AWA I T I N G O N YO U A L L

T H E I L L U S T R A T E D

G EORG E
H ARRISON
“The Beatles saved the world from boredom. “ George Harrison, 1984
 AWAITING ON YOU ALL
T H E I L L U S T R A T E D

GEORGE
HARRISON

GEOFFREY GIULIANO
DEDIC ATION
To India Giuliano.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library
Giuliano, Geoffrey.
AWAITING ON YOU ALL: THE ILLUSTRATED GEORGE HARRISON / Geoffrey Giuliano. —Updated edition
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Harrison, George. 2. Rock musicians—England—Biography.
Copyright © Icon Editions Ltd., 1993/2015
First Published by Sunburst Books
Deacon House, 65 Old Church Street, London SW3 5BS.

The right of Geoffrey Giuliano to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this
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Every effort has been made to trace the ownership of all copyrighted material and to secure permission from
copyright holders. In the event of any question arising as to the use of any material, we will be pleased to make
the necessary corrections in future printings

THIS LITERARY WORK IS NOT AN OFFICIAL PUBLICATION BY GEORGE HARRISON AND OR THE
ESTATE OF GEORGE HARRISON. NOR IS IT IN ANYWAY AUTHORIZED OR APPROVED BY ANY OF THE
ASSOCIATE CORPORATIONS, FIRMS, PARTNERS, LICENSEES, ADMINISTRATORS OR EXECUTORS OF
ANY OF THE ABOVE MENTIONED PARTIES WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS (BUT NOT LIMITED TO) GEORGE
HARRISON. THE USE OF THE TITLE ‘THE ILLUSTRATED GEORGE HARRISON’ DENOTES THE TITLE OF
AN ORIGINAL BOOK AUTHORED BY ACCREDITED JOURNALIST AND WRITER GEOFFREY GIULIANO.
THE CONTENT OF THIS WORK IS MADE UP OF THE FOLLOWING:
• THE LITERARY AND ARTISTIC CREATION OF THE AUTHOR
• INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OWNED AND OR LICENSED BY THE PUBLISHER
• FAIR USE MATERIALS
• PUBLIC DOMAIN MATERIALS
IF THE READER HAS ANY DOUBT, CONCERN OR CAUSE WHATSOEVER THAT THIS LITERARY WORK
IS BOTH UNAUTHORIZED AND UNAPPROVED OF BY THE ABOVE NAMED PARTIES PLEASE DO NOT
REVIEW IT’S CONTENT FURTHER.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE 11
EARTHBOUND

CHAPTER TWO 28
RIDING THE WHEEL

CHAPTER THREE 36
INSIDE OUT

CHAPTER FOUR 60
BAD WORDS

CHAPTER FIVE 86
GOD’S EYE

CHAPTER SIX 112

FURTHER ENDEAVOR

CHAPTER SEVEN 150

THE QUIET ONE

APPENDICES 182
SIR FRANK CRISP & FRIAR PARK

APPENDICES TWO 188

THREE WORLDS AT HIS FEET

APPENDICES THREE 202

REMEMBER THE MUSIC

APPENDICES FOUR 212

GEORGE HARRISON 1984

APPENDICES FIVE 214

PLACES

APPENDICES SIX 220

COSMIC WHEELS

APPENDICES SEVEN 224

PERSONAL EFFECTS

CREDITS 232
February 25, 1943 - November 29, 2001
 BY GIULIANO
The Beatles / A Celebration
John Lennon My Brother (Julia Baird) (Introduction Paul McCartney)
Dark Horse / The Life & Art Of George Harrison
Blackbird / The Life & Times Of Paul McCartney
The Beatles Album / 40 Years Of Music & Memorabilia
Screwed / 40 Years Of Music & Memorabilia
Behind Blue Eyes / A Life Of Pete Townshend
The Illustrated John Lennon
The Illustrated Paul McCartney
The Illustrated George Harrison
The Illustrated Jimi Hendrix
The Illustrated Elvis Presley
The Illustrated Eric Clapton
Vagabond Heart / Rod Stewart The Unauthorized Biography
Two Of Us / Lennon & McCartney Behind The Myth
The Lost Beatles Interviews
The Lost Lennon Interviews
Things We Said Today / Conversations With The Beatles
Glass Onion / The Beatles In Their Own Words
Gloria / The Authorized Biography Of Gloria Hunniford
Lennon In The USA / The Lost Lennon Diaries
Compassionate Cuisine
Revolver / A Secret History Of The Beatles
Paint It Black / The Life & Death of Brian Jones

EARTHBOUND
“Whatever action is performed by a great man, common men follow and
whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues.”
Arnold Grove, Wavertree, Liverpool
where George lived much of his life
as a child.
Schoolboy Harrison at Dovedale
Primary.
CHAPTER ONE
– The Bhagavad Gita
G
eorge Harrison was born at 12:01 a.m. February 25, 1943.
The philosophically minded Beatle later endeavored
to put a finger on the metaphysics involved in this, his
latest incarnation.
“Try and imagine the soul entering the womb of a
woman living in 12 Arnold Grove, Wavertree, Liverpool
15 says George.” “There were all the barrage balloons,
and the Germans bombing Liverpool. All that was going on. I sat
outside the house a couple years ago, imagining 1943, nipping through
the spiritual world, the astral level, getting back into a body in that
house. That really is strange when you consider the whole planet, and
all the planets there may be on the physical level. How do I come into
that family, in that house, at that time, and who am I anyway?”
Mr. Harrison’s first impression of his little son wasn’t quite so lofty.
“I vaguely remember tiptoeing up the stairs to see him after he was
born,” he said. “All I could think of was he looked so remarkable,
like me! A tiny, squalling, miniature replica of myself.”
At his mother’s insistence, baby George was baptized a Catholic
like the other children, although the Harrisons were admittedly not
overtly religious.
George’s mother recalls him as a toddler: “George was good as a
child. He was no trouble at all and seldom misbehaved. Lots of people
think maybe I say this because he’s famous now, but he was good, so
it would be unfair to say he was a naughty boy!”
George was very eager to start school. He was bright, intelligent
and extremely independent. He was also very fair haired. He and his
brother Pete were always together, and as a tot George would often
look at photographs of his brother and think it was him. He never
13
 The Beatles meet Prime Minister
Harold Wilson, London, 1964.
George’s first passport.
With Rory Storm of the Hurricanes
at the Cavern Club, Mathew Street,
Liverpool. Early 1960s.
14
played about the streets as a child. He used to like swimming and
always found something constructive to do in his spare time.
In 1949 the Harrisons moved from Wavertree to a brand new,
roomy council house in nearby Speke, which Harry applied for some
eighteen years earlier. The property, at 25 Upton Green, was lovely
in comparison with Arnold Grove, but Louise didn’t take to the sort
of rough and tumble people who lived in the area and longed for
the close familiarity of their old neighborhood.
Harry Harrison remembers his wife taking eight year old George
to the cinema and the boy insisting she give an old tramp half a
crown. “Money didn’t mean anything to him even then,” says Harry.
“If George had his way, every old boy we saw should be entitled
to at least a few pence. He was always very compassionate like
that.” Harrison always hated to see street people hanging about in
doorways or sleeping on the pavement. Once in the early eighties, as
he was leaving a trendy London restaurant with friends “Legs” Larry
Smith and Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, he offhandedly presented a
destitute old man with a crisp fifty pound note. According to Larry,
it wasn’t the first time he had seen the guitarist give so freely.
Although money in those days was tight, the Harrisons still tried
to take a little family trip together at least once a year. Usually
they when to nearby towns on the northwest coast - Bidston Hill,
Southport, New Brighton and that standard British holiday resort,
Blackpool. In his autobiography I Me Mine, George recalls several
childhood visits to Wales, where he marvelled at the country’s
natural beauty: “We went all over Wales, staying in little places,
nice old stone cottages with slate roofs. Probably cost next to
nothing to rent. You could actually live a whole happy life in a
place like that.”
On one holiday in Scotland, George was suddenly taken ill while
swimming with his brothers at Inverness. A doctor was called and
George ordered into hospital. An ambulance with two stretcher
bearers, but George was adamant. “I’m not going on that,” he said
bluntly and walked out of the hotel, with the stretcher men in
procession behind. In the hospital, George was far from a model
patient. He hated the salt free diet they put him on so much he
wrapped a meal in a brown paper bag and threw it out of a window
when no one was looking. Unfortunately, the matron happened to Mr. and Mrs. Harrison tending to their
be passing underneath at precisely that moment and caught the famous son’s fan mail.
parcel right on her head. She strode purposefully up the stairs and
into George’s ward, only to find him apparently fast asleep, “He was
the first person I have ever seen smiling that broadly in his sleep,”
she said dryly to his parents afterward.
Although George was certainly very intelligent and capable,
he was never really fond of school. Bearing in mind George’s
outstanding creative achievements of later years, one might well The Fabulous Foursome assume a
assume that, in the eyes of his masters, anyway, the seemingly striking pose.

15
 The group during their matching suits and tie period in Great Britain.

16
17
18
19
20
21

An early London appearance by the
fab Beatles.
Another silly photo opportunity with
four very bored looking Beatles in
Scotland, 1964.
22
disinterested Harrison was a bit of an anomaly. “Little polite rows
of toffee headed robots,” John Lennon once said. “That’s all any of
[the teachers] were after.”To George, seeing through the illusion of
so-called adult authority seemed to be all the justification he needed
to forever reject its dictates even at such an early age. Like so many
others in the creative sphere, it was George who ultimately found
the courage to reject the values he saw around him. From “those
nosey mothers” standing at the school gate to the unenlightened,
interfering masters he met at school, George Harrison has never
borne fools gladly.
After leaving Quarry Bank High School for Boys in 1953, George
was enrolled at the Liverpool Institute. On his first day he was jumped
from behind by a local roughneck, which did little to bolster his
enthusiasm for his new school. At first, Harrison did try to make the
best of things by attending classes and keeping up with his homework.
But soon, George put it, “the old rot set in,” and he once again declared
a war of inattention on all things relating to his life at school.
A true rebel, by his sixteenth birthday George was at the very
bottom of his class at the Liverpool Institute, and often in deep
water at home. Although he made no bones about his feelings for
school, he was secretly nervous about leaving without benefit of
even the most basic qualifications. To be able to sit for the General
The Beatles initially auditioned for George Martin on June 6, 1962, in studio three
at the Abbey Road studios. Ron Richards and his engineer Norman Smith recorded
four songs, which Martin (who was not present during the recording) listened to
at the end of the session. The verdict was not promising, however, as Richards
complained about Pete Best’s drumming, and Martin thought their original songs
were simply not good enough. Martin asked the individual Beatles if there was
anything they personally did not like, to which George Harrison replied, “Well,
there’s your tie, for a start.” That was the turning point, according to Smith, as John
Lennon and Paul McCartney joined in with comic wordplay that made Martin
think he should sign them to a contract for their wit alone.

23

Original Beatle drummer Pete Best.
Below: On the road with temporary
Ringo replacement, Billy Nichols.
24
Certificate of Education, a student had to first pass a preliminary
exam given by his teachers. The minimum requirement was
successful completion of at least three subjects relevant to one’s
choice of career. George, however, failed dismally in all classes,
except art. “While most of the other students spent their Wednesday
afternoon painting around the school track, “says George, “I was
content to take a notebook and dream up some sketches. They were
mostly from my head, not from anything around me. I was fond of
sports, too, especially swimming, but I guess I was fonder of art.”
Today, it is the little things George remembers about life in
Liverpool quirky, seemingly unrelated strung together on a
chain of golden memories. Pictures of pushy, tobacco stained
vicars chatting up housewives for donations. Little red faced
insurance salesmen toting their tatty imitation leather briefcases
around the noisy streets. Pot-bellied masters from the Institute
marching up and down the cricket fields followed by a scruffy
band of schoolboy soldiers singing out their off key cadence into
Liverpool’s late afternoon hustle bustle. The rowdy merchant
sailors, street vendors, pitiful alleyway drunkards, tight lipped
bobbies and, of course, the North’s famous bounty of pretty girls.
All characters right out of the Beatles’ Penny Lane. All striking
by their own peculiar sense of normalcy and all still very real to
George Harrison.
John, Paul, George, and Ringo Downunder for their first Australian tour, June 1964.

25
 The Harrisons on their honeymoon in Barbados in February of 1966.

26
 There are magical places, too, that simmered fondly in George’s
consciousness. A highly polished giant meteorite set into concrete outside
the Wavertree Baths that, after careering around the Milky Way for a
million years or so finished up its journey in a farmer’s muddy field in
suburban Liverpool. Young George used to scramble up on top and then
gaily slide back down. It is still there today. Then there were Calderstone
Park, the library and the mysterious tunnels leading the way to Childwall
Five Ways. None of these places are on the tourist maps handed to out
of town Beatle fans by the Merseyside Tourist Board. There are secret
places reserved only for the people of Liverpool. The real Liverpool. The
Liverpool Carl Jung called “the pool of life.” The heady stuff that dreams The way they were in the manic early
are made of and about which songs are composed and sung. days of the swinging sixties.

27
28
In many ways George was the most adventurous and trendy of the Beatles.

29
 CHAPTER TWO

RIDING THE WHEEL

“Wise men you won’t be to follow the like of me” - George Harrison- ‘World of Stone’

L
ouise Harrison’s first indication that George was seriously
interested in music came when he was thirteen; she
happened to notice his school exercises books were
virtually covered with crude little sketches of guitars.
Soon afterward, she bought her son a cheap three pound
acoustic from the father of one of George’s schoolmates.
Surprisingly, George didn’t seem interested and relegated
the gift to an upstairs cupboard for the next three months. When he
eventually picked it up he found it frustratingly difficult to learn
and almost packed it in several time before finally making progress.
Sitting up some nights till nearly dawn with his mum encourage him,
George with an early girlfriend.
he practiced until his fingers bled.
With practice and determination - often listening to pop records
and then trying to mimic what he’d just heard - George begun to play
quite well and outgrew the battered old acoustic that served him so
faithfully. His mum once again came to the rescue by saving up her
extra household money to buy him another guitar. This one, a good,
solid, wide body acoustic with white inlaid trim, cost thirty pounds
and featured a handy cutaway neck for easier manoeuvrability on
the lower frets of the fingerboard. Proud and independent, young
George was determined to reimburse his mother as soon as he could.
It wasn’t in the lad’s makeup to accept anything he considered
charity. As a result, he soon signed on as a Saturday afternoon
delivery boy for a local butcher. George’s natural aversion to flesh
as food slowly gained momentum as he cycled through the narrow
back street of Speke with a full load of raw meat packed into his
dusty saddle bags. It is tempting to speculate whether these early
memories later inspired his militant anti-meat eating song Piggies
on the Beatles’ White Album.

30
 The ultimate in sophisticated sixties hi-fi
for the discerning merseybeat fan.

Still marking time at the Liverpool Institute, George shuttled back

and forth to school on his father’s bus from Speke to Liverpool in a
dreamy haze of guitars and pop stars. The long, rambling ride took
up an hour each way, which also allowed him to boyhood luxury of
mucking about with other lads. One of the boys, the son of a cotton
salesman and the estate midwife from Allerton, was especially good
fun. His name was Paul McCartney, and although he was a year
ahead of George at school, the two quickly became firm friends by
early 1955. Like George, McCartney was also intensely interested in
music not only played the guitar but also held the proud distinction
of owning his very own trumpet, which greatly impressed young Taking a drive with BBC DJ, Jimmy
master Harrison. At home, George used to perch himself on a stool Saville.
in the middle of the sitting room and strum along to his favorite
skiffle tunes with his brother Pete, a fair musician himself. The
two brothers even played a gig together at the British Legion Club
in Speke in 1956 with Pete’s school chum Arthur Kelly and one or
two others calling themselves the Rebels. This first engagement
was memorable in that none of the other groups scheduled to play
turned up, so the rocking Rebels were forced to entertain for the
entire evening.
Paul McCartney first laid eyes on John Lennon at the neighborhood
chip shop. McCartney was invited to join the Quarry Men on the

31

The Beatles as we remember them best.
merit of his mastery of Twenty Flight Rock, as well as his justly
famous Little Richard imitation. His obvious talents were a welcome
addition to the rag tag group of schoolboy musicians. “John was
really the only outstanding member,” says Paul. “All the rest sort of
slipped away, you know? I suppose the drummer was pretty good
actually, for what we knew then. Frankly, one of the reasons they all
liked Colin (Hanton) was because he happened to have the Coasters’
record Searchin, and that was pretty impressive currency back then.
I mean, sometimes, you made a whole career with someone solely
on the basis of them owning a particular record!”
Deeply drawn in by the charismatic spell cast by the masterful
Lennon, young McCartney revealed in his role as John’s on stage foil
and steady street corner accomplice. But though their musical efforts
within the admittedly shaky stricture of the Quarry Men were both
admirable and ambitious, what they really need was a good, solid lead
guitar upon which to hang their funky back street skiffle sound. Paul
remembers the events leading up to their settling on George: “Well,
he was always my little mate. Nonetheless, he could really play guitar,
particularly this piece called Raunchy, which we all used to love.”
“You see, if anyone could do something like that it was generally
enough to get them in the group. Of course, I knew George long
before any of the others, as they were all from Woolton and we hung
out with the Allerton set, I can tell you we both learned guitar from
the same book, and that despite his tender years, we were chums.”

