctuated trebled leads that fit the melody’s harmonic composition rather than overwhelm it. His lead guitar carried a song’s bridge to the next chorus or punctuated the song’s denouement.  Live performances placed him front and center where a missed note could not be hidden, an onus that led to his serious, onstage persona and his appellation as the ‘quiet Beatle’.  

Tight performance scheduling and budget restraints dictated quick turnarounds when the Beatles hit the recording studio for production of a wealth of singles and albums released during Beatlemania from 1963 to 1966.  George’s selfless dedication to melody and Ringo’s innate ability to quickly sense the song’s rhythm played crucial roles in the ‘nuts and bolts’ creation of the band’s rapid-fire production of Lennon & McCartney compositions.  

Harrison performed with an economy of notes painstakingly measured to the last fret that accentuated the song’s melody rather than engulf it with flash and dash guitar licks.  A reflection of his persona, his understated guitar work seamlessly served the group’s song rather than crying out in self-promotion.

In addition to his essential lead guitar work, George enhanced much of the magic of early Beatle records with his active role in the band’s block harmonies that lifted songs aloft.   George’s vocals—though lacking the range and depth of his band mates—segued seamlessly in support where his voice could be found in the middle range, higher that John’s, lower than Paul’s.  

His underappreciated vocal contributions fortified dozens of Lennon & McCartney tunes.  To name just a few, his par excellent refrains included sympathetic support of John’s pleas in Help; added ballast along with Paul to boost backing of Lennon’s Twist and Shout; and provided soulful inflection in the three-part harmony of This Boy.   

The youngest band member was two weeks shy of age 21 when the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in early February 1964, so it took time to gain prominence on his own accord as a songwriter as he and the band matured.  Initially relegated to one song per album, Harrison hit his stride in what many consider the group’s seminal 1966 album, Revolver, where he scored three tracks on the record that included the lead-off number, Taxman.  His added compositional fodder propelled the group beyond the competition.  No other rock band before or after could boast of three singing and writing talents. 

Nonetheless, Harrison remained a third wheel lagging behind the Lennon & McCartney axis, which perhaps explains his quest for independence with his frequent visits to India. Eastern philosophy and music appealed to his soulful nature, both of which influenced Beatles’ productions.  His sitar on Norwegian Wood gave Lennon’s song a unique ambiance that captured the ambivalent mood of the whimsical melancholy.  Eastern influence in Within You Without You added a sense of mysticism in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

The Beatle’s double White Album released in 1968 provided ample room for three songwriters, allowing each a sense of independence from the others who basically acted as session men on their mate’s individual songs—included Harrison’s bluesy While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Eric Clapton.  Yet, by early 1969, the relentless burden of fame and the demand for still more musical production took its toll.  Fab four fabric frayed on the edges.   

It was not just Lennon (or Yoko) trying to exit the oxygen-depleted orbit that consumed their lives.   An album platter possesses limited space to feed three rapacious appetites.   George grew frustrated with his third wheel status and his backlog of songs vying for space with John and Paul who likewise required vent.  The confident and now financially secure youngest Beatle bridled at Paul’s domineering ways, and briefly left the band during the Let It Be recording sessions.  The group temporarily shelved the album’s unfinished recording tapes rather than carrying on in their embattled state.

Later that same year, the Beatles placed differences aside, and recorded Abbey Road. The three best songs on the album demonstrated Harrison’s emerging influence.   His crisp guitar rifts on Come Together sharpened that song’s thrust.   More importantly, his two compositions scored double triumphs, the optimistic Here Comes the Sun, and the romantic Something, the latter of which became the second most covered song in the Beatles’ catalogue.  

The year closed with the last song re-worked by the Beatles for the delayed release of the Let It Be album, Harrison’s ironically titled, I Me Mine.  Henceforth, the fab four flew solo.

On His Own.     

The aptly titled All Things Must Pass album followed ten months later in November of 1970.   Arguably the best of all former fab four solo releases, the double album (with a third platter of jams with Eric Clapton and friends) freed a backlog of George Harrison’s pleasing tunes including the soulful mega-hit My Sweet Lord; the sorrowful Isn’t It a Pity; and the rocking What is Life.  

The following year, the one-time Scouser gained a world platform when he launched the first benefit rock show, the Concert for Bangladesh, for which he recruited luminaries Bob Dylan, Ringo, Clapton, Ravi Shankar, Bad Finger and a half-dozen others. The concert proceeds along with release of the double album of the event generated a wash of cash for famine victims, although tax and expense issues created long-lasting headaches.  

As the lineup of those who participated in the Bangladesh Concert suggests, the ex-Beatle possessed an amiable, mild personality who did for others, and others for him.  Bob Dylan contributed two songs for All Things Must Pass.  Clapton and Ringo played with him in many concerts and on his albums.   Harrison performed on Lennon’s Imagine album, playing the dobro on Crippled Inside and the slide guitar on How Do You Sleep, implicitly concurring with the song’s lyrics laced with digs directed towards McCartney.

The quiet Beatle was being heard.  Tiring of the mega egos with Lennon’s over-the-top Avant Garde parade and McCartney’s perceived pretentiousness, the public embraced the soft-spoken underdog and late-bloomer as the most popular former Beatle.  Many related to being overshadowed as a younger sibling or underappreciated in their own individual life dramas.   They sensed that Harrison’s celebrity orbit circled closer to earth.

Riding a Dark Horse.

In 1973, Harrison was only 30 years old with tough acts to follow with both his own solo successes, and the penumbra cast from his Beatle days that blessed and dogged him as long as he lived.  A persistent case of laryngitis plagued his 1974 Dark Horse world tour prompting a critic to dub it the Dark Hoarse Tour. Over the next several years, he recorded four solo albums of uneven quality sprinkled with hit songs—Give Me Peace on Earth, Blow Away, Dark Horse, and his slide guitar driven Crackerbox Palace to name a few. Musical creativity covering two sides of an album proves difficult for most anyone to carry out alone year after year.  

Young and handsome, rich and famous rock and rollers rarely stayed married for long.   Patti Boyd tired of his philandering, and divorced him in 1977.  As the hectic decade wound down, Harrison fell prey to the long and winding lines of cocaine that bedeviled so many of that musical era.

The youngest ex-Beatle slowed his pace, no doubt affected by the assassination of John Lennon on December 8, 1980. “I just wanted to be in a band. Here we are, 20 years later, and some whack job has shot my mate. I just wanted to play guitar in a band.”

Soldiering On.

After 1982, he only released two more solo albums, both of which received critical acclaim:.  Cloud Nine in 1987–which featured Got My Mind Set on You, and his retrospective When We Was Fab–and the 2002 posthumously released Brainwashed.  In between time, he continued to perform with others, most notably in the late 1980’s with the Traveling Wilburys.  The so-called super group consisting of Dylan, Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty released two critically praised albums.  One would be hard pressed to imagine either McCartney or Lennon sharing their flight paths with others as co-pilots.  

He later spent time trying to remain under the radar.  He collaborated with Ravi Shankar in the latter’s Chant of India.  Harrison joined Clapton for a tour of Japan; participated in a music video with Tom Petty; and appeared at a Bob Dylan benefit concert. He remained what the Brits called a good bloke, meaning an everyday dude–at least as much as any man could be given the overwhelming fame that swamped all the Beatles.

Meanwhile, music royalties continued to pour in during a time that pre-dated Spotify, Pandora and I-tunes.   CD sales opened a whole new vein of ore and riches, which maintained the former Beatle in a well-heeled life of material wealth.  He resided with his wife Olivia and son Dhani in their 30-room Friar Park Victorian neo-Gothic mansion surrounded by 62 acres on Henley-on-Thames, England.  Ten workers reportedly maintained the grounds, which included a 36-acre garden.  Harrison himself actively participated in the creation and maintenance of his floral grounds where he could escape the bright-light focus of fame, and all that went with it.

He also accumulated a number of high-priced vehicles and race cars, the latter in which he challenged himself on high-speed racetracks.  George was fully engaged ‘Living in a Material World’ despite his album and the song of the same name wherein he expressed his desire to escape from it.  A Mahatma Gandhi proves rare indeed. 

Yet, who could blame him given the costs of living as a neon celebrity where everyone wanted a figurative piece of him, and pirates sought a literal piece of his finances.  Perhaps recognizing his personal dichotomy between idealism and living ideally, Harrison met his duty of nobles oblige when he established the Material World Foundation, which still funds charitable organizations to this day.

All the while, the erstwhile Scouser retained his well-known Liverpudlian sense of humor.  In 1978, he and Dennis O’Brien created HandMade Films, a movie production company backed by Harrison’s personal guarantee that financed the creation of Monty Python’s hilarious Life of Brian.   A number of successful films followed.   However, a succession of box office flops and mismanagement by his partner created a precarious financial situation. A reluctant Harrison participated in the Beatles’ Anthology in the mid-1990’s.   He needed a cash flow boost.

The 1994 Beatle Anthology—the release of interviews, film footage of the band, interviews and takes of heretofore unreleased Beatle cuts and rehearsals—proved a boon to fans everywhere.   Significantly, the Beatles released a new song, a cobbled together creation taken from a John Lennon demo entitled Free as a Bird.  Though the title suggests a happy liberation, George Harrison’s bluesy slide guitar along with an accompanying video with scenes of old Liverpool suggest otherwise.  Retrospectives often conjure both joy and melancholy.

When asked what was it like to have been a “Beatle”, Harrison retorted: “What was it like not to be a Beatle?”  As his life attests, fame and fortune prove no nirvana, though to most it would seem better to possess much rather than little.

Yet, the underbelly of fame took its’ toll as litigation encumbered much of his life.   As refrained in his song, Sue Me Sue You Blues, Harrison saw his name captioned as either plaintiff or defendant in suits ranging from fights over royalty rights with his former band mates; a copyright infringement suit over My Sweet Lord; grappling over revenues diverted from the Concert for Bangladesh; and a protracted and acrimonious lawsuit involving millions lost in his HandMade Films venture that ended in a $ 11.6 million dollar judgment against his former partner for fraud and negligence.

Headaches and worse abound when dealing with unrelenting intrusions of privacy, the most harrowing of which involved the invasion of his home by a crazed maniac armed with a kitchen knife who thrashed and slashed at a recumbent Harrison until his wife Olivia subdued the assailant by striking him over the head with a lamp.

Coda.

George overcame throat cancer in 1998, which found origin from years of smoking.  But in May of 2001, Harrison underwent an operation to remove a cancerous growth from one of his lungs; the following July, he was treated for a brain tumor.  When the news made public, Harrison bemoaned his physician’s breach of privacy, and his estate rightfully claimed damages for breach of doctor-patient confidentiality.

Suffering the final throes of cancer’s deadly python, the dying ex-Beatle endured even a feckless physician’s insistent request that his renowned patient autograph a guitar for the doctor’ son.   George Harrison died a few days later, missing out on much of life most take for granted. He was only 58-years old.   

Reflecting his soulful nature, his final message relayed in a statement by his wife Olivia and son Dhani read:  “Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait.  Love one another.”

Those who believe in the Hindu belief in Karma are left to ponder what a prior life’s action directed and influenced the course of George Harrison’s time on earth, and how the life he lived impacted on his next existence, either here, or in a spiritual existence in the hereafter.