By Harrison's music career was in full swing. Lennon had renamed the band the Beatles, and the young group began cutting their rock teeth in the small clubs and bars around Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany. Within two years, the group had a new drummer, Ringo Starr , and a manager, Brian Epstein , a young record-store owner who eventually landed the Beatles a contract with EMI's Parlophone label.
Before the end of , Harrison and the Beatles recorded a top 20 U. Beatlemania was in full swing across England, and by early , with the release of their album in the United States and an American tour, it had swept across the Atlantic as well. Largely referred to as the "quiet Beatle" Harrison took a backseat to McCartney, Lennon and, to a certain extent, Starr.
Still, he could be quick-witted, even edgy. During the middle of one American tour, the group members were asked how they slept at night with long hair. From the start, the Beatles were a Lennon-McCartney driven band and brand.
But while the two took up much of the group's songwriting responsibilities, Harrison had shown an early interest in contributing his own work.
In the summer of , he spearheaded his first song, "Don't Bother Me," which made its way on to the group's second album, With the Beatles. From there on out, Harrison's songs were a staple of all Beatles records. 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 by more than other artists, including Frank Sinatra —were penned by Harrison.
But his influence on the group and pop music in general extended beyond just singles. In , while on the set of the Beatles' second film, Help! Harrison took an interest in some of the Eastern instruments and their musical arrangements that were being used in the movie, and he soon developed a deep interest in Indian music. Harrison taught himself the sitar, introducing the instrument to many Western ears on Lennon's song, "Norwegian Wood.
Soon other rock groups, including the Rolling Stones, began incorporating the sitar into their work as well. It could also be argued that Harrison's experimentation with different kinds of instrumentation helped pave the way for such groundbreaking Beatles albums as Revolver and Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Over time, Harrison's interest in Indian music extended into a yearning to learn more about Eastern spiritual practices.
In , he led the Beatles on a journey to northern India to study transcendental meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The trip was cut short after allegations arose that the Maharishi, an avowed celibate, had engaged in sexual improprieties. Having grown spiritually and musically since the group first started, Harrison, who was feeling the pangs to include more of his material on Beatles records, was clearly uneasy by the group's Lennon-McCartney dominance.
During the Let It Be recording sessions in , Harrison walked out, leaving the band for several weeks before he was coaxed to come back with the promise that the band would use more of his songs on its records.
But tensions in the group were clearly high. Lennon and McCartney had ceased writing together years earlier, and they too were feeling the yearning to go in a different direction. Three months later, McCartney publicly announced that he was leaving the band, and the Beatles were officially done.
All of which proved to be a great boon to Harrison. He immediately assembled a studio band consisting of Starr, guitarist Eric Clapton , keyboardist Billy Preston and others to record all of the songs that had never made it on to the Beatles catalog. The result was 's three-disc album, All Things Must Pass. Not long after the album's release, Harrison brandished his charitable leanings and continued passion for the East when he put together a series of groundbreaking benefit concerts held at New York City's Madison Square Garden to raise money for refugees in Bangladesh.
They also produced a Grammy Award—winning album, and lay the groundwork for future benefit shows such as Live Aid and Farm Aid. But not everything about post-Beatles life went smoothly for Harrison. In , his marriage to Pattie Boyd, whom he'd married eight years before, ended when she left him for Clapton. His studio work struggled, too. Following the release of that last album, Harrison took a short break from music, winding down his self-started label, Dark Horse, which had produced works for a number of other bands, and started his own movie production company, HandMade Films.
The outfit underwrote Monty Python's Life of Brian and the cult classic Withnail and I and would go on to release 25 other movies before Harrison sold his interest in the company in In , Harrison, newly married to Olivia Arias and the father of a young son, Dhani, returned to the studio to record his eighth solo album, George Harrison , which was released the following year.
It was followed two years later with Somewhere in England , which was still being worked on at the time of Lennon's assassination on December 8, While the song was a hit, the album, its predecessor, and its successor, Gone Troppo , weren't. For Harrison, the lack of commercial appeal and the constant battles with music executives proved draining, and they prompted another studio hiatus.
But a comeback of sorts arrived in , with the release of his album Cloud Nine. The record featured a pair of hits and led to Harrison linking up with Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Dylan to form what was dubbed a "super group" in the form of the Traveling Wilburys.
Encouraged by the commercial success of the Wilburys two studio albums, Harrison took to the road in , embarking on his first solo tour in 18 years. Not long after, Harrison reunited with Starr and McCartney for the creation of an exhaustive three-part release of The Beatles Anthology , which featured alternate takes, rare tracks and a previously unreleased Lennon demo.
Originally recorded by Lennon in , the demo, titled "Free as a Bird," was completed in the studio by the three surviving Beatles. The song went on to become the group's 34th Top 10 single. George Harrison was born on February 25, in Wavertree, Liverpool. In his autobiography, I, Me, Mine , Harrison described the home he grew up in during the first years of his life. According to Harrison, the home was "OK in its own period. Young Harrison used an outdoor toilet and managed without hot running water indoors.
Harrison was the youngest of four children to Harold and Louise Harrison. In , though a far bus ride away, Harrison started to attend the Liverpool Institute. Though he said it took a while to get home, it was on one of these bus rides that he met an upperclassman who also lived in the area and the pair sparked a friendship.
That upperclassman was none other than Paul McCartney. On July 6, , a year-old Paul McCartney watched a young, local skiffle band named "The Quarrymen" play, fronted by a soon-to-be year-old John Lennon.
The pair's love of music sparked a friendship and musical partnership as McCartney quickly joined the band, as stated in Britannica. While John Lennon was the clear leader and frontman of the Beatles in their early days , McCartney knew his school friend George Harrison's skills at the guitar surpassed everyone else in the young group. Despite this, according to Biography , there was a major factor that made Lennon hesitate to add Harrison.
Harrison was three years Lennon's junior and two years younger than McCartney. Despite this, as McCartney says in the documentary, Living in the Material World , during a bus ride with the three boys, Harrison played a perfect rendition of the song, "Raunchy," which convinced Lennon to put him into the group as the lead guitarist. This would not be the last time that Harrison's age affected his career, however.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock , when the group began to play shows in Hamburg, Germany, they originally performed primarily at two clubs owned by a man named Bruno Koschmider. After a year, the group's popularity soared enough that they were offered more money for another club, at which Koschmider called the authorities and had Harrison deported, as he was only 17 and considered underage to work in Hamburg.
As the Beatles' popularity grew, each member earned a nickname: John Lennon was considered the smart one, Paul McCartney was the cute one, and Ringo Starr was the funny one. Harrison earned the title as the "quiet Beatle" and while he never complained about the nickname — even making a joke about it at the group's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — people close to him saw it as inaccurate.
The Independent wrote in that Harrison was an "innovator and a maverick, yet his place in western culture remains under-appreciated.
On the stage, Harrison usually kept his head down and focused on his guitar playing, leaving the main vocals to Lennon and McCartney. He was quoted as saying, "How do you bring a song and show it to Lennon and McCartney? Another reason for the reputation, the New York Post reports, was that when the group arrived in the United States in February , Harrison was suffering from a degree temperature and strep throat, keeping him inside while the rest of the group enjoyed New York City.
His sister, Louise Harrison, who cared for Harrison while he was sick, said Harrison's nickname came in part because "he didn't feel like talking much since he was sick.
Being a second banana is hard for someone with talent. Ego trips tend to lead to infighting and breakups in bands. So imagine how the talented Harrison felt not to be the second in command, but the third when it came to the Beatles.
The dominant force of John Lennon and Paul McCartney led Harrison to be largely limited to only one or two songs per album during the group's tenure. In a documentary about Harrison , Martin addressed the issue. The Beatles producer talked about Harrison's early work being looked down upon when compared to Lennon and McCartney's contributions.
However, by , according to U Discover Music , Harrison's songwriting had grown to the point that his composition, "Something" for the album Abbey Road was called "the best track on the album" by Lennon. But you'd have to do 59 of Paul's songs before he'd even listen to one of yours.
Harrison and Lennon's relationship grew during the 60s but deteriorated as Harrison desired to grow as a songwriter and Lennon became more attached to his wife, Yoko Ono. Harrison left the band for a period after a blowup with Lennon in , before returning. Meanwhile, Uncut reported that McCartney saw Harrison less than two weeks before his death and they had a long, friendly conversation. Finally free from the constraints placed on him as the third option in a group, Harrison launched into the s with the album, " All Things Must Pass.
Both became tracks on Harrison's third solo album. One of the many standout tracks on the record was the chart-topping "My Sweet Lord. Harrison wrote it in December and after attempting to give it to his friend Billy Preston, Harrison recorded his hit version himself. However, in February , Bright Tunes Music sued Harrison for copyright infringement, saying the song was too similar to a song under their label, "He's So Fine" by the Chiffons.
The lawsuit was not decided until when, according to U Discover Music, the judge declared that Harrison had subconsciously used the song and awarded the lawsuit in favor of Bright Tunes Music. One step forward, two steps back as they say. The two began a romantic relationship and married in By the end of the decade, however, Harrison's marriage was put on the line by one of his closest friends. Eric Clapton , like Harrison, had grown tired of his band's infighting and had chosen to go solo by the decade's end.
The two began to collaborate in and out of the studio. During this same period, Clapton had fallen in love with Pattie Boyd Harrison. In , Clapton, now the leader of the band Derek and the Dominoes, wrote an entire album about his unrequited love for his best friend's wife, with the title track, "Layla" becoming a rock classic. Boyd said in an interview she "panicked" upon hearing the song. Eventually, Clapton confessed his love for her to Harrison while the three were at a party. However, because of Harrison's infidelities, Boyd left him in and began a relationship with Clapton.
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