32
 John Lennon, however, was apparently sceptical about admitting Although Harrison appreciated
such a veritable baby into the group. How would it look for the perks which came from being
a Beatle, he resented the constant
someone as talented and popular as John to be caught consorting intrusions of his privacy and the
with someone so young and obviously undistinguished as George? crass way the group was marketed.
What would his mates think, let alone the ladies? After all, the
whole point of being in a band in the first place was to look like a
big man, and that was admittedly a little tough to do playing with
a teenybopper like Harrison. His musical skill, however, coupled
with McCartney’s insistence that George be brought on board Recording at EMI, Abbey Road
overruled John’s initial reservations. Studios, St. John’s Wood, 1963.
George played Raunchy for them in a cellar club called the Morgue,
and then hung around the band until he was invited to play with
them. He was formally accepted as a member on February 6, 1958.
McCartney, however, tells a slightly different tale. He says George’s
audition took place atop a Liverpool bound bus: “George slipped
quietly into one of the seats aboard this largely deserted bus we were
riding, took out his guitar and went right to Raunchy, a few days
later I said to John, “Well, what do you think?” And he finally says,
“Yeah, man, he’d be great!” It was simply that. George was in.”

33
34
 Beatle George accosted by an overly
excited female fan.
One of the boys’ first big breaks came when Britain’s Mr. Star
Maker, Caroll Levis, announced at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool With My Guy songstress Mary Wells.
for his Carol Levis Discoveries television program, which was to
be filmed at a Manchester studio some weeks later. As expected,
virtually every guitar toting teenager in town turned out for the
big even including, of course, John, Paul and George, this time
billing themselves as the Moondogs, Louise Harrison remembers
George being absolutely “over the moon” when he received word
of their selection:
They let us know by post. At first I couldn’t make out why
anyone would send us a letter addressed to the “Moondogs,” but
then I twigged. “You must have won, son!” I shouted to George,
who happened to be just at the top of the stairs getting ready to

35
 go out. “I can’t believe it!” he cried, almost flying down the stairs to The Beatles meet folk trio Peter,
read the letter. “We’re really on the way now!”` Paul, & Mary in New York, 1964.
The evening of the big show, the boys boarded the train from Liverpool’s
Lime Street Station to Manchester, struggling down the platform with
their guitars and primitive amplifiers tottering precariously atop a
luggage cart. “Where are we going, fellas?” Lennon sang out as they made
their way into the already rolling train. “To the top, Johnny!” the yelled.
“Where’s that, lads?” “Why, to the toppermost of the poppermost!”
Although the Moondogs gave a rousing performance that night,
they were in jeopardy of missing the last train back to Liverpool
and couldn’t therefore, stay for the final judging. It was a crushing
disappointment to the starry eyed young musicians, being so close
to what they considered “the big time,” only to have it elude them
through something as simple as the lack of reliable transport. For this
night, anyway, “the toppermost of the poppermost” would remain
just a distant dream.

36
37

INSIDE OUT
“All I’m doing is acting out the part of Beatle George. Even if it’s being a Beatle
for the rest of my life, It’s only a temporary thing.” George Harrison, 1969
Patti Boyd was a 60’s celebrity in her
own right, as seen here in this 1969
Vogue cover.
38
CHAPTER THREE
“T
here was a time when George really had no faith at
all that the Beatles would ever click, “Harry Harrison
senior has said.”I remember him going on about the
lot of us packing up and immigrating to Australia.
Then it was Canada and even Malta for a time. “Just
stick with the music, boy,” I told him. “If you really
want it bad enough you’ll catch your star.”
Of all the Beatles George Harrison was perhaps the least likely to
have stayed in show business if the Beatles hadn’t finally caught on.
Adventure was what he was after, and money. In their early days with
manager Brian Epstein, it was Harrison who was the most concerned
with rock and roll; playing music had not so much to do with artistry
as with setting one’s self above the crowd. Says Harrison wryly: “We
looked at fellas like Buddy Holly and Elvis and thought, “That looks
like a good job.” Money, travel, chicks, and nice threads - there’s a
great deal to be said for playing rock and roll.”
The boys’ first notable tour was in May 1960, when they backed pop
singer Johnny Gentle in Scotland on what Harrison’s buddy “Legs” Larry
Smith has called “the cello tape and chewing gum circuit.” The two week
tour took the band - now called the Silver Beetles - to the nethermost tip of
Scotland, where they played dingy working men’s clubs and tatty teenage
ballrooms all along the eastern coast. John’s art school chum, bass player
Stuart Sutcliffe, by now had joined the band, as had drummer Tommy
Moore. To affect a more “professional” air, the young men adopted stage
names. George became Carl Harrison, after his rock idol, Carl Perkins;
John was renamed Johnny Silver; Paul was now Paul Raymon; Stu became
Stu de Stael. Tommy Moore did not change his name.
George and Patti, married in London on January 21, 1966.

39
 George and Pattie on their wedding day.

Batchelor Harrison signing his life away.

By early summer of 1960, the prospects of the band were dwindling. By

all accounts Tommy Moore had been quite good on the skins, but, being
significantly older than the others, wasn’t about to make a career of bashing
about with a local two bit group. A month after the tour (during which Tommy
had the misfortune of losing has two front teeth when the group’s van collided
with a car full of senior citizens), Moore unceremoniously bailed.
The effect on the band was devastating, as no one would ever hire them
without a drummer. Fortunately, the answer to the Beatles’ prayers soon came
in the person of Randolph Peter Best, a strikingly handsome, though sometimes
uncomfortably quiet young man. Not only did he have a gear new kit but his
mum, Mona, also had her own teen club, an irresistible combination.
A few months later, Allan Williams, the diabolical Welshman who
arranged some earlier booking for the boys, was in a trendy London
coffee bar called the Two I’s, when he ran into German nightclub owner

40
 George was very happy and proud
to have caught hold of a lady as
beautiful and charming as Patti.
Decades later Patti admitted George
was the love of her life.

Bruno Koschmider. “Do you think you could fix me up with a Liverpool
group to take back home?” Koschmider enquired. “Sure thing,” Williams
shot back. “One of the city’s best.”
The band he has in mind was Derry and the Seniors, a well organised beat
group much loved in Merseyside. Their gig went well, and soon Williams
was again called upon to help import more of Liverpool’s raucous brand
of rock to Hamburg’s music loving teens. This time, though, the boys were
not passed over. Despite strong objections from their families, in August
1960 the Beatles piled into Williams’ battered van and barrelled off to the
Channel ferry and on to Germany.
George once listed his tour of duty in Hamburg as his only “higher
education,” and he wasn’t far wrong. To the Beatles, Hamburg’s raw,
uncensored lifestyle gave them a kind of carte blanche to act out their
most violent and aggressive fantasies.
Altogether, the Beatles’ first trek to Hamburg lasted just over four
months. Although they found playing the Kaiserkeller infinitely preferable
to the cramped and seedy Indra, they weren’t entirely happy with Bruno
Koschmider’s bullying tactics, nor with the deplorable living conditions
they were forced to endure. As a result, they approached local club
manager Peter Eckhorn and requested an audition with an eye toward

41

The heady days of teeny boopper
Beatlemania.
transferring their talents to his Top Ten Club, an even grander version
of the somewhat scruffy Kaiserkeller.
The Top Ten was anxious to have the Beatles as their star attraction,
but Bruno Koschmider was very distressed at the thought of losing his
biggest draw to the competition. Unfortunately for Koschmider, the
Beatles’ contract with him was about to expire, leaving the group free
to perform wherever they chose and they wasted no time. One evening,
without any notice, the boys were gone, off to play the Top Ten for their
new boss, Peter Eckhorn. As far as the Beatles were concerned, after
having lived rough for so long, their only loyalty now was to themselves.
They were quite pleased with their new position. Their
accommodations, supplied courtesy of Eckhorn, were far more
comfortable than the smelly lodgings they shared at the Bambi Kino,
and the pay was top notch. With a new extended contract in hand, it
looked as though things were finally beginning to go their way.
Precisely twenty four hours after the boys moved into their new rooms,
they were awakened by a loud knock at the door. “Police! You must open
up!” The boys scrambled out of bed and hurried to get dressed. Lennon
stumbled into the hallway and cracked open the door just enough to
make sure their visitors weren’t a team of Koschmider’s muscle bound
enforcers sent round to make the lads an offer they couldn’t refuse. That
was the only invitation the police required, though, and suddenly the
room was wall to wall uniforms. “We are looking for the one called
Harrison,” one of the cops barked. Everyone froze. “What the fuck do
you want him for?” said Lennon. Surprisingly belligerent in the face of
such authority “He hasn’t done anything.”
Apparently the police received an anonymous tip that George was
only seventeen and was therefore too young to be playing in an adult club
past curfew. On top of that, the Beatles had not bothered to secure either
visas or work permits before the band came to perform in Germany.
George was to be deported immediately. There was no way out of this
one; the boys had been had, by someone with a grudge. Someone very
like the unsavory Bruno Kischmider.
The loss of their guitar player left the Beatles in an awkward position.
They couldn’t very well perform without him. There was little hope
the German authorities would relent and allow them to stay. They had
no choice but to make their way home as best they could. By early
spring of 1961, the Beatles were one of Merseyside’s top bands but
were still virtually unknown outside their hometown. By now George
turned eighteen, so the group returned to Hamburg to play the Top Ten,
from April through July 1961. While there, they had been invited to
sit had been invited to sit in on a recording session with transplanted
English pop singer Tony Sheridan, who was perhaps Hamburg’s most
popular entertainer. Although the Beatles had recorded a few times
previously, once as the Quarry Men in a friend’s basement studio in
Liverpool and then in the fall of 1960 at Akustik Studios in Hamburg,

42
these were their first truly professional sessions. Produced by the
well known orchestra leader Bert Kaempfert, the boys recorded eight
tunes: six backing Sheridan, and two others, a rocked up version of My
Bonnie and a Harrison-Lennon original, Cry for a Shadow. Released
as a single in Germany in August 1961, a few imported copies of My
Bonnie made their way back to England and before long the obscure
45 was occasionally being spun in a few Liverpool area discos. All
of which prompted eighteen year old Raymond Jones to wander into
local businessman Brian Epstein’s NEMS (North East Music Stores)
shop in the Whitechapel section of Liverpool on October 28, 1961, and
requested a copy of the hard to find single. Epstein had always prided
himself on his ability to rustle up even the most obscure records for
his customers, but this particular order had him stumped. What’s more, Three fab first generation Beatle
dresses, 1964.
none of Brian’s contacts in the music business had even heard of the
band, much less their fly by night single. Coincidentally, a couple of
weeks later, while chatting with one of his sales clerks, he learned the
mystery group was playing only a few hundred feet away at the tiny Barn storming the world in the name
basement club on Matthew Street. Brian was intrigued. of global Beatlemania.

43
 A little after noon on November 9, 1961, Brian and his personal
assistant, Alistair Taylor, visited the Cavern to hear for themselves
this swinging ensemble known as the Beatles. Thirty four days
later, during a meeting at Pete Best’s house, a formal management
agreement was negotiated between the Beatles and Epstein’s
NEMS Enterprises. Brian didn’t actually sign the document but
simply shook hands as a show of faith. After all, unlike these
four young scruffs, Epstein was a gentleman and his word was
therefore his bond. At any rate, the deal was done. The Beatles
finally had themselves an official manager and Epstein yet another
pet project to occupy his otherwise tediously lonely life. Little did
either party suspect what was to happen to them all in just a few
short months.
By the fall of 1963, full tilt, gut wrenching, diehard Beatlemania had
descended upon the British Isles. By Christmas time the band played
the prestigious Royal Variety Performance, toured Sweden, scored a
number one single With I Want to Hold Your Hand and consummated
Posing with Billy Nichols. the deal for their first full length motion picture, A Hard Day’s Night.

44
 In January 1964 I Want to Hold Your Hand entered the American
record charts at number 83. By the next week it had climbed
steadily to 42 and showed no signs of levelling off. Days later,
while the Beatles were holed up in their ritzy digs at the famous
Hotel George V near the Champs-Elysees in Paris, they received
a call from New York informing them their turbulent teenage love
call had toppled Bobby Vinton’s There! I’ve Said It Again and
was now number one on the charts. Everyone was ecstatic. It was
a dream come true. The boys had already experienced the thrill
of topping the charts back home. Now they were taking America! The Beatles in Germany, 1966.

45
 Often times the only way the Beatles could
ever get a look at the cities they conquered
was from the back of a limousine or out of
a hazy hotel window.

46
47

The Beatles, Sunday, June 25, 1967
appearance on the BBC’s Our World,
where they performed the anthemic,
All You Need Is Love, for a global
television audience via satellite.
48
On board Pan Am flight 101 from London’s Heathrow to New
York’s Kennedy Airport, on February 7, 1964, George Harrison and
his three colleagues were very anxious. “America’s got everything,”
thought Harrison out loud. “Why should they want us?” On top of
feeling almost unbearable apprehension, George was also sick with
the flu and concerned his hair didn’t look quite right following a
last minute shampoo back in London (no small worry to a group for
whom hair was such an important part of the act).
Brian Epstein, meanwhile, though trying to appear calm, was
concerned Harrison’s ill health would prevent him from play; either
The Ed Sullivan Show or Carnegie Hall. From the moment they
landed on American soil, everything went at breakneck speed. As the
plane slowly made its way to the gate, the shrill screams of more than
ten thousand hysterical teenagers penetrated the hull of the aircraft.
Peering through the windows of the DC 10, the boys thought that
perhaps the president was about to land on another runway.
49
 “Every kid from Broadway to the Bronx is here,” observed
one seasoned veteran of the New York press corps in an on-the-
spot report. “They’re wearing buttons that say ‘I like the Beatles,’
and waving home made banners. Teenage girls are fainting by the
dozen, and we’ve even seen a few of the older cops sticking bullets
in their ears, for Pete’s sake. As far as I can tell the four Beatles
are standing at the door of the aircraft almost certainly completely
and utterly in shock. No one, I means no one, has ever seen or even
remotely suspected anything like this before!”
After their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, which
was seen by a record 73 million viewers, the entourage boarded a
train bound for Washington D.C., on the morning of February 11th.
That night they played before twenty thousand screaming fans at
the Coliseum, another record audience and the first of many manic
concerts the Fab Four were forced to endure. “It was bloody awful,”
says Harrison.

50
51
 Harrison in India for his first sitar lessons with Ravi Shankar and Shambu Das.

52
 From February 2, 1963 to August 29, 1966, the Beatles played more Recording Sgt. Pepper at Abbey Road.
than 225 live shows in almost every country of the free world. They
performed for millions of hysterical teenyboppers, were pelted with jelly
beans and constantly harassed by fans looking for souvenirs - everything
from autographs to bits of their hair, clothes and even fingernails. Crippled
children were wheeled into the boys’ dressing rooms in hopes a dose of their
mysterious power might restore or straighten lifeless limbs and twisted
bodies. Airport terminals were continually dirtied by young women who
became incontinent when at last they caught up with their favorite Beatle.
It was, in all, quite a lot of madness for four provincial young men from
the north of England to endure. And so, when the Beatles laid down their
instruments after their last number at Candlestick Park in San Francisco
on August 29, 1966, they said goodbye to public performing forever.
From then on, John, Paul, George and Ringo would devote themselves
exclusively to working their magic only in the privacy and sanctity of the
recording studio. George Harrison, for one, couldn’t have been more pleased.

53
 The press launch for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band at manager Brian Epstien’s
Mayfair home.

With Ravi Shankar in London, 1967.

54
A rare bootleg recording
stating the obvious.
Lennon, apparently tripping,
at Brian’s posh home during
the press party for Sgt. Pepper.

The Beatles during the iconic

Summer of Love.

55
 A vintage 1967
Sgt. Pepper button.

Ringo in repose.

Opposite bottom: Promoting the far out

Yellow Submarine film in 1968.

56
57
 George plots the Beatles’ course of the Magical Mystery Tour September 1967. The actual filming was mostly
accomplished over the next two weeks.

Opposite: Harrison in his bizarre overly large blue sports coat and rather too small hat during the filming
of Mystery Tour.

58
59
 George and John talk transcendental meditation on the David Frost Show Friday, September 29, 1967.

Asleep at the wheel on the Mystery Tour. Trendy George posing for a fan in his extravagant
white Mercedes.

60
Harrison happily on the Mystery Tour somewhere
in the British countryside.

61

BAD WORDS
“I don’t want to be an icon, but I suppose it’s a bit late for that.”
With the Maharishi at the Hilton Hotel
in London, Thursday, August 24, 1967.
62
CHAPTER FOUR
George Harrison, 2000
B
ack in the late sixties while many of the world’s youth were
busy getting loaded with their friends and living off student
loans, George Harrison had already taken on a world
of responsibility. He became one fourth of the Beatles’
international Apple Corps Limited, as well as being a full
time professional musician, composer, record producer and
husband. During this period, Harrison was now determined to forge a
more meaningful role for himself within the group. Notwithstanding
the Beatles’ musical Midas touch, George became keen to launch his
own solo career as well.
“I got back from the Maharishi’s retreat in India a bit later than
everybody else,” George recalled in the mid-seventies. “They all split
and started Apple. When I got back it was like a mad house. In fact,
to this day we’re still trying to untangle it. At that time John and Yoko
had just gotten together and they had some guy throwing the I Ching
every ten minutes. “Oh we’re having a business meeting? Then let’s
play the I Ching!” the place was full of lunatics.”
Apple Corps Limited was established late in 1967 chiefly as a device
for lessening the Beatles’ incredible tax burden. Paul McCartney
came up with the name after apparently being inspired by an original
Magritte painting he owned, which featured a giant Granny Smith
apple locked inside a tidy room.
The first Beatle related venture to carry the Apple logo was the film
Magical Mystery Tour, shown on English television on December 26,
1967. Artistically, it was years ahead of its time, employing many of the
same surreal techniques so popular in today’s rock videos. Commercially,
however it was a disaster. From there Apple evolved into a trendy high-
fashion head shop and boutique housed at 94 Baker Street, in Sherlock
Holmes territory, with a small music publishing division housed above the Harrison’s photographic self portrait
store. In those days, Mike Berry, a middle management music executive, with celebrated sitarist Shambu Das
on Juhu Beach, Bombay, 1966.
and Beatle buddy Terry Doran were running the show, assisted by two
attractive but largely ineffectual secretaries.
The Apple Boutique opened its doors on December 7, 1967 with a gala
celebration attended by John, George, their wives and about two hundred
more trendy people than could comfortably fit inside the store. John At the Maharishi’s Rishikesh ashram.
nicknamed it the “psychedelic Woolworth’s”, and almost immediately it
became the place to see and be seen in Swinging London. The shop front
featured a far out, acid inspired mural by a team of Dutch designers who
called themselves The Fool. After endearing themselves to the Beatles,
the flamboyant artists proceeded to put their creative touch to just about
everything the boys owned. Suddenly, wild rainbow colored designs showed
up on George’s living room fireplace and on one or two of his favorite guitars.
John even commissioned a fancy paint job for an antique upright piano.
However impressed the Beatles may have been with The Fool’s far
out creations, their Baker Street neighbors were less favorably disposed

63

Harrison’s groovy mini, circa 1967,
Kinfauns, Clarmont Drive, Esher.
An impromptu sitar lesson in the
Beatles’ hotel suite, 1966.
Opposite: With the Maharishi in
London, 1967.
64
and promptly petitioned city officials to have the offending dream scape
removed from the building. About eight months later, the shop was closed
down after a long history of petty pilfering and poor management, and
the entire contents given away free to the public - that is, after the boys
stopped by to do a little last minute shopping themselves.
Still cautiously optimistic about their future together, from 1966
to 1969 the Beatles racked up an incredible list of worldwide smash
recordings, the titles of which read like a table of contents for the
dope-filled dreams of an entire generation: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt.
Peppers Lovely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles
(the White album), the Yellow Submarine sound track, Abbey Road
and Let It Be - an astounding array of ground breaking, intelligent and
artfully conceived music. The problem was that the evolving talents of
the four artists could no longer be so easily contained on one LP every
twelve months or so. There is no doubt George Harrison possessed
the innate ability to perhaps even commercially surpass the Lennon-
McCartney song writing cartel, but the chance never came, and
65
 “For the forest to be green each tree must be green”
Maharishi

66
67
 George, sitar in hand, New York, 1967.

George and Ringo chow down during

sessions for the Beatle’s White Album.

Harri and Beach Boy, Mike Love in

Rishikesh.
Harrison was relegated by fate to the back of the Beatles’ bus to ride
out the remainder of the Mystery Tour as a second class citizen. “I
believe that if I’m going to sing songs on record, they might as well
be my own,” commented George in 1969.
“I feel you can say more in two minutes of a song than in ten
years. The first song I ever wrote was Don’t Bother Me. It wasn’t
very good, but I was sick in bed and thought I might as well write
something, and it went on our second album (With the Beatles;
released in America as Meet the Beatles). The most difficult thing
for me is following Paul’s and John’s songs. Their earlier songs
weren’t as good as they are now, though, and they obviously got
better and better, and that’s what I have to do. I’ve got about forty
tunes that I haven’t recorded, and some of them are quite good. I
wrote one called The Art of Dying (later to appear on All Things
Must Pass)three years ago, and at the time I thought it was too far
out. But I’m still going to record it.”

68
Promoting Yellow Submarine.

69

A rare smile from all four Beatles
during shooting for the Mystery Tour.
Below and opposite top: Recording the
popular Zapple release Wonderwall in
India, 1967.
70
“I used to have a hang up about telling John, Paul and Ringo I had
a song for the albums, because I felt mentally, at that time, as if I
was trying to compete. In a way, the standard of the songs had to be
good, because theirs were very good. I don’t want the Beatles to be
recording rubbish for my sake just because I wrote it. On the other
hand, I don’t want to record rubbish, just because they wrote it. The
group comes first. It took time for me to get more confidence as a
songwriter, and now I don’t care if they don’t like it. I can shrug it
off. Sometimes it’s a matter of whoever pushes hardest gets the most
tunes on the album, and then it’s down to personalities. More often, I
just leave it until somebody would like to do one of my tunes.”
The late sixties seemed to be rather an era of disillusionment
for Harrison. First it was the broken promise of drug induced
enlightenment, followed closely by the inevitable wilting of
flower power. The Beatles’ trek to India in 1967 to sit at the feet of
the Maharishi turned sour almost immediately and even George’s
fairy tale marriage to Pattie Boyd began to suffer under the strain
of the constant demands made upon George’s times and energy.
When the Beatles finally began to collapse in 1969 Harrison’s new
declaration of independence was tempered, it was safe to say, with
some very real doubts.
The luxurious Kashmir houseboat in
which Harrison first began learning
to play the sitar.

Recording his second solo album

Wonderwall in India with his sitar
teacher, Shambu Das.

George demonstrate his sitar technique to

British film star Rita Tushingham, 1966

71
 A possibly stoned George
out for lunch with his
lovely wife, 1968.

Opposite: Model Patti Boyd,

a favorite of teenage boys
everywhere back in the late
sixties.

72
73

George and Patti visit San Francisco’s
Haight Ashbury, Monday, August 7,
1967.
Opposite: Mrs. Harrison attending
a modeling assignment at the Apple
Boutique, 3 Baker Street, London.
Looking after the Maharishi.
74
Like the sweet twirling smoke of an Indian joss stick, the swinging
sixties faded into the uncertain seventies and scattered to ashes any
hopes the world might have had that the Beatles would stay together.
When at last it came, on December 31, 1970, with the suit McCartney
brought against his three former partners, the end was long overdue. In
even the most bitter of marriages, the mechanics of the final dissolution
are always painful. Anger is the first emotion to be overcome, and in
the case of John, Paul, George and Ringo, that alone took years. People,
of course, are desperate to try to pinpoint a specific cause of the split
- something absolute to tidy up all the loose ends in their minds. The
truth is it was many things, but mostly just the inevitable ebb and flow
of time washing away what was and replacing it with what is.
One of the most profound reasons, however, seems to be the
introduction of New York show business accountant Allen Klein into
the picture back in 1969. Eventually, John, George, and Ringo were
convinced that Klein just might be the answer to the Beatles’ problems
with Apple and as a group. Paul McCartney, however, and apparently
quite a few other Apple insiders, definitely did not agree.
75
 Harrison, Indian drum in hand at Heathrow Airport.

Left to right: Pattie Boyd, Cynthia Lennon, Maureen

Starkey and Jenny Boyd.

76
 Being in the Beatles, in Harrison’s words,
was like “being in a box,” and once the way
was finally made clear, he ran like blazes
and never looked back. Although they are
all genuinely loving, none of the Beatles
is particularly sentimental or nostalgic. On
the surface, at least, there is a hardness that
probably owes much to being from the north
of England, but even more to having lived
through the lunacy of Beatlemania. When
they went their separate ways, George was
only too pleased to try to deflate the group’s
mighty myth at every turn.
“I realise we did fill a big gap in the
sixties,” he has said, “but all the people who
we really meant something to are all grown
up. It’s like anything people grow up with,
they get attached to it. I can understand that
the Beatles, in many ways, did some nice if
things, and it’s appreciated that people still
like them. But the problem comes when they
want to live in the past.”
As a roving one man anti-Beatles
propaganda machine, George had a mighty
tough row to hoe. Still, he makes a lot of
sense. “Even if I were to be a Beatle for
the rest of my life, it would still be only a
temporary thing,” he says, referring to the
transitory nature of life itself.
As the years slipped away, however,
Harrison’s hard line view on the Fab Four
loosened up considerably: “Maybe one day
we’ll get the Beatles together and just put
them in a room having tea, satellite it all over
the world and charge twenty dollars each to
watch it. We could make a fortune.”
By the mid-seventies Harrison was ‘able to
see the whole amazing period with at least a
measure of good humor.

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at Euston Station,

London, 1967.

77
 Recording Wonderwall in
Bombay, June 9, 1968.

Setting off for Rishikesh.

78
George and the Maharishi, London.

Two Beatles on the banks of the

sacred Ganges river.

79
 The Beatles enjoying a sunny afternoon at the Maharishi’s ashram.

Setting off to India.

80
Life with the giggly cosmic guru.

81
82
The now derelict ashram as it is today.

83
84
A magnificent view of the slowly winding Ganges from the Maharishi’s now abandoned court.

Beautiful graffiti left by modern day visitors to the empty ashram.

85

“The world is ready for a mystic revolution.” George Harrison, 1967
Opposite: The Harrisons leave Esther
Town Court following a brief trial
which ultimately led to the couple
being convicted of possessing hashish.
Although they only received a small
fine, the drug conviction caused George,
significant immigration hassles.
86
CHAPTER FIVE
GOD’S EYE
F
rom the first eerie twang of the Indian sitar in the motion
picture soundtrack of the Beatles second feature film Help!
George Harrison was forever hooked. From that moment all
things Hindu - philosophy, diet, fashion, literature and art, held
their transcendent sway over the young man who shuttled his
revelations across the Indian subcontinent into the appreciative
arms of a turned on generation of seekers. Suddenly, in tiny
bedrooms and cluttered crash pads around the world, young people were
ripping down their tattered M.C. Escher posters in favor of brightly
colored representations of an array of multi-armed benevolent gods
from Buddha to Brahma. At the very hub of this spiritual revolution was
George’s friend and mentor, sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.
“I met him at Peter Sellers’ house in London for dinner,” recalled
George of their introduction in 1966, “and he offered to give me some
instruction on the basics of sitar. It was the first time I actually approached
music with a bit of discipline. Later, I started really listening to Indian
music, and for the next two years I hardly even touched the guitar,
except for recording. Having all these material things… I still wanted
something more, and it came to me in the form of Ravi Shankar.” ‘
By the late summer of 1967, both George and Pattie Harrison
became absorbed in cultivating their spiritual lives. They had
already endeavored to teach themselves meditation from books
but weren’t really making much headway So when a girlfriend of
Pattie’s suggested she attend a lecture on Transcendental Meditation
at Caxton Hall, London, she readily accepted and afterward signed
up to become a member.
George, meanwhile, alerted the other Beatles that the Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi was coming to London and they could hear him speak
at the Hilton Hotel on August 24th. They went, and were impressed
The Harrisons leave the Esher Town Court following an appearance answering charges of
possession of hashish.

87
88
89
90
Ringo and George detained by a Blue
Meanie, London, 1968.

91
 The Beatles attend the grand premier of the group’s animated feature, Yellow Submarine in Central London.

92
George Harrison circa 1968.

93

Harrison busted for possession of
marijuana at his Esher bungalow
and looking none too pleased at the
uncivilized of interruption of his
privacy, March 12, 1969.
94
by what they heard. Afterward, the Maharishi met the boys and
invited them to a ten day conference in Bangor, North Wales, and
the next day. Travelling with the guru by train (or “The Mystical
Special” as the London Daily Mirror called it) were Mick Jagger,
Marianne Faithfull, and Pattie’s younger sister, Jenny Boyd,
among others. George especially was genuinely excited about the
prospect of finally hooking up with someone who, it seemed, might
be able to provide some answers to the Beatles’ nonstop, topsy
turvy existence. Naturally, the platform at Bangor was mobbed by
hundreds of screaming fans. John Lennon later confided the naive
yogi actually thought the crowds turned out to see him.
On August 27, 1967, the Beatles were formally initiated into
his society some distressing news suddenly came through from
London - Brian Epstein was dead. ` Although the Beatles were
naturally concerned about how Epstein’s untimely demise might
affect their careers and thus their staggering collective fortunes,
for George Harrison the tragedy only encouraged his further retreat
into the yogic philosophy that by now consumed him.
On tour with American blue’s
group Delany & Bonnie, Denmark,
December, 1969.

95
 IMA

96
 Eric Clapton, Bonnie Bramlett, Delaney Bramlett and George.

AGE

97
 London 1969.

98
99
 Relaxing at the only recently purchased Friar
Park, Paradise Road, Henley-on-Thames.

Harrison and entourage arrive in India.
Still, it was with great enthusiasm and optimism all round that
George, John, their wives and a few close friends arrived at New
Delhi Airport on the morning of February 16, 1968, to begin serious
study with the Maharishi at his extravagant Rishikesh retreat.
As one day slipped casually into the next and the initial excitement
of the trip subsided, the boys’ pent up tensions slowly began to
unravel under the magic spell of the meditation. Most days it was
the normally sluggish John who was the first up, and after about a
half hour of meditation he would go for a leisurely stroll round the
compound with George.
Soon, however, the inevitable happened, and the Beatles’ fascination
with TM slowly began to subside. After all, sitting hour after hour
silently muttering a Sanskrit syllable to oneself (no matter how exotic
the locale) did tend to become a little boring. Ringo and his wife,
Maureen, left after only ten days.
McCartney, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly anxious over
the preliminary organisation of Apple, a pet project meant to bring at
least a semblance of order to the Beatles’ rapidly declining business
empire. Despite the distractions, however, Paul and his girlfriend,
actress Jane Asher, managed to stick it out for six weeks before jetting
off home. Were they disillusioned with the teaching? They were asked
upon their return. “No,” said Paul, “just a little homesick.”

100
 That left John and George, the Maharishi’s most ardent
believers. So besotted were they with the bearded holy
man that even when they heard a rumor that the Maharishi
had made a very definite bid for the earthly affections of
Mia Farrow; they were loath to believe it. Within a week
Farrow had gone on a tiger hunt in the south. It was
suggested by the Maharishi’s staff she would be returning
shortly thereafter. She never did.
John and George were extremely hurt and confused by
the whole affair, all the while enthusiastically counselled
to drop the guru once and for all and go home.
The Beatles stormed out of the bungalow and rang for
a taxi from the ashram’s dining hall before racing back to
their quarters to pack. As they were filing out the main gate, a disciple Arriving for sessions for the Beatles’
was sent by the Maharishi to make one last plea for them to calm down Abbey Road.
and talk things over. But it was too late the Beatles, like so many times
in the past, had burned their bridges and were moving on.
There isn’t much doubt the Harrisons’ admittedly jet set lifestyle
was both a blessing and a curse to their yoga practice. On one hand,
their social mobility gave them access to virtually anyone they wanted
to meet; on the other, it threw a lot of fuel on the fire of passions
they were both struggling to control. For George and Pattie Harrison
their abiding interest in Krishna consciousness was a double edged Taking a break during the recording
sword. The transcendental power of the mantra was both liberating of the haunting Something.
and inspirational, but the rigid dictates of their “new” guru Srila
Prabhupada’s no nonsense philosophy tended to expose faint cracks in
their already shaky marriage.
By early 1973 George was more involved than ever with the London
Radha Krishna Temple. When Prabhupada noted that because of growing
attendance their London property was no longer suitable, Harrison
readily agreed to finance the acquisition of yet another house. This time
it should be something really grand, some place with prestige to attract a
more select following, and preferably in the country with large grounds
to accommodate the many outdoor festivals held each year. In short, a
real showplace for Krishna consciousness. A place where people could
get a taste of the splendor of devotional service to the Supreme Lord. A
tall order, to be sure, but after all, it wasn’t every day a Beatle got to go
house hunting for God!
Eventually they found the perfect site in what was to become
Bhaktivedanta Manor, in Letchmoore Heath, just outside London.
George negotiated down the exorbitant asking price, then bought the
property. In early March 1973, the Krishna devotees moved in.
Harrison’s journey into Bhakti Yoga or Krishna consciousness
has taken him all over the world, but it is his various pilgrimages

101

Gigging with John Lennon and friends
at the London Lyceum Ballroom,
Monday, May 15, 1969.
102
to holy sites in India he sees as the highlight of his devotional
life. In a 1974 questionnaire published in England’s Melody
Maker, he describes seeking Sri Krishna in His sacred homeland
of Vrndavana as his all time most thrilling experience. Retracing
the footsteps of this entrancing, rain cloud colored cowherd was
to George indescribably ecstatic.
By the fall of 1977, the eighty one year old Srila Prabhupada’s
health was beginning to seriously deteriorate. George was informed
of his guru’s condition by his old friend Syamasundar during one
of Harrison’s semi-regular visits to Bhaktivedanta Manor.
“Will he live?” George asked. “He’s in no immediate danger,
but it doesn’t really look too promising,” replied the devotee sadly.
That afternoon, George revved up the engine of his jet black
Ferrari and took a long, fast drive through Oxfordshire’s winding
back roads, something he often did when he needed to get away
from the unrelenting swoosh of his lifestyle. Meanwhile, a world
away in India, a small band of Prabhupada’s key men were silently
chanting to themselves outside their guru’s private quarters in
ISKCON’s Krishna Balaram Temple in Vrndavana.
In his bed, surrounded by several solemn devotees, Prabhupada
very slowly inched a simple gold ring from
his finger and pressed it into the hand of one
of them. “Please, give this to George. He
was a good friend to us all. He loves Krishna
sincerely and I love him. He was my archangel”
Srila Prabhupada passed away on the evening
of November 14, 1977.
The road to hell, they say, is straight and
broad. The road to heaven, however, is narrow,
rough and treacherous. One is easy; the other
difficult. George Harrison’s arduous spiritual
trek was fraught with disappointment and
pain almost from the beginning. In 1967,
after finally coming to grips with the tug of
his inner voice, he began a frantic search for
someone or something that could help him on
his way. “I used to laugh when I read about
Cliff Richard being a Christian,” Harrison has said “I still
cringe when I hear about it, but I know now religion and God
are the only things that exist. I know some people think I’m a
nut case. I find it hard not to myself, sometimes, because I still
see so many things in an ordinary way. But I know that when
you believe, it’s real and nice. Not believing, it’s all confusion
and emptiness.”
“I believe I love my guitar more than
the others love theirs. For John and
Paul, song writing is pretty important
and guitar playing is a means to an
end. While they’re making up new
tunes I can thoroughly enjoy myself
just doodling around with a guitar
for a whole evening. I’m fascinated by
new sounds I can get from different
instruments I tr y out. I’m not sure that
makes me particularly musical. Just
call me a guitar fanatic instead, and I’ll
be satisfied.” “George Harrison”

103
 At Kinfauns, 1969.

104
Harrison has always seen Ravi Shankar as a kind of father figure,
as well as musical mentor. In many ways Shankar was an open
door for George in reference to the Beatles almost lifelong love
of all things Indian.

105
 With Apple promo man, Pete Bennett, during the promotional campaign of All Things Must Pass,
New York 1969.

106
Harrison and his Hare Krishna bodies, 1969

107
 “Friends are all souls that we’ve known in
other lives. We’re drawn to each other. That’s
how I feel about friends. Even if I’ve only
known them for a day, it doesn’t matter. I’m
not going to wait till I’ve known them two
years, because anyway we have met somewhere
before, you know.” “George Harrison”

HAREkrishna

Chanting Hare Krishna at the release party for The Radha Krishna Temple’s Apple LP.

108
109
 ISKCON’s Burry Place temple in London,1969.
George stood as guarantor with the landlord
for their occupancy.

Sri Sri London Ishwara, the original deities London, 1969

of ISKCON London.

110
His Divine Grace, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prahupada, Harrison enjoys Krishna Prasadam, London 1969.
the founder of ISKCON and George’s guru.

Sri Sri Radha Krishna in the mystical forests of Vrndavana.

111

FURTHER ENDEAVOR
“You can destroy our planet, but the souls are going to keep on going, they’ll
keep on getting new bodies and going on to other planets. So in the end it
really doesn’t matter.” George Harrison, 1998
The now iconic George Harrison
and Friends concert tour of 1974.
112
CHAPTER SIX
A
fter thirty one years on the job, Harry Harrison was only
too happy to permanently park his bus when, in 1965,
George generously offered his dad an early retirement.
“So how much are you making these days?” asked the
junior Harrison during one of his now infrequent trips
north on a weekend sabbatical from the band.
“Around ten quid”, Harry replied.
“A day?” asked George incredulously.
When his father told him no, that was what he was taking home
weekly, George was adamant. “I’ll give you five times that for sitting
around doing nothing.”
“Son,” Harry shot back, smiling broadly, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”
The next order of business for the Harrisons’ upwardly mobile young
son was to purchase for his parents a modern new home in the village
of Appleton, a smart suburb near Warrington, in Cheshire.
“It was lovely,” said Harry. “Very private on three splendid acres of
gardens. I think George paid around £10,000, but it was worth every
penny. Upstairs, there was a lovely, long room we used for entertaining.
Pattie and Louise talked together quite a bit about the furniture as I recall.
Eventually they settled on a modern look. I was lost to all that myself
though, and mainly looked after the outdoor work with the gardener.”
For the Harrisons their new home was a treat. Unfortunately, they
spent only five happy years there together before Louise became
seriously ill and died of cancer on July 7, 1970. For everyone in George’s
family it was a crushing blow. Sadly, the horrific spectre of cancer was
to show up again and again in the Harrison’s close knit inner circle.
Once Mrs. Harrison’s passing was announced to the press, the
genuine and immediate out poring of love and affection for her from
fans worldwide was overwhelming. Bouquets and cards of sympathy
harri’s on tour
113
 1974 Press conference.

114
Billy’s big ass afro, 1974.

115
 George in 1974. He is wearing Tulsi beads which are worn by all Krishna followers.

116
Although George lost his voice during the tour his
enthusiasm did not suffer.

117
 More from the critically panned,
though innovative 1974 tour.

118
119
 G e orge and friends me et w ith
President G erald R . Ford in the
O val Office of the White House,
De cemb er 12, 1974.

120
121
122
“George had some unique
licks. His solos are like
a singer. He had a kind
of crying technique. He
was a really good player.
He’s a very emotional
guy; he’s very spiritual
and sensitive. He’s also a
very kind hearted person.”
Billy Preston

123
124
125

George Harrison, a singular talent
and a provo c ative advo c ate of
innate spirituality,
126
were sent by the hundreds, both to the Harrisons’ home and to the
Beatles Apple offices. A group of concerned American fans soon
established the Louise F. Harrison Memorial Cancer Fund, as well
as the Apple staff all sent flowers but did not attend the private
family funeral in Liverpool.
George was at his mother’s bedside when she passed away.
Naturally he was deeply troubled and upset by her death, but this was
his Krishna conscious period and the teachings of Srila Prabhupada
were of great and lasting comfort.
Despite the tragedy, by late November of that year, George’s
marathon three record set, All Things Must Pass, was released in
the States and immediately began a steady climb to number one.
It remained on the charts for an incredible thirty eight weeks. The
album, with its haunting melodies and sweeping, majestic production,
was the culmination of months of painstakingly hard work by Harrison
and producer Phil Spector. Having been continually short changed as
a Beatle, George Harrison had finally come into his own. Not only
was the album a gripping musical masterpiece but it was also imbued
with an important spiritual message. Inspired by Harrison’s homespun
philosophy, young people everywhere began looking inside themselves
for their own answers. The album spawned two popular singles, What
Is Life and the international megahit, My Sweet Lord. Almost overnight,
Hare Krishna became a household word, and George Harrison was
elevated, as a solo artist, to superstar status.
His next public venture, the humanitarian Concert for Bangladesh,
showed the world George Harrison was more than willing to go out on
a limb for a cause in which he truly believed. It was the first example of
the staggering philanthropic power of rock. The historic concert was the
benevolent precursor of events like Live Aid, the Prince’s Trust annual
shows and the Amnesty International tours. Harrison and his three
famous cohorts had already shown us that rock music had a mind; now
he would prove to everyone that it had a heart as well.
The cause, a bloody vendetta of terror between West Pakistan and
Bangladesh, came to the attention of George through his great friend
Ravi Shankar. “When I talked with him,” said Shankar in an interview
conducted two days following the August 1971 concerts, “he was
impressed by my sincerity, and l gave him lots to read and explained
the situation.”
The roster of musicians slated to appear at the benefit read like a
who’s who of rock and roll. On drums were Ringo Starr and super
session man Jim Keltner. Country rocker Leon Russell and Billy
Preston took over on keyboards, while Eric Clapton, George Harrison
and Jesse Ed Davis looked after most of the guitar work. In addition,
the well known Apple band, Badfinger, provided vocal harmonies and
strummed along on acoustic guitars. Klaus Voormann played bass,
and Jim Horn, as his name implies, led the electrifying horn section.
On the Indian side of things, Ravi Shankar was on hand with his sitar,
accompanied by his ever present tabla man, the portly Alla Rakha.
Phil Spector was in charge of recording the historic event, and Apple
man Pete Bennett with promoting it. One notable name, however,
was still missing. The big question on everybody’s mind was, “What
about Bob Dylan?”
Ever since word about the shows first spread, there was much
speculation that the ultra reclusive Dylan might turn up to trade
licks with his old pal George. Behind the scenes, Harrison was doing
everything he could to make that rumor a reality. At first Bob was
sceptical, but willing to listen to what Harrison had to say. “I’ll
consider it, man,” he told George.
George and Billy in flight, 1974.
Dylan seemed to be tempted by Harrison’s constant encouragement
to leave the self imposed isolation in which he had been living for the
past five years. As the day drew near, he showed up more than once
at Harrison’s New York hotel to party. When the subject of the show
would come up, however, the great tune smith turned characteristically
quiet. He eventually agreed to join Harrison for the final rehearsal and
sound check at the Garden, and depending on how things went, would
let him know if he “felt like” performing.
Huddled together on the gigantic cable strewn stage, the two men
looked surprisingly inconsequential for the rock legends that they
were. Strumming first through the Harrison-Dylan If Not for You, they
conferred on chord changes, assisted the technical staff with their
sound checks and meandered through a long list of numbers under
consideration for the show.
Harrison’s next solo release, the philosophical Living in the Material
World of 1973, was his last major attempt to promote his Krishna
(Gaudiya Vaishnava) beliefs en masse. Although many reviewers saw
the album as somewhat self involved and even maudlin, Harrison
remained confident that those who truly needed to would hear his George and Ringo hanging with
God centred message. Everybody else, as usual, would either ignore Beatle’s promo man, Pete Bennet.
the work or, worse; see it simply as an old Beatle’s newest trick.
As usual with any Harrison directed work, the album contained
the talents of a mighty array of session players including Ringo Starr,
Nicky Hopkins, Gary Wright and Klaus Voormann, to name but a
few. Inside the tastefully designed gatefold cover Was a photograph
of George hosting his own version of the Last Supper on the grounds
of a lavish estate, dressed as a Catholic priest complete with a pair
of very deadly looking six shooters strapped to his Waist. Nothing to
get excited about, however - just George lampooning the established
Western religious order with a parody of the materialism so prevalent

127

George’s first concert tour was
notable for not only showcasing his
own work, but also, an extended
Indian music section.
Harrison on tour, 1974.
128
in today’s Christendom. The enclosed lyric sheet was illustrated with
a fiery full color painting of Krishna as the charioteer for his friend
and disciple Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, the original
setting for the celestial Bhagavad Gita, Harrison’s bible. Lyrically,
the songs reflected the sombre musical meanderings of a very straight
Hare Krishna, which Harrison still was, in spirit if not in practice.
Titles like The Lord Loves the One Who Loves the Lord, The Light
That Has Lighted the World, Be Here Now and Don’t Let Me Wait
Too Long, made it clear to everyone where the spiritually inclined
ex-Beatle’s head was at. Still for all its blatantly yogic overtones, the
million selling LP managed to produce one hit single in the mantra-
like Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth), which topped the charts
in America for three months.
Out of the gate like a bullet with All Things Must Pass, Harrison’s
Living in the Material World and the subsequent Dark Horse failed
to catch fire with the majority of the record buying public. While Harrison
maintained the negative reaction to the tour didn’t bother him, he was, in
fact, badly bruised by it. Discouraged, as well, over Dark Horse’s poor sales
and still quietly brooding over Pattie’s embarrassing departure to live with
Eric Clapton, George soon sank into a deep, seemingly irreversible
Harrison takes a breather at Bangladesh. depression. He would not see friends, rarely went out and became verbally
abusive to those around him. He also all but abandoned his spiritual practice,
although there was still the heavy Krishna conscious rap. Always the rap.
Things really got bad in early 1976, when his health started to decline,
partly because of his increased drinking. One day, looking into that same
magnificent peer glass in which old Sir Frank used to primp prior to seeing
his clients, Harrison noticed his eyes had turned a deep, sickly yellow. He
was also rapidly losing weight, looking more and more like one of the
refugees he had worked so hard to save just five years earlier. Thumbing
through Paramahansa Yogananda’s Scientific Healing Affirmations,
he even began chanting translated Kriya Yoga mantras aimed at restoring
lost health. Eventually, though, he gave in to his new girlfriend, Olivia’s,
insistence that he consult a physician, and was diagnosed as having serum
hepatitis. He had suffered some liver damage, for which he was prescribed
large doses of vitamins. Unfortunately, Harrison didn’t respond to treatment.
The only positive outcome of this nightmare was that at least now he was
scared, scared enough to make an effort to truly become well.

129

With Ravi Shankar’s brother, 1974.
A bushy George, London, 1975.
130
Toward that end, Olivia contacted the well known acupuncturist
to the stars, Dr. Zion Yu in California. She had first heard of the
doctor after her younger brother Peter sought treatment with him
following a near fatal motorcycle accident. After several visits
to Dr. Yu, Harrison’s condition began to steadily improve, and
within a few months he seemed to be completely cured.
Following the disastrous Dark Horse, George recorded
another marginally successful album with the rather inscrutable
title of Extra Texture - Read All About It. Released in Britain on
September 22, 1975, the LP contained several very listenable
but rather depressing cuts, among them Grey Cloudy Lies, This
Guitar Can’t Keep From Crying, World of Stone and Tired of
Midnight Blue.
Harrison’s next album, the infinitely more accessible Thirty
Three & 1/3, seemed to indicate that he was now squarely back on
musical track. Behind the scenes, however, things were still fairly
tangled up. Harrison had missed his July 26, 1976, deadline by two
months and when he finally arrived in LA. to deliver the master
tapes to A&M, he discovered that Jerry Moss was preparing to sue
him for the delay - to the tune of a staggering S10 million.
George’s response was to ring the brass at Warner Brothers
and offer the album to them on the condition they immediately
buy out his contract with A&M. Warner agreed and made plans
to promptly release the LP. In appreciation, Harrison consented
(for the first time in several records) to actively promote the
album by travelling with Olivia to several major American cities,
meeting freely with the media at each stop.
“Some of the songs” Harrison commented, “are closer to the
songs and spirit of All Things Must Pass. This new one has a
more focused production, though, and it’s very positive, very
up, and most of the last album, Extra Texture. That one caught
me in a less than happy mood.”
It was a good thing Harrison was becoming so open to the
humor behind the hassles of the material world, as he was then up
to his ears in litigation brought against him by the proprietors of
Bright Tunes Music Corporation, who were alleging that George
had lifted the tune for his My Sweet Lord from the Chiffons’ He’s
So Fine, the 1963 classic to which they owned the rights.
The controversial case went to court in January 1976 and
garnered international headlines with each and every bump
and grind of the slowly moving wheels of justice. Represented
by an army of high powered copyright lawyers, Harrison sat
quietly in the crowded New York City court as a barrage of nasty
accusations and innuendos flew back and forth.
 Though Harrison may not have been aware of the distinct
similarities between the two hit tunes, somewhere along the
way either he or Billy Preston inserted the critical three notes
that later convinced District Judge Owen that George had indeed
committed an act of plagiarism against Bright Tunes. In his final
statement before the court, Owen pronounced his judgement:
“Did Harrison deliberately use the music of He’s So Fine? I do
not believe he did so deliberately. Nevertheless, it is clear that My
Sweet Lord is the very same song as He’s So Fine with different
words, and Harrison had access to He’s So Fine. This is, under
the law, infringement of copyright, and is no less so even though
subconsciously accomplished.”
Harrison’s former manager, Allen Klein, had in 1978 - after
the trial commenced - purchased the rights to He’s So Fine and
was therefore the direct beneficiary of George’s grief. The court
took note of this, considering it interference by Klein, and limited
the damages to what he had paid for the song - $587,000, which Paul McCartney one said George’s
Harrison paid as ordered in 1981. hair was so thick it was like “a fuckin’
While promoting Thirty-Three & 1/3, Harrison reflected: “I’d be turban.” Here we see why.
willing every time I write a song if somebody will have a computer
and I can just go up to the thing and sing my new song into it and Touching down at Hearthrow.

131

An unwell Harrison after being stricken
with a life threatening bout of hepatitis
in the mid seventies.
132
the computer will say sorry or yes,
ok. I’m willing to do that, because
the last thing I want to do is keep
spending the rest of my life in court, or
being faced with that problem. Once
you get people thinking, “Oh, Well,
they beat Harrison on My Sweet Lord,
let’s sue” they can sue the World! It
made me so paranoid about writing.
I thought, “God, I don’t even want
to touch the guitar or the piano, in
case I’m touching somebody’s note.”
Somebody might own that note, so
you’d better watch out!”
Probably the only good thing to
come out of the Bright Tunes ordeal
for Harrison was that it gave him the
inspiration to compose This Song a biting satire of the whole
sordid affair, and the biggest tune on Thirty Three & 1/3. “All
in all,” said a Warner Brothers official as This Song started its
steady climb up the American charts, “Harrison picked a mighty
tough way to get a hit record.”
George meets the press in ‘76.

The ornate front hall in Friar Park.

Naughty school boy George at Friar Park, 1976.

133
 Parmahamsa Yoganada, 1,000
year old Himalayan Yogi, Babaji,
and Lahari Maharsi.

134
Yogananda’s guru, Sri Yutaswar.

135
 A transcendental gallery of Gurus: Left to Right: Meher
Baba, Neem Karoli Baba, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

136
Jesus Christ, Rama Krishna, Baba Ram Das, and Swami
Satchitananda.

137
 Swami Vivikananda, Guru Maharaji, Mahatma Gandhi,
and Sai Baba.

138
Srila A.C. Bhakitvedanta Swami Prabhupada.

139
 Harrison’s purchase of Friar Park makes headlines, 1970.

140
Srila Prabhupada, Pattie Boyd, and
Dhanajaya Dasa strolling the grounds
of Friar Park.

141
142
An intimate inside look of the house and grounds of Friar Park, Paradise Road, Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire.

143
 Beatle buddy, artist “Legs” Larry Smith,
tinkles the ivories in Harrison’s antique
strewn front parlor.

George boating underneath his

fairyland estate.

Harrison’s home Krishna temple.

144
145
146
147
 A model of Friar Park inside the extravagant home.

Friar Park End, originally the stables for the stately home, but now a separate property which is occasionally
up for rental.

148
There is no question that
George, in large part, defined
himself in many ways by his
ownership of Friar Park.
The property is intensively
interesting and unique with
120 rooms spread over thirty
plus acres.

149

THE QUIET ONE
Hope to get out of this place by the Lord Sri Krishna’s grace, my salvation
from the material world.” - George Harrison- ‘Living In The Material World, 1973
G e o r g e’s f l o w e r l a d e n s t a r on
Ho l l y w o o d B l v d .
150
CHAPTER SEVEN
A
fter his wife, Louise, died, Harry Harrison often went to
visit his sons at Friar Park. Growing his striking silver
hair well past his shoulders, the sixty five year old began
spending a lot of time with George and his friends, even
joining his son on the road for the 1974 Dark Horse
tour. The elder Harrison was happier and more fulfilled
than he had ever dreamed possible. Although he missed
Louise terribly, he made a good life for himself at Appleton and seemed
quite content to putter about in the garden, or take a stroll down to his
local pub for a friendly pint or two with his mates.
One evening in May 1978, George and Olivia went to bed early
after a particularly exhausting day. Sometime during the night George
became aware of a dull blue and gold light ringing the darkened room.
Suddenly, there was his father, standing solemnly in the middle of
the large room looking lovingly down at his astonished son. After a
moment or two, Harry quietly bade George and his brothers’ farewell
and then disappeared. That same day, at his home in Cheshire, Harry
Harrison died of emphysema, related to a lifetime of very heavy
smoking. Although everyone was saddened and upset, George was
comforted somewhat by what he considered to be his father’s spiritually
auspicious passing.
On August 1, 1978, George and Olivia’s only child, Dhani, was born
at the Princess Christian Nursing Home in Windsor, just a short hop
down the highway from Friar Park. Dhani is the Sanskrit word for
“wealthy,” but Harrison insists he was only aware of its significance
as a term relating to his beloved Indian music. Strangely, most of his
life his name has been incorrectly pronounced as “Danny”, stranger
still, the Harrisons never really made an effort to correct the error.
So excited was George by the birth of his son and heir that he rushed
down to his friend RodneyTurner’s in Henley to pick up a new baby blue
George swimming with the dolphins
in Australia, 1980’s.

151

In 1972 Harrison jokingly started the
Jim Keltner Fan Club. Keltner, the
legendary gentleman session drummer,
played with George for years and was
even an occasional member of the
Travelling Wilburies.
George, his only son Dhani, and Olivia
in the mid-eighties.
152
Rolls Royce he had ordered in celebration of the great event. Harrison was
like a man reborn. So concerned and possessive was he that, for the next
few months, only he and Olivia were allowed to touch young Dhani. Like
John Lennon after his son Sean was born, George was frantic that the baby
might “pick up” something if handled by anyone. These Beatles, it seems,
take their babies very seriously.
George and Olivia invited her parents to fly over from California to be
the sole guests at their secret wedding on September 2nd at the Henley
Registry Office. Sometime later, the happy couple treated themselves to a
luxurious honeymoon in Tunisia. By the time they returned, George was
anxious to get back to work.
Harrison’s first musical project following his father’s passing and
Dhani’s arrival was the masterfully conceived and lyrically brilliant
George Harrison, issued in England on February 23, 1979. The LP
featured ten thoughtful new tracks and was once again infused with
Harrison’s familiar Krishna conscious philosophy, only this time
presented in a far more palatable manner, sandwiched as it was between
a lot of genuinely great music. “It’s the first time I’ve done a birth, a
marriage and a death during making a record,” says George. “We had a
lot of stoppages, but I don’t think it really took any longer than any other
album to record. The other night Mick Ralphs from Bad Company said
to me, ‘Do you feel like you’re in the after the album lull?’ And I said,
‘I’m in that while I’m making it.”
By 1980, George was beginning to feel the time was right to record
another album. Gathering together an array of old friends - Ringo,
Alla Rakha, Ray Cooper, Herbie Flowers, Willie Weeks, Al Kooper,
Jim Keltner and Tom Scott - Harrison began sessions at Friar Park
for what would later become Somewhere in England. The album
Harrison submitted to Warner Brothers records in Los Angeles
consisted of eight new tracks as well as two old standard, Baltimore
Oriole and Hong Kong Blues. It also included a suitably slick,
sophisticated cover photo of George’s profile merged with a satellite
shot of a cloudy Great Britain. Warner Brothers unfortunately was
not particularly impressed with either the music or art and tersely
rejected the album. In the end, four tracks were cut - Flying Hour,
Lay His Head, Sat Singing and Tears of the World - and in their place,
four new Harrisongs were added, Tear Drops, Blood From a Clone,
That Which I Have Lost and All Those Years Ago. A new cover was
also put together by Ray Cooper and photographer Caroline Irwin.
The album, released in June 1981, spawned two singles, Tear Drops
and All Those Years Ago, Harrison’s touching tribute to his late
partner, John Lennon.
George Harrison was at home sleeping when the phone rang.
The jarring noise startled him, and left him shaking. Before he even
touched the receiver he felt that something must be very wrong. The Harrison at Sea World Brisbane,
wavering, crackling line told him instantly the call was from overseas Australia.
- it was Louise, Harrison’s eldest sister, who had lived stateside for
many years. George quickly began to prepare himself for what he
was sure be bad news.
That afternoon in London, the Beatles’ former promo man, Derek
Taylor, wandered over to Apple’s last sorry incarnation on St. James
Street to sit with the company’s managing director, Neil Aspinall,
and wait for the calls to start flooding in. John Lennon had been shot
dead by a maniac at point blank range on December 8, 1980, as he
and Yoko were returning from a late night mixing session for a tune
called Walking on Thin Ice. After a couple of awkward hours spent
painfully reminiscing, Taylor and Aspinall said goodbye. Derek
walked into the street and caught a cab to George Harrison’s London
office. A short time later, he summoned up the courage to finally
ring George. After a decade spent on the phone, this was one call he
dreaded. “George, maybe you should make some sort of statement,
just to get the bastards off your back.”

153
 With Eric Idle at Friar Park.
Harrison hangs out with one of the
many Formula One drivers he knew
so well. George was a huge fan.
154
“I can’t now,” Harrison replied. There was a long pause. “Later, maybe.”
The line suddenly clicked off. Taylor replaced the receiver and lit
a cigarette. He didn’t want to push the issue, but his better judgement
told him the longer George waited to speak, the worse it would
ultimately be. Less than an hour later he was back on the line to
the Park. This time George agreed to help the misty eyed PR man
formulate a statement for the press:
“After all we went through together I had and still have great love
and respect for him (John Lennon). I am shocked and stunned. To
rob life is the ultimate robbery in life. This perpetual encroachment
on other people’s space is taken to the limit with the use of a gun.
It is an outrage that people can take other people’s lives when they
obviously haven’t got their own lives in order.”
Recorded at Friar Park Studios, All Those Years Ago was originally
intended as a vehicle for Ringo. But following Lennon’s murder
in December 1980, it was rewritten by George to include specific
reference to the tragedy on the spur of the moment; Harrison decided
it would be fitting if he were joined on the session by Ringo and Paul.
Happily, they agreed, thus making it the first and only Beatles’ reunion
of the new decade. Produced with the help of George Martin, the song
included backup vocals by Linda McCartney and Denny Laine, who
tells me he has yet to be paid for the session! Although it was a pretty
bleak circumstance under which to record a new “Beatle” song, it was
nevertheless a touching gesture. The tune rose to number two on the
charts and remains a popular jukebox hit in North America to this day.
 The unlikely harbinger of Harrison’s renewed enthusiasm for his art
came in the person of affable country rocker Carl Perkins, one of George’s
earliest and most important musical influences. Perkins, fifty three, was
musically as sharp as ever, but in the past few years had experienced a
serious slump in his remarkable career. How ironic that the musician who
helped inspire Harrison to pick up the guitar in the first place would be
responsible for bringing him back into the fold. Seriously considering
retirement himself, Perkins and his manager cooked up the idea of a star
studded rockabilly extravaganza featuring the creme de la creme of the pop
world in a concert designed to showcase Perkin’s exceptional talents.
To that end, he video taped personalised invitations to Ringo Starr, Eric At the racetrack.
Clapton, Dave Edmunds and George Harrison, among others. Within ten
days, Perkins had received notes of acceptance from everyone he contacted,
with the exception of George. “I thought I was wasting my time,” Perkins
told People magazine, “because I read that (George) would never go before a
live audience again.” Several days later, however, Harrison enthusiastically
accepted, and the big show was on. Perkins’s people engineered a lucrative
deal with the Cinemax cable network in the United States to air the one-
hour special, entitled Blue Suede Shoes.
Perkins wasn’t the first of his peers to try to coax George on stage after
his unhappy tour of America in 1974. New York promoter Sid Bernstein
attempted to get the Beatles together for an internationally televised benefit
in 1979 to aid Cambodia’s boat people, as did United Nations secretary
general Kurt Waldheim for another concert later that year. Both efforts,
unfortunately, failed to convince Harrison to perform, as did Bob Geldof,
Live Aid’s patron saint, in his bid for the guitarist to participate in his star
studded extravaganza. Until Carl Perkins ambled onto the scene in late 1985,
most observers doubted whether Harrison would ever perform on stage again.
The evening of the taping on October 21st at Lime house Studios in A rare poster advertising a concert
London, Harrison was a bundle of nerves. He paced anxiously around his by one of Harrison’s personal
heroes, Carl Perkins.
dressing room, chain smoking. Then, balancing on the arm of a sofa, he tuned
and returned his vintage Gibson. On stage, sensing George’s butterflies,
Perkins immediately eased the situation by inviting the studio audience
to clap along to Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby. Even before the end
of that first song, Harrison regained his confidence and was relishing the
spotlight after so many years spent in self imposed exile. “George Harrison,
everybodyl” yelled Perkins as the audience exploded with applause. “Don’t
he look good?” By the time Perkins, George and Dave Edmunds ripped
into the classic Your True Love, it was obvious to everyone that Harrison
was having the time of his life.
Meanwhile, Olivia stood watching in the wings, not caring the large
tears streaming down her face were making a mess of her make up.
George was back! Not just for his old buddies and the fans, but for her
and Dhani and, best of all, for himself. lt was perhaps the single happiest

155
 night of their married life. “I haven’t seen him so happy in years,”
she commented later to the press. “That’s my old George!” From that
moment on, Harrison was suddenly wild about sharing his music with
the world once again. When he wasn’t in the studio writing or recording,
he was jamming with friends at any one of a number of exotic locations.
In February 1987, he and Bob Dylan went along to see guitarist Jesse
Ed Davis play with the Graffiti Band at the Palomino Club in North
Hollywood. Before the night was out, both of them were up on stage
playing their hearts out. Overnight, it seemed, George Harrison was one
of the hottest things going, and this time he was ready for action.
George’s next major public appearance came four months later on
A rare press appearance by George
in the late seventies.
June 5th and 6th. The occasion was the Prince’s Trust annual charity
concerts at Wembley Stadium, just outside London. As usual, rumors of
an impending Beatles reunion were rife, but came to nothing. When the
lights went down and Eric Clapton stepped up to the mike to introduce
George and Ringo, the audience was ecstatic. Even half a loaf, when
it came to the Beatles, was something to shout about.
Harrison and Clapton traded lead licks on a shining version
of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, followed by a remarkably
touching rendition of Here Comes the Sun, which also featured
George’s new musical colleague, Jeff Lynne, formerly of the
Beatlesque Electric Light Orchestra.

IMAGE
Another big night for George Harrison came on January
20, 1988, when the Beatles were inducted into the Rock
‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in
Manhattan. “They had long hair, scruffy clothes, but they
had a record contract,” joked presenter Mick Jagger at the
official ceremony. “I was almost sick! I’m really proud to
be the one who leads them into the Hall of Fame.” It was a
With the Dark Horse Records band, fabulous night. George, Ringo, and Julian and Sean Lennon took the
Jiva at the Park. stage with an unusually frumpy looking Yoko Ono. The only damper on
the splendid evening came when word leaked out that Paul McCartney
would not be making the trip.
At the time of the Hall of Fame induction, Harrison’s single, Got My
Mind Set on You, was securely in the Top Ten and was rapidly heading
for number one. For once, Beatle Paul was dramatically overshadowed
by his introspective mate from Wavertree.
Despite the controversy over Paul’s absence, George was enthusiastic
when the time came for him to say a few words on behalf of the group. “I
don’t have much to say,” he began, “because I’m the quiet Beatle. We all
know why John can’t be here, and I’m sure he would be, and it’s really
hard to stand here supposedly representing the Beatles...what’s left, I’m
afraid. But we all loved him so much… it’s unfortunate that Paul’s not
here, because he was the one who had the speech in his pocket!”
George’s next album release following the Gone Troppo fiasco took
place on November 2, 1987 with the issuance of Cloud Nine.

156
With early idol Little Richard.

157
 At the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame with Little
Richard, Bob Dylan, Bruce Sprigstien, and
Mick Jagger, June 20, 1988.

158
 George in his Henley recording studio.

The grand piano at Friar Park.

Among the talents assembled for the album were Harrison’s usual
stable of superstar musicians, including Ringo, Jim Keltner, Gary
Wright, Ray Cooper and Eric Clapton. Two relative newcomers to Friar
Park Studios were Elton John and Jeff Lynne.
Lynne and Harrison were originally brought together by well known
British rocker Dave Edmunds. For years Harrison had been an ardent
admirer of Lynne’s extravagant Electric Light Orchestra.
The sweeping success of Cloud Nine went a long way toward helping
to re-establish Harrison as the major artist his many fans always knew
he was. For the first time in several years, the name George
Harrison once again translated into big ratings on radio and television.
The album opened up a whole new audience of young people to the life
and work of this reluctant world legend.
George was also part of the magnificent Travelling Wilburys. It was
the first time he had been a member of a bona tide band in eighteen
years. The inception of the big name group, consisting of Bob Dylan,
Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and George, came about rather
casually as an outgrowth of the Cloud Nine project. In April 1988,
Harrison was in Los Angeles tying up some loose ends regarding the hit Harrison memorialized in stone 2001.

159

George tours Japan with his close
friend, Eric Clapton, 1991.
Meeting the press, 1977.
A beautiful hand painted poster
advertising a Ravi Shankar concert
performance.
160
album when Warner Brothers asked him to consider recording a new tune
to back the twelve inch extended play version of the popular This is Love.
George, however, couldn’t really think of anything he had back at Friar
Park that would be suitable, and so mentioned his dilemma to Lynne and
Orbison during dinner at a swanky L.A. eatery. George suggested that the
three of them book some studio time and record something together. Orbison
and Lynne readily agreed. Bearing in mind the time restraints placed upon
the trio by the record company, Lynne suggested asking Bob Dylan if they
might use his private studio, located in the garage of his luxurious Malibu
home. A few days later, Harrison dropped by Tom Petty’s house to pick up
a guitar for the session and on the spur of the moment invited Petty to join
them. George and Jeff wrote the tune together the next day in the studio and
then persuaded Dylan to sit in as well.
After the five old pros laid down the musical tracks for the upbeat
folksy number, they sat together in Dylan’s garden on a lunch break
and wrote the words. “Okay, you guys,” said Harrison, smiling broadly,
“We’re all supposed to be such hot stuff how about some lyrics, then?”
Spying a discarded cardboard box sporting a bright orange sticker that
said Handle With Care, they had their title, and by the time it was over
a major hit as well.
So pleased were they with the finished track that Harrison decided it
was far too good to simply be stuck on the B side of one of his singles.
He suggested they do an album together. The sessions went on for about
two weeks, with some additional work done in England at Friar Park.
The group’s sidemen, dubbed “The Sideburys” by Harrison, included Jim
Keltner, percussionist Ray Cooper, Ian Wallace playing the tom toms and
Jim Horn wailing away on sax.
Lynne and Harrison came up with the name Travelling Wilburys from
a joke bandied about during the long, eight month sessions for Cloud
Nine. Apparently, someone coined the phrase “tremblin’ wilburys”
to describe the unwelcome little screw ups and glitches that occurred
while they were recording the multitrack masters, and the name stuck.
A full year before he even thought of putting a group together, Harrison
had some custom guitar picks made up that had ‘Travelling Wilburys”
printed along the top.
In keeping with the zany spirit of the album, the five co-conspirators
decided to adopt bizarre new Wilbury names. Harrison took the alias
Nelson Wilbury, while Dylan assumed the name Lucky; Petty was Charlie
T, while Orbison was called Lefty. The album, entitled The Travelling
Wilburys: Volume One, was released on October 25, 1988, on the newly
formed Wilbury Records label. Distributed by Warner Brothers, it
contained ten tracks and a tongue in cheek history lesson on the origins
of the Wilbury clan penned by one Hugh Hampton E.F. Norti-Blitz, better
known as Monty Python’s brilliant Michael Palin.
MTV in America premiered the classy Handle With Care video with
much fanfare on October 25th, and within a few short weeks the album
was selling like hotcakes on both sides of the Atlantic. There was talk of
Harrison incognito in a Los Angele’s elevator.

161
 In Washington during the 1974 Dark
Horse tour.

a Wilbury tour, scheduled for sometime in the new year, while Volume
Two was eagerly awaited by a whole new breed of Wilburymaniacs.
The staggering success of the band was a boon to George after so
many years of brooding over the musical malaise of the record industry.
But it was the energising effect on Roy Orbison’s career that secretly
pleased Harrison the most. In his final interview, Orbison praised
Harrison for persuading him to join the Wilburys at a time when his
solo career had taken a turn for the worse.
The Wilburys’ curtain however came crashing to the ground with the
sudden death of Orbison on December 6, 1988, from a massive heart
attack. Upon hearing the tragic news, George told reporters that Roy was
“a sweet, sweet man. We loved Roy, and still do. He’s out there, really, his
A charitable appearance with American spirit. You know, life flows on within you and without you. He’s around.”
TV host Hugh Downs. No matter how high any of the surviving Beatles fly in their solo
careers, there will always be the inevitable push for them to get back

162
together just one more time. Ringo has bitterly joked that even when
there’s only one Beatle left, people will still be asking, “When are you
getting back together?”
The public’s endless fascination with the Beatles is a frustrating mystery
to George. “The Beatles can’t save the world - we’ll be lucky if we can
even save ourselves,” he once said. Still, he knows the fans will always
dream of a reunion, even if it includes only three fourths of the original
group. “I have a problem, I must admit, when people try to get the Beatles
together,” George told Rolling Stone in 1988. “They’re still suggesting it
even though John is dead.... I suppose the three of us could get back
together, but it was such a struggle to find our individual
identities after the Beatles.”
Harrison says that although things are far better than they
were in the past, he still finds Paul McCartney rather “too moody” for
his liking, and admits he is “more friendly now with other musicians. Our
relationship is quite good but there’s no reunion of any Beatles,” he told the
Associated Press in 1989.
“We have been having dinner together. We are friends now; it’s the first
time we have been this close for a long time. But it doesn’t mean to say that
we are going to make another group or anything. You know I could go out and
try to become a superstar, and I tell you, if l went to an agent and a manager
and checked myself out and practiced a bit, I could do it. But I don’t really
want to do that. That’s being a kamikaze pop star, the tours and everything.
I don’t have to prove anything.... I don’t want to be in the business full time
because I’m a gardener: I plant flowers and watch them grow.”
Although he lived most of his life in the never ending scrutiny of
the media, George Harrison has always managed to be very much his
own man. Whereas most people tended to see the Beatles as public
property, Harrison remained aloof. Like a lotus flower growing in
an oily, polluted river, its delicate petals never getting wet, George
Harrison emerged unscathed from a potentially lethal dose of fame
and fortune. Even when he fell - and fall he did, many times - he
never surrendered his ideals or his stubbornly held right to live out Saying hello to fans outside Friar Park.
his life the way he wanted to. Often down, but never out, his steadfast
allegiance to the unique vision of truth served him well. In a brief, dark
world, George’s faith has been a beacon of reflected light for himself
and countless others, too. “For the forest to be green, each tree must
be green,” Harrison has often quoted the Maharishi as saying “The
movement you need is on your shoulders,” said another old friend. .
Still, no matter how you say it, or which way you choose to look,
Harrison’s truth belongs to all of us as well. And maybe that’s what we
admired most about the man after all these years. Like the simple Chauncey
Gardener in the film Being There, George Harrison carefully cultivated his
own small garden of truth, season after season. Which, of course, is really
just about all any of us can do.

163
 Sri Sri Radha L ondon
Is h w a r a , S o h o S q u a r e ,
L ondon.

Krishna Balaram Temple,

Vrndavana, U.P.

164
Sri Sri Radha and Krishna in Mathura.

Harrison visits ISKCON’s Sri Dham

Mayapura project in the mid-eighties.

165
 Several images from George Harrison’s final spiritual pilgrimage in Vrndavana, India.

166
“George Harrison displayed great respect for
Srila Prabhupada. He bowed before Prabhupada
at each of their meetings, even though he was
never formally initiated… George was truly a
spiritual person… George was a real person, and
when he could have been vain and filled with airs
like many wealthy and idolized people, he was
instead ver y unassuming. George was caring,
sensitive, honest, a great conversationalist,
deeply reflective, and spiced with a keen sense
of humor. Because he often visited us, ate with
us, and sang with us, he became our friend. His
wife, Olivia, calls Shyamasundara, Mukunda,
George, and me ‘the old gang… George not
only supported us by his friendship but by his
deeds as well, his many selfless ser vices to Srila
Prabhupada. He encouraged our ‘Hare Krishna
Mantra’ and ‘Govinda’ recording projects from
the beginning. Among so many other ser vices,
he financed Prabhupada’s Krishna book, bought
valuable slabs of exotic marble for our altars,
and gave us Bhaktivedanta Manor.” Guru Dasa

167
 Said George of Prabhupada; “He
was a friend. He is my master,
who I have respect for. The
thing that always impressed me
most about Prabhupada was his
saying, ‘I am the servant of the
servant of the servant.’ I like
that. A lot of people say, ‘I’m
it. I’m the divine incarnation.
I’m here, and let me hip you.’
But Prabhupada was never
like that. I like Prabhupada’s
humbleness. None of us is God
– just His servant.”

168
Performing the ritualistic circumambulation of Krsna’s holy land of Vrndavana, known as Parikrama.

169
170
171
 Visiting the holy places of Krishna on his final trip to Vrndavana.

172
Meditating in Srila Prabhupada’s room at Radha Damodar temple.

173
 Bhaktivedanta Manor in
Letchmore Heath outside of
London. The grand estate
Harrison gifted to the Hare
Krishna movement.

174
G e orge’s final v isit to the Manor.

A remembrance for George at the Manor lead by Olivia.

175

The world is informed of George
Harrison’s passing, on November
29, 2001.
176
The evening of December 30, 1999 was pleasant for the
Harrisons. George had been to visit his brother, Peter, and his wife
Pauline, who were making plans for the next day’s New Year’s
Eve Millennium party, complete with fireworks and celebrity
friends. Around midnight George settled in to watch a movie with
Olivia and then locked up. The couple had gone to bed at around
two a.m.
At three twenty Olivia was awoken by the sound of breaking
glass. She woke George: “Somebody’s in here. I heard a window
smash!” Thinking that perhaps a chandelier had fallen, George
fumbled for his boots, tossed on a jacket over his pyjamas, and
began to make his way to the hall. He smelt cigarette smoke,
looked down over the banisters and saw a shadowy stranger. “You
get down here!” the man bellowed, adding cryptically, “You know
what it is!”
The man, around six feet tall, wearing blue jeans and a black
leather jacket, had a mass of long blond hair. George called the
housekeeper and told her to ring 999, while Olivia alerted the rest
of the staff on the intercom. His mother-in-law and Dhani were
sleeping in another wing, and Olivia was close by, so Harrison didn’t
think twice before he went downstairs to confront the intruder. The
man was holding what appeared to be a pole, and a knife with a
long blade.
He saw the man pace frantically about from room to room,
and hoping to “confuse or distract” him, George yelled, “Hare
Krishna, Hare Krishna!” This enraged the man, who lunged up the
stairs waving the weapons. George took him on and a ten minute
struggle ensued, throughout three rooms on the first floor. Olivia
appeared on the scene and hit the intruder in the groin with a brass
poker, whereupon he grabbed her by the throat. She twisted free,
and the struggle moved into the family’s meditation room, then
towards the master bedroom. The attacker saw that the much older
Harrison was tiring and plunged the knife deep into his chest.
In desperation Olivia grabbed a leaded Tiffany table lamp,
and struck their assailant’s head. He grabbed the cable, so she
hurled it at him, finally felling him. Dhani appeared in the room,
and they managed to hold the man at bay until the police arrived.
When Thames Valley detectives stormed the house at three
thirty they found the man slumped on the landing. He had dropped
the knife and surrendered. George lay on the floor, holding a towel
to his chest, drifting in and out of consciousness as Olivia knelt
next to him. After a cursory look at the crime scene, Detective
Chief Inspector Euan Read assessed the attack as “vicious”. The
pole-like object George had seen was a section of a stone sword
that the assailant had broken off a Friar Park statue of St George
and the Dragon.
 Minutes later paramedics arrived to find Harrison lying on
his back with his son crouched at his side. It was later reported that
Dhani kept his father conscious and alert: “Stay with me, Dad!”
he pleaded. George, feeling his life ebbing away, told his son,
“Dhani, I’m going, I’m going. I love you, Dhani. Hare Krishna,”
and closed his eyes.
As the ambulance whisked the former Beatle off to the Royal
Berkshire Hospital in Reading, the intruder, now in handcuffs,
grunted to police, “You should have heard the spooky things he
was saying as he was going. The bastard! I should have got the
bastard better.” He added, “It’s all in the Book of Exodus. He got
very close tonight.”
At the hospital, doctors gave George a tetanus shot,
intravenous antibiotics and a host of powerful painkillers. His
most serious injury was a punctured right lung, which collapsed:
he was fitted with a chest drain. Harrison was found to have at least
ten wounds, including three to his chest. The major chest wound
required six stitches. The blade had just missed the artery that
connects the heart with the brain. Dr. Andrew Pengelly, medical
director of the Royal Berkshire, stated, “If that had ruptured he
would have perished within a matter of minutes from internal
bleeding. He was extremely lucky.”
Fortunately Olivia had escaped serious injury, but was treated
for a skull laceration and minor cuts. Doctors praised her bravery.
As one family friend put it, “Olivia gave him a good clocking and
probably saved George’s life.” According to her friend, London
fashion designer Elizabeth Emanuel, “She’s fit and strong. I imagine
she’d be very brave in those circumstances. She’s quite tough.”
Following emergency treatment, Harrison was transferred to
Spreading the sad news.
the Royal Harefield Hospital in north-west London, renowned for
their first class thoracic surgery unit. He quipped, “I can see the
headlines already: ‘Beatle George Has A Hard Day’s Night!’ On
his attacker, he said, “He wasn’t a burglar and he certainly wasn’t
trying out for the Traveling Wilburys.”
Harrison’s attacker was treated for minor injuries at
Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, then held at St Aldate’s police
station. He appeared at Oxford magistrates’ court, charged
with breaking and entering, aggravated assault and two counts
of attempted murder. Then he was sent to the Scott clinic in
Rainhill, Merseyside, a medium security forensic psychiatric
unit, to await a February hearing where he entered a plea of not
guilty by reason of insanity.
The police learned that his name was Michael Abram, and
he came from Huyton, Merseyside, in Liverpool. The thirty three
year old former gardener and television advertising salesman was
an unemployed father of two.

177

The spiritual Beatle as we remember
him best.
In London, George was recovering remarkably well. Olivia
stayed with him in his private double room, to which home-cooked
meals and fresh fruit were sent from Friar Park. Soon George
issued a statement: “Olivia and I are overwhelmed by the concern
expressed by so many people. We thank everyone for their prayers
and kindness.”
George was released from hospital in the evening of New
Year’s Day. He arrived at home to welcome old Monty Python
friend Eric Idle on an extended visit, and security was stepped up
with security guards and dogs. It was reported George hired two
former SAS soldiers to guard his home.
Michael Abram’s trial for attempted murder began at Oxford
Crown Court on 14th November. Olivia and Dhani attended but
George was absent due to illness. The proceedings opened with
Harrison’s account of the event, which was read aloud to the jury.
Olivia told of how she had watched in horror as Abram
bolted up the stairs and stabbed her husband. After she had hit
the man with the poker, he had lunged for her and knocked her
down: “I reached up and tried to grab his testicles. I just got a lot
of fabric in the trousers he was wearing.” George had leaped on
to Abram’s back and the three had fallen together in a heap. “At
that point,” Olivia said, “I didn’t have any weapon in my hands.
There was blood on the walls, and the carpet. There was a moment
when I realized we were going to be murdered. I realized this man
was succeeding in murdering us and there was absolutely nobody
there to help .”
The jury, instructed by Judge Michael Astili, had reached
their verdict within an hour of leaving the courtroom: not guilty by
reason of insanity. Michael Abram was remanded to the Scott clinic
for an indefinite period. Judge Astili deemed the attack “horrifying”
and stated, “He will be held without time restriction,” his release
contingent on approval by a mental health tribunal.
The Harrison family was far from satisfied. Dhani stood
outside the courthouse and read the following statement: “Michael
Abram was acquitted by a loophole in the law. We shall never forget
he was full of hatred and violence when he came to our home. The
prospect of him being released back into society is abhorrent to us.
We hope the authorities will act with the utmost responsibility in
avoiding it in the near future and allow us to be consulted before
reaching a conclusion.”
Still, there was even greater heartache looming in the
Harrisons’ future. While tending to his beloved garden on July 22,
1997 George had discovered a hard, discolored lump on his neck.
Within a week, under the alias “Sid Smith”, he entered Princess
Margaret Hospital, in Windsor. In a ten-minute operation a sample
of lymph tissue was removed and sent for analysis.

178
 On August 2nd, Geoff Baker issued an upbeat statement:
“George is absolutely fine! There is no reason he shouldn’t be. He
had a quick operation for a small lump on the outside of his neck.”
Although the nodule was widely reported as benign, Harrison
soon checked into Britain’s leading cancer hospital, the Royal
Marsden, to undergo two courses of intense radiotherapy. “I was
very lucky,” George said later, “because it didn’t go anywhere. All
it was was a little red mark on my neck. Maybe I’ll record a track
called Radiation Therapy.”
Finally, in June 1998, Harrison responded to the intense
media interest in his condition: “I’m not going to die on you folks
just yet,” he said. “I’m very lucky.” He referred to his years of
chain smoking, and added, “I gave up ciggies many years ago,
but started again for awhile, then stopped in ‘97. Luckily for
me, they found this nodule which was more of a warning than
anything else. There are many types of cancerous cells and this Beautiful George playing his Fender
was very basic.” in a New York Hotel, 1970.
By the spring of 2001, Harrison’s world was rocked when
his lung condition erupted into a life-threatening crisis. On March
21st, he checked into St Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota,
affiliated with the Mayo clinic. The following day he underwent
a four hour operation to remove a large cancerous growth from
his left lung. “The operation was successful and George made an
excellent recovery,” said his lawyers. “He’s in the best of spirits
and on top form, the most relaxed and free since the knife attack on
him in 1999. He is now enjoying a holiday in Tuscany. Although
all things must pass away, George has no plans right now and is
still living in the material world and wishes everyone all the best,
God bless, and not to worry.” The tongue in cheek statement,
however, was in fact authored by the sly Harrison himself.
George was discharged on April 2nd but barely had time
to recuperate before further tests revealed devastating news: the A tiny newspaper article discussing
cancer had spread to his brain. Ironically the same disease had the final disposition of George
taken the life of his mother on July 7, 1970 in Liverpool. His Harrison’s ashes.
father had also died from cancer, after years of heavy smoking.
Later that month George entered the Oncology Institute of
southern Switzerland, known also as the San Giovanni Clinic, in
Bellinzona. He and Olivia leased a palatial villa in Luino, Italy,
a forty-minute drive from the clinic. There, in the care of the
clinic’s director, Dr. Franco Cavelli, a renowned cancer specialist,
George underwent several courses of cobalt radiation therapy to
shrink the tumor. It didn’t work.
In fact, when Harrison was told by his doctors in Switzerland
that the cancer had moved to his brain he was content to forgo any
further treatment, withdraw from the world and prepare himself
for death by completely giving himself over to Krishna.

179
 “Never was there a time when I did not
exist, nor you, nor all these kings. And
in the future will any of us cease to be.”
Sri Krishna, Bhagavad Gita.
180
Still, even in his picture postcard Swiss village, George
was hounded by the media. In an attempt to maintain his privacy, he
used many different vehicles with alternating British, Swiss and Italian
number plates, and moved into a fourteen room villa, called Collina
d’Oro (Golden Hill), close to the clinic, and told villagers in Montinola
above Lake Lugano that he planned to make it his permanent home.
Sadly, he had agreed to abandon his beloved Friar Park.
Harrison’s health declined throughout the autumn, and Olivia was
desperate for a way to extend her husband’s life or, at least, lessen his
severe pain, and hours of internet research led her to Dr. Gil Lederman,
who performed experimental cancer treatments at Staten Island
University Hospital in New York. At the end of October George and
his family flew to the USA for him to try Dr. Lederman’s noninvasive
procedure known as fractionated stereo tactic radio surgery. After a
frame had been attached to the head focused beams of radiation were
aimed directly at the tumor, zapping it with such precise accuracy that
the surrounding healthy tissue suffered only minimal damage. The
beams were also rotated around the body, enabling the tumor to be
attacked from all directions. Although the treatment boasted a ninety
per cent cure rate for brain lesions, it could not halt the metastatic spread
of the cancer’s primary source, the lung. In cases like Harrison’s, the
treatment served only to relieve the severe pain of final stage cancers.
As one male nurse observed, George appeared “very frail and gaunt”
when he entered the hospital in a wheelchair. “It was shocking to see him
that way after thinking of him as so young and vital for all those years.”
Discharged from hospital on November 10th, George and his
family flew to Los Angeles on the evening of Thursday, November
22nd from JFK aboard a private jet owned by actor Jim Carrey. George
almost died on the way. He was lying in a hospital bed fitted into the
aircraft by the aviation firm after they had removed several rows of
seats. Every move he made was excruciatingly painful and at times he
even hallucinated. He did not want to return to Friar Park because he
knew the media vultures would be lurking outside the gates awaiting
news of his death. In a last ditch attempt to buy himself a little more
time, Harrison endured a taxing course of chemotherapy at the UCLA
Medical Center.
On the 29th family and a few close friends gathered at his bedside
in a private estate in the Hollywood Hills. In addition to Olivia and Dhani,
Ravi Shankar, his wife, their daughter Anoushka and Hare Krishna
friends Mukunda and Shyamasundara were there. George drifted in
and out of consciousness as he chanted “Hare Krishna.” Anoushka
later remarked, “We used to say that Uncle George was more Indian
than an Indian. He chanted Hare Krishna, he said, because it helped
him see God.” Ravi noted, “George looked so peaceful, surrounded by
love. He was a brave, beautiful soul, full of love, childlike humor and
a deep spirituality.”
Finally, in the early afternoon, just after the two Hare Krishna
monks had left, George stopped chanting and whispered he was taking
his final breath. Paul McCartney later described it as a “golden
moment”. He died, at 1.30 p.m. on 29 November 2001, as he had
lived, in touch with his Higher Power, the Lord Sri Krishna. In the
minds of those closest to him he had finally gone “home”.
Afterwards, the family issued this statement: “He left this
world as he lived 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.’

181
 APPENDICES

SIR FRANK CRISP AND FRIAR PARK

Friar Park on Paradise Road on the western edge of pastoral Henley-

on-Thames was originally owned by Sir Frank Crisp from 1875 to 1919.
Crisp was born on October 25, 1843 in London. His mother died when he
was three and so was brought up by his grandfather, John Filby Childs. He
resolved to take up law and at sixteen was articled to a firm of solicitors.
Crisp also studied at the University of London, obtaining a BA in 1864 and
an LLB in 1865. In 1867 he married Catherine Howes.
Crisp qualified as a solicitor in 1869 and his reputation quickly grew,
acting in many high profile commercial contracts. He counted several
foreign railroad companies and the Imperial Japanese Navy amongst his
clients, and famously, drew up the contract for the cutting of the Cullinan
diamond. Crisp received his baronetcy in 1913 for services as legal advisor
to the Liberal Party. He also had the first working telephone in London with
presumably, no one to call.
In 1890, Crisp built Friar Park as a weekend retreat. Designed by the little
known architect M. Clarke Edwards, the house is an architectural fantasy in
red brick, stone and terracotta, mixing English, French and Flemish motifs
in a lavish, undisciplined profusion. But the house achieved its greatest
fame from its sixty two acre grounds, landscaped in fantastical style with
topiary, twenty five glass houses and even a gnome filled grotto. The
Sir Frank Crisp in a period drawing. grotto featured stones just underneath the surface of the pond (providing a
walking on water illusion). Reflecting Crisp’s keen sense of humor, among
the statuary is a monk holding a frying pan with holes in it, and a plaque
reading “Two Holy Friars”.
The gardens also reflected Crisp’s scientific interest in horticulture as well
as a more romantic medievalism. The name Friar Park preceded Crisp’s
purchase of the property (there was another house on the land earlier) and
was derived from a local field name before the area was built up: there is,
however, no historical connection with friars or any other religious group.
Over time Crisp developed spectacular public gardens at the Park
including an alpine garden featuring a twenty foot (six meter) replica of
the Matterhorn. The illustrious mountain had only just been climbed, thus,
the moneyed Crisp built his own version in sandstone, which over the
A stone carving over the entrance to years grew to several acres in size. Today there is an airy Alpine meadow
Friar Park end illustrating a centaur. at the top and cascades that drop dramatically or trickle from level to level.

182
A tumbling scree gives way to the lower slopes, and on the shady side
are ravines towering over head. Among the many treasures there are blue
Himalayan poppy and Podophyllum.
Plant collecting was a lay profession during Crisp’s time and new
species were being brought back to Friar Park. Many were plants
never been seen before. There were also walled and productive
gardens, an Elizabethan garden, a white garden, a Japanese garden
and a spooky topiary dell.
Crisp eventually published an exhaustive survey of medieval gardening
titled Medieval Gardens as well as A Guide to Friar Park (1914).
Old Frank was also a enthusiastic microscopist being a sometime officer
of the Royal Microscopical Society. He was most generous in his support
of the Society, donating furniture, books and instruments in addition to his
A stone carving at the park of a monk
work on their technical publications. with a large screw in his mouth.
The philanthropic Crisp engaged with the town in various ways, Photo by the author, 1983.
sometimes throwing the house and gardens open on special occasions.
In 1895 the Horticultural Society held its annual show in the grounds
of Friar Park. Crisp also supported (and perhaps influenced the designs
for the new Congregationalist church of 1907, which is architecturally
a cousin of Friar Park.
Following Sir Crisp’s death on April 29, 1919 the next owner was the
financier and Chinese art connoisseur, Sir Percival Victor David Ezekiel
David, second Baronet. David was an important collector of Chinese
porcelain. His background was a Jewish family in British India originating
in Baghdad. His father, Sir Sassoon David, first Baronet, was a successful
businessman in Bombay and a banker, being a founder of the Bank of India.
David moved away from the Park following his divorce in 1953. His former
wife stayed on at ‘Friar Park End’, remodelled from the coach house and
stable courtyard.
Friar Park then passed on to Roman Catholic nuns belonging to the
Sir Percival David, owner of Friar
Silesian order. The nuns ran a local school in Henley, the Sacred Heart
Park following Sir Frank’s passing.
School, but by the late 1960s Friar Park was in a scandalous state of disrepair
and due to be demolished.
The120 room Victorian Neo Gothic mansion was then purchased in
January of 1970 by George Harrison. George once put the property up as
collateral in order to fund the Monty Python’s movie, Life of Brian, after
their original backers, EMI, pulled out at the last minute. As a huge fan of
the Pythons, Harrison simply wanted to get to see the film − something his
friend Eric Idle has often described as “the most expensive cinema ticket in
movie history”.
In early 1972 Harrison installed a sixteen track recording studio in a guest
suite, which at one stage was superior to the one at EMI’s Abbey Road
Studios. By 1974 the facility had become the recording headquarters for An ornate statue of the Mother Mary
his company, Dark Horse Records. The album covers for projects Harrison left at the Park by the Catholic nuns
recorded there usually mentioned “’F.P.S.H.O.T.”’ − or Friar Park Studios who sold the property to Harrison.

183
 Henley-on-Thames. These include the bulk of his own albums, from
1973’s Living in the Material World onwards; among them, Dark Horse,
Thirty Three & 1/3, George Harrison, Cloud Nine and Brainwashed.
Overdubs for the two Traveling Wilburys releases, recording and
filming of The Beatles’ 1995 Anthology project, interviews with family
and friends for posthumous documentaries such as 2003’s Concert for
George, the 2005 Concert for Bangladesh DVD release, and Martin
Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World in 2011 −
all were carried out there at F.P.S.H.O.T. or just downstairs in the main
part of the house.
Besides the records by Harrison or artists he produced, the studio
was also used by Shakespears Sister to record their 1992 album
Hormonally Yours.
Writing in I Me Mine, Derek Taylor says of Harrison’s purchase of
Friar Park: “It is a dream on a hill and it came, not by chance, to the
right man at the right time.’
The year Harrison and his first wife, Pattie Boyd, moved in, he was
photographed among four garden gnomes located on the main lawn
for the cover of All Things Must Pass, and again with his father Harry
six years later, with the photo appearing inside the gatefold cover of
Thirty Three & 1/3.
Harrison immortalized the grand estate in his 1976 song
Crackerbox Palace, which was his nickname for the mansion (after
Lord Buckley’s home in California). The All Things Must Pass track
Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll) was inspired by Friar Park’s
history, and the lyrics of later songs such as Ding Dong, Ding Dong
and The Answer’s at the End directly quote from the many carvings
around the property. His humorous video clips for the likes of Ding
A humorous carving on the main Dong, Ding Dong, True Love and Crackerbox Palace were all shot
house at Friar Park of two holy Friars. within the grounds of Friar Park, as were the album covers for some
of his F.P.S.H.O.T. recorded Dark Horse acts − Splinter’s The Place I
Love and the Ravi Shankar’s Music Festival from India album being
the most obvious.
Over the years Harrison and second wife Olivia restored the
gardens. Until his death in November 2001, George loved tending
to them personally − an activity a visiting Rolling Stone journalist
in 1987 deemed a “decidedly un-rock-starish pastime”. Among the
grounds keepers were his older brothers Peter and Harry. George’s son
Dhani would later recall: “He’d garden at night time until midnight.
He’d be out there squinting because he could see, at midnight, the
moonlight and shadows, and that was his way of not seeing the weeds
or imperfections that would plague him during the day.” Talking of
the tranquility he felt at Friar Park, Harrison once said: “Sometimes
I feel like I’m actually on the wrong planet, and it’s great when I’m
A contemplative Harrison in the in my garden. But the minute I go out the gate I think: ‘What the hell
candlelit cave underneath his home. am I doing here?”

184
 The mansion was quietly open to the public until the murder of John
Lennon in December 1980. Shortly afterwards, the gates were locked
and security features such as razor wire fences and video cameras were
installed. Despite these measures, an intruder broke into the residence
in the early hours of December 30, 1999, attacking Harrison and his
wife Olivia, leaving him suffering a punctured lung, more than forty stab
wounds, and head injuries.
In 2008 a London journalist visited the sprawling estate. He remembers.
“Olivia took me on a magical tour in the rowing boat under the lake. We
entered a cleft in the rocks alongside the waterfall that splits the two
levels and paddled our way behind the cascade. Light bounced off the
stucco walls as we entered the tunnel, but before long we had left the
roar and the light behind and were paddling through the pitch black. I
began to wonder how far we could feel our way into the darkness but
rounding a corner the shimmering grotto was revealed. Blue glass panels
The illumined night time view of the
set into the garden above let an eerie light fall over the columns of spa miniature Matterhorn replica on the
stone that rose from the water.” grounds of Friar Park.
In 2009 Olivia Harrison won the right to put in a permanent fence for
her protection, to which some of the neighbors objected, out of concern An extremely r are u npubli she d
that their cats could be injured by the sharp edges of the razor wire. photograph of Sir Frank Crisp.

185
 Victorian images of the Park as it looked in old Sir Frank’s day.

186
187
 APPENDICES TWO

T H R E E W O R L D S AT H I S F E E T

Harrison’s Spiritual Journey Selected Quotations

“You can’t be in India without being aware of everything. George

The Harrison family, George center.
and I went to a meeting at Benares, the holy city on the Ganges.
Millions had come for a big festival, which went on for three days.
We stood in a little compound and watched it all. It was like a
Biblical film. We felt like men just arrived from outer space. The
king of Benares came into the center of the multitudes riding an
elephant. He knelt down and said his prayers. The sun was going
down behind him and he was just a dark silhouette. It all sounds
very romantic. But it had a great effect on us. It obviously meant so
much to all these millions. The process was beginning, without our
knowing it.”
Pattie Harrison, 1967

“Music should be used for the perception of God, not jitterbugging!”

1974

“Up until LSD, I never realized there was anything beyond this
normal waking state of consciousness. All the pressure was such that,
as Bob Dylan said, ‘There must be some way out of here.” The first
time I took it, it just blew everything away. It was like gaining hundreds
of years experience within twelve hours. It changed me and there was
no way back to what I was. It wasn’t all good, though, because it left
quite a lot of questions as well.”
1987

“The meditation trip to Rishikesh, made us see beyond each other’s

physical bodies. This is the goal; to realize the spiritual side of life. If
you can’t feel the spirit of some friend who’s been close, then what
chance have you got of feeling the spirit of Christ, Buddha, Krishna or
whoever else you may be interested in? ‘If memory serves you well,
we’re going to meet again.’ I believe that.”
Date Unknown

188
 “In 1966, a flood of thoughts came into my head, which led me to
the yogis. At that time it was very much my desire to find out. We get
so hung up on things like cars, television and houses, yet what they
can give you is only there for a little while, and then it’s gone. LSD
isn’t an answer either.”
1967

“Around the time of Rubber Soul and Revolver, I became more

conscious. Everything we were doing became deeper and more
meaningful. The music started happening for me when I started
smoking reefers. I’ve come out the other end of that now and I don’t
do it! Instead, you learn to get your own cosmic lighting conductor,
and nature supports you. You begin to realize you are very small,
and yet everyone, every grain of sand is very important. You listen
deeper, somehow.”
1997

“We got to the point where were looking for something more.
It’s been about three years of thinking, looking for why we’re
here, the purpose of what we’re doing in this world, getting
born and dying over and over. I’ve found out the reason we
come is to get back to God, whomever you might call Him.
Indian music, seemed to hold something very spiritual for me,
and it became a stepping stone to find out about a whole lot
of other things. Finding out about Hinduism, and particularly
Vaishavism, made me realize that every religion is the same,
really. Everybody lives their lives thinking this is reality and
they say to people like us, ‘Oh, you’re just escaping reality.’
They seriously term this scene of waking up, going out to work,
going home again, going to sleep, dreaming, waking up again,
reality! In actual fact you’re in illusion, or Maya! It’s nothing
to do with reality, because reality is God alone. Everything else
is an illusion. There is spiritual music. This is why I’m so hung The windy, rainy rigors of out of
up on Indian music, from the day I got into it until the day I die, control Beatlemania.
I believe it’s the greatest music ever on our level of existence.
I’ve learned a hell of a lot about Hinduism and Bhakti Yoga
from being in India. ”
Date Unknown

“I don’t personally enjoy being a Beatle anymore. That Beatle

thing is trivial. I’m fed up with all the meaningless things we
do. I’m working out solutions to more important things in life.
Thinking about being a Beatle is going backwards. I’m more
concerned with the future, but it would take six months of talking
to tell you exactly what I believe, all the Hindu philosophies,
reincarnation, meditation on the Hare Krishna mantra. It’s when

189
 you begin to understand those things you realize how pointless all
the other stuff is. To the ordinary believer in God, I know it sounds
very far out.”
1968

“John, Paul, and George converged, then a little later, Ringo. We

were part of that action which led to the next level of reactions. We’re
all just little cogs in an action which everyone is part of. The only
thing which is important in life is karma. That means roughly actions.
Every action has a reaction which is equal and opposite. Everything
that’s done has a reaction, like dropping this cushion down; see,
there’s dent in it.”
February 1968

“It’s something to do with feeling really tiny. But at the same time
I also felt I was whole as well. It was like being two completely
different things at the same time. Soon this feeling would vibrate
right through me and started getting bigger and bigger, and faster and
faster. Before I knew what was happening it was going so far, and so
fast, it was mind boggling and I’d come out of it really scared. I used
to get that experience a lot when we were recording Abbey Road.
I’d go into this big empty studio, get into a sound box and do my
meditation. It was here I had a couple of indications this was the same
thing I went through as a kid.”
Date Unknown

“The first time I heard Indian music in 1966 I felt as though I knew
it. It was everything I could think of. It was like every music I’d
ever heard, but twenty times better than everything all put together.
It was just so strong, so overwhelmingly positive, it buzzed me right
out of me brain.”
Date Unknown
George and Patti in San Francisco
visiting the hippies, 1967.
“I met Ravi in 1965 at the house of Mr. Angbadi, who ran the
Asian Music Circle in Finchley. We had dinner and it was through
that meeting he later came to my house to give me some basic sitar
instruction. Later, because he was a Bengali, he came to me because
he wanted to do something about the situation in Bangladesh. He
wanted to put on a concert where he could raise around twenty-
thousand dollars, which was more than he’d normally make from
a performance. He originally asked Peter Sellers and myself if we
could introduce the concert, or think of something to do. So I became
involved and helped put the Concert For Bangladesh together, and
it has raised eleven million dollars to date.”
Date Unknown

190
 “I met [Ravi Shankar] again at Peter Seller’s house in London for
dinner in 1966 and he offered to give me some instruction on sitar.
It was the first time I’d ever actually approached music with a bit of
discipline. I started really listening to Indian music and for the next
two years hardly even touched the guitar, except for recording. Having
all these material things I wanted something more, and it suddenly
came to me in the form of yoga and meditation.”
Date Unknown

“I went over [to India] partly to try to learn the music, but also
to absorb as much of the actual country as I could. I’d always
heard stories about these old men in the Himalayas who were
hundreds of years old, levitating yogis, and saints who were able
to be buried underground for weeks and live. Now I wanted to
see it for myself. Once you get to the point where you’re actually
doing things for truth’s sake, then nobody can ever touch you
again, because you’re harmonizing with a greater power. The
farther into spiritual life I go; the easier it is to see the Beatles
aren’t really controlling any of it, but that something else has now
taken us firmly in hand.”
Date Unknown

“I realized Indian music was like a stepping stone to the spiritual path.
I had a great desire to know about the yogic path. I always had a feeling
for that, and the music led me there. I got very involved with Hinduism.
I came to understand what Christ really was through Hinduism. Down
through the ages there has always been a spiritual path, it’s been passed
Hanging out pool side at Kinfauns,
on, and it always will be. It just so happens India was the place the seed
George’s first home.
was planted. The Himalayas were very inaccessible to people so they
always have peace there. The yogis are the only ones who can make it
out there. It may be something to do with my past lives, but I felt a great
connection with it. In this age the West and East are closer and can all
benefit so much from each other. We can help them with our material
attributes and they can help us with spiritual things.”
Date Unknown
“A yogi I met said, ‘You are really lucky. You have youth, fame,
fortune, health, but at the same time that’s not enough. You want to
know something else.’ Most people don’t even get to the point where
they realize there’s something beyond that wall. They are just trying
to get on top, to be able to eat, have a nice house and be comfortable. I
was fortunate enough to get all that in time to realize there’s something
else to life, whereas most people get worn out just trying to attain
purely material things.”
Date Unknown

191

George and Patti in Rishikesh on the
occasion of his twenty fifth birthday.
192
“In many ways I’ve felt like a patch board: I like to plug one person
into another, one type of idea into something else. I could experience
the best of Vedic India, and I was able to find it straight away. Without
yoga I would have ended up a boring old fart, but at least my life was
enhanced and given greater depth through ancient Indian culture.”
Date Unknown
“It’s up to each of us to get off that cycle of repeated birth and
death (samsara), because it’s going around forever. You have to
say, ‘I’ve had enough of this roundabout, I’d like to go on now to
something else.’ People are making it to the astral plane, but those
who don’t just keep dying, coming back, and dying and coming
back. It’s all action and reaction. Finally you’ve got to get on the
astral plane, go around for a bit, get rid of your astral karma, and
then on to the causal plane, until you get rid of that one, then you’re
right there back.”
Date Unknown
“Through Hinduism, I feel a better person. I just get happier and
happier. I now feel I am unlimited, and more in control of my physical
body. The thing is, you go to an ordinary church and it’s a nice feeling.
They tell you all about God, but they don’t show you the way. They
don’t show you how to become Christ conscious yourself. Hinduism
and devotional yoga, however, are very different.”
1972
“Although we have this divinity, or unlimited creativity, within
us, it is covered by gross material energy, and a lot of the time
our actions come from a mundane level. We’re like beggars in a
gold mine, where everything has really enormous potential and
perfection, but we’re all so ignorant with the dust of material desire
on our mirrors. As I sang in the song, Dhera Dune, ‘See them move
along the road in search of life divine / unaware it’s all around /
beggars in a gold mine.’”
Date Unknown
“I don’t know the answers. I think in the end, everybody has to
go inside themselves and get spiritual. The more individuals that
have inner strength that will manifest itself in the external world.”
1987
“It’s basically a cosmic vision in which life on Earth is but a fleeting
illusion edged between lives past and future beyond physical mortal
reality. I don’t know what as. You go on being reincarnated until you
reach the actual Truth. Heaven and Hell are just a state of mind. We are
all here to become Christ-like. The world is an illusion. I’m beginning
to know that all I know is I know nothing.”
1968

“It is one of our perennial problems, whether there is actually a God.

From the Hindu, or Vedic point of view, each soul is divine. All religions
are branches of one big tree. It doesn’t matter what you call Him just
as long as you call. As cinematic images appear to be real but are only
combinations of light and shade, the universal variety is a complex
delusion. The planetary sphere, with it’s countless forms of life are
only figures in a cosmic motion picture. One’s values are profoundly
changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion
picture; and that not in, but far beyond, lies one’s ultimate reality as a tiny
qualitative spark of God.”
1973

“Names are far out. Ray Cooper, for instance.” “cooper” is a barrel
maker. Larry Smith. Well, a “smith’s” a blacksmith. George Harrison.
You know what that means don’t you? “Son of Hari!”
1984

“In one way I feel pessimistic. When you see the rate the world A dapper looking George at the premier
is being demolished, people polluting the oceans and chopping of the film, Yellow Submarine.
down the forests, unless somebody puts the brakes on, there isn’t
going to be anything left. There’s just going to be more and more
people with less and less resources. In that respect, I feel very
sad. But at the same time, I have to be optimistic. Even if the
whole planet blew up, you have to think about what happens
when you die. In the end, ‘Life goes on within you and without
you.’ I have a belief that this, the physical world, is only one
little bit of the universe.”
Date Unknown

“How people say, ‘you’ve only one life, Squire.’ I’ve given up
saying, ‘You’ve got as many as you like and more, even ones you don’t
want!’ But it’s true. We have.”
Date Unknown

“The danger is when you become attached too possessively to each

other, even to your own body, or your wealth, motor cars, fame or
fortune. The idea is to be unattached, but still experience it. It’s all part
of life’s experience. The only God we need is within ourselves.”
Date Unknown

193

The Harrisons leave Esher Town
Court following an appearance
relating to their marijuana bust on
March 12, 1969.
194
“If you really want to get it [spiritual enlightenment] permanently,
you have got to do it, you know...be healthy, don’t eat meat, fish, or
eggs, keep away from nightclubs, and meditate on Sri Krishna.”
1974
“Chanting Hare Krishna is another way of reaching God. Each
person must decide for himself the way which best suits him.”
Date Unknown
“I am an ecologist, yes. I didn’t eat meat from 1966 to 1979. During
those years I was undernourished because I did not know what to eat
to replace the protein. If you don’t go to Indian restaurants, where you
can eat lentils and greens, you cannot easily stay on a vegetarian diet.”
January 1988
“I wouldn’t say that I’m absolutely God conscious. But, basically,
we all want divine love.”
1987
“Although spirituality is the most important aspect of life, I’m
really still a lunatic. I enjoy comedy. I love Formula One racing, I love
gardening, and I’m not that serious. Actually, I’m more normal and
relaxed now than ever because I’ve had a chance to absorb a lot of
spiritual teachings and use them.”
Date Unknown
“I keep [my religious beliefs] to myself unless somebody asks me
about it. I still feel the same as I felt back in the Sixties. I lost touch with
the Hare Krishnas when Srila Prabhupada died. I used to go and see the
old master, AC. Bhaktivedanta Swami, quite a lot. He was real good. I’m
still involved, but it’s something which is more a thing you do inside
yourself. You don’t actually do it in the road anymore. It’s a way of trying
to get in touch with yourself. I still write songs with Sri Krishna in there in
little bits and pieces. Lots of songs that are unfinished say various things,
but maybe I say it in different ways now. There’s a song [on Cloud Nine]
which is straight out of Bhakti yoga, Fish On The Sand it’s called.”
Date Unknown
“When people are presented with ideas they don’t understand, fear
takes over. They want to destroy it, chop it down. Just like that guy in
America [Ted Patrick] who claims to go around de-programming people
from Krishna. That’s his fear coming out, because if you understand
something, you don’t fear it.”
1979
 “If this role as a sill pop musician is worthwhile, then I’d rather
be silly jumping up and down chanting Hare Krishna than being silly
jumping up and down with high heeled mirrored boots and eye makeup.
With all respect to all those rock’n’rollers who wear makeup, there
comes a time when you have to decide what life is all about. There
must be some other reason for being here than just jumping up and
down, trying to become famous.”
1979

“You get pure by chanting, then you see God. Sanskrit, the
language they’ve written in, is the world’s first recorded language.
“Devanagari” actually means, “language of the gods.” It’s a matter
of being open. Anyone who’s open can do it. You just have to be
open and not prejudiced. You just have to try it. There’s no loss,
you know. But the intellectuals will always have problems, because
they always need to “know” empirically (sic). They’re often the
most spiritually bankrupt people, because they never let go; they
don’t understand the meaning of transcending the intellect. But an
ordinary person’s more willing to say, ‘Okay, let me try it and see if
it works.’ Chanting the Hare Krishna maha mantra can make one a
better Christian too.”
Date Unknown With a friend.

“The hippies are a good idea. I love all these people. The ones
who are honest and trying to find a bit of truth, and straighten out
the untruths. I’m with them one hundred percent. But when I see the
bad side of it I’m not so happy. The thing is, everybody is potentially
divine. It’s just a matter of self realization before it will all happen.
The whole point of life is to harmonize with everything and every
aspect of creation.”
1967

“The word “Hare” is a word that calls upon the energy from the
Lord. If you chant the mantra enough, you build up an identification
with God. God’s all happiness, all bliss, and by chanting