Posted on: Friday, November 30, 2001
Beatles' Harrison succumbs to cancer
By Jeff Wilson
Associated Press
George Harrison, the Beatles' quiet lead guitarist and spiritual explorer who added both rock 'n' roll flash and a touch of the mystic to the band's timeless magic, died yesterday of cancer. He was 58.
Harrison died at 1:30 p.m. at a friend's Los Angeles home, longtime friend Gavin De Becker told The Associated Press late yesterday.
"He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death, and at peace, surrounded by family and friends. He often said, 'Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another,"' Harrison's family said in a statement.
With his death, there remain two surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. John Lennon was shot to death by a deranged fan in 1980.
In 1998, when Harrison disclosed that he had been treated for throat cancer, he said: "It reminds you that anything can happen."
The following year, he survived an attack by an intruder who stabbed him several times. In July 2001, he released a statement asking fans not to worry about reports that he was still battling cancer.
Harrison bought a 63-acre estate in Nahiku, Maui in 1981. He was involved for years in a dispute over public access to a path that ran across his land to the ocean.
The Beatles were four distinct personalities joined as a singular force in the rebellious 1960s, influencing everything from hair styles to music. Whether dropping acid, proclaiming "All You Need Is Love" or sending up the squares in the film "A Hard Day's Night," the Beatles inspired millions.
Harrison's guitar work, modeled on Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins among others, was essential.
He often blended with the band's joyous sound, but also rocked out wildly on "Long Tall Sally" and turned slow and dreamy on "Something." His jangly 12-string Rickenbacker, featured in "A Hard Day's Night," was a major influence on the American band the Byrds.
Although his songwriting was overshadowed by the great Lennon-McCartney team, Harrison did contribute such classics as "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something," which Frank Sinatra covered. Harrison also taught the young Lennon how to play the guitar.
He was known as the "quiet" Beatle and his public image was summed up in the first song he wrote for them, "Don't Bother Me," which appeared on the group's second album.
But Harrison also had a wry sense of humor that helped shape the Beatles' irreverent charm, memorably fitting in alongside Lennon's cutting wit and Starr's cartoonish appeal.
At their first recording session under George Martin, the producer reportedly asked the young musicians to tell him if they didn't like anything. Harrison's response: "Well, first of all, I don't like your tie." Asked by a reporter what he called the Beatles' famous mop-top hairstyle, he quipped, "Arthur."
He was even funny about his own mortality. As reports of his failing health proliferated, Harrison recorded a new song — "Horse to the Water" — and credited it to "RIP Ltd. 2001."
He always preferred being a musician to being a star, and he soon soured on Beatlemania — the screaming girls, the hair-tearing mobs, the wild chases from limos to gigs and back to limos. Like Lennon, his memories of the Beatles were often tempered by what he felt was lost in all the madness.
"There was never anything, in any of the Beatle experiences really, that good: even the best thrill soon got tiring," Harrison wrote in his 1979 book, "I, Me, Mine." "There was never any doubt. The Beatles were doomed. Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed, because we didn't have any. We were like monkeys in a zoo."
Still, in a 1992 interview with The Daily Telegraph, Harrison confided: "We had the time of our lives: We laughed for years."
After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Harrison had sporadic success. He organized the concert for Bangladesh in New York City, produced films that included Monty Python's "Life of Brian," and teamed with old friends, including Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison, as "The Traveling Wilburys."
George Harrison was born Feb. 25, 1943, in Liverpool, one of four children of Harold and Louise Harrison. His father, a former ship's steward, became a bus conductor soon after his marriage.
Harrison was 13 when he bought his first guitar and befriended Paul McCartney at their school. McCartney introduced him to Lennon, who had founded a band called the Quarry Men — Harrison was allowed to play if one of the regulars didn't show up.
"When I joined, he didn't really know how to play the guitar; he had a little guitar with three strings on it that looked like a banjo," Harrison recalled of Lennon during testimony in a 1998 court case against the owner of a bootleg Beatles' recording.
"I put the six strings on and showed him all the chords — it was actually me who got him playing the guitar. He didn't object to that, being taught by someone who was the baby of the group. John and I had a very good relationship from very early on."
Harrison evolved as both musician and songwriter. He became interested in the sitar while making the 1965 film "Help!" and introduced it to a generation of Western listeners on "Norwegian Wood," a song by Lennon from the "Rubber Soul" album. He also began contributing more of his own material.
Among his compositions were "I Need You" for the soundtrack of "Help"; "If I Needed Someone" on "Rubber Soul"; "Taxman" and "Love You To" on "Revolver"; "Within You, Without You" on "Sgt. Pepper"; and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on the White Album.
In 1966, he married model Patti Boyd, who had a bit part in "A Hard Day's Night." (They divorced in 1977, and she married Harrison's friend, the guitarist Eric Clapton, who wrote the anguished song "Layla" about her. Harrison attended the wedding.)
More than any of the Beatles, Harrison craved a little quiet. He found it in India. Late in 1966, after the Beatles had ceased touring, George and Patti went to India, where Harrison studied the sitar with Ravi Shankar. He maintained a lifelong affiliation with that part of the world.
In 1967, Harrison introduced the other Beatles to the teaching of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and all four took up transcendental meditation. Harrison was the only one who remained a follower — the others dropped out, with Lennon mocking the Maharishi in the song "Sexy Sadie."
By the late '60s, Harrison was clearly worn out from being a Beatle and openly bickered with McCartney, arguing with him on camera during the filming of "Let It Be."
As the Beatles grew apart, Harrison collaborated with Clapton on the song "Badge," performed with Lennon's Plastic Ono Band and produced his most acclaimed solo work, the triple album "All Things Must Pass." The sheer volume of material on that 1970 release confirmed the feelings of Harrison fans that he was being stifled in the Beatles.
Despite the occasional hit single, including the Lennon tribute song "All Those Years Ago," Harrison's solo career did not live up to initial expectations. Reviewing a greatest hits compilation, Village Voice critic Robert Christgau likened him to a "borderline hitter they can pitch around after the sluggers (Lennon and McCartney) are traded away."
Musician Bob Geldof, a friend and contemporary of Harrison, disagreed.
"As he said himself, how do you compare with the genius of John and Paul, but he did, very well. I would argue that 'All Things Must Pass', his solo album, is by far the best Beatles solo album," Geldof told BBC Radio.
Harrison's family life was steadier. He married Olivia Arias in 1978, a month after Dhani was born.
The next year, Harrison founded Handmade Films to produce Monty Python's "Life of Brian." He sold the company for $8.5 million in 1994.
Last year, he saw a compilation of Beatles No. 1 singles, "1," sell millions of copies and re-establish the band's status around the world.
"The thing that pleases me the most about it is that young people like it," he said in an AP interview.
"I think the popular music has gone truly weird," he said. "It's either cutesy-wutesy or it's hard, nasty stuff. It's good that this has life again with the youth."
Robert Barr in London and Hillel Italie in New York also contributed to this report.
