George Harrison

George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Known as “the quiet Beatle”, he helped shape the band’s musical direction and later built a successful solo career. His era was the rise of rock and roll from postwar Liverpool into a global youth culture, and Harrison stood at the center of it while often seeming to look beyond it, toward folk rock, Indian classical music, meditation, and a more reflective kind of songwriting.

Harrison was born at 12 Arnold Grove in Wavertree, Liverpool, the youngest of four children of Harold Harrison, a bus conductor and former ship’s steward, and Louise Harrison, a shop assistant of Irish Catholic descent. His mother was especially supportive of his love of music. According to Pattie Boyd, “All she wanted for her children is that they should be happy, and she recognised that nothing made George quite as happy as making music.” As a boy, he heard and absorbed George Formby, Cab Calloway, Django Reinhardt, Hoagy Carmichael, Carl Perkins, Lonnie Donegan, and Elvis Presley. After hearing “Heartbreak Hotel” from a nearby house while riding his bicycle, he became deeply interested in rock and roll.

At about 14, Harrison got a guitar after his mother paid £3.10s for it. He formed a skiffle group, the Rebels, with his brother Peter and a friend, Arthur Kelly. On the bus to school, he met Paul McCartney, who also attended the Liverpool Institute, and they bonded over music. In 1958, McCartney brought him into contact with John Lennon’s group, the Quarrymen. Lennon first thought Harrison was too young, but Harrison later impressed him on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus by playing the lead guitar part to “Raunchy”. He was accepted into the group that became the Beatles.

Although most Beatles songs were written by Lennon and McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onward included at least two Harrison compositions. His songs with the band included “Taxman”, “Within You Without You”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Something”, and “Here Comes the Sun”. By 1965, he had begun leading the Beatles toward folk rock through his interest in Bob Dylan and the Byrds, and toward Indian classical music through the sitar, which he encountered on the set of Help!. He played sitar on Beatles recordings beginning with “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”. In 1967, he initiated the band’s interest in Transcendental Meditation, and he later developed an association with the Hare Krishna movement.

After the Beatles disbanded, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, which produced his most successful hit single, “My Sweet Lord”, and introduced the slide guitar sound associated with his solo work. In 1971, he organised the Concert for Bangladesh with Indian musician Ravi Shankar, a forerunner of benefit concerts such as Live Aid. He founded Dark Horse Records in 1974 and co-founded HandMade Films in 1978, initially to produce Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. In 1988, he co-founded the platinum-selling Traveling Wilburys. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Beatles in 1988 and, after his death, for his solo career in 2004. Harrison died of cancer in 2001 at 58, leaving songs and ideas shaped by guitars, friendship, Indian music, and a steady search for meaning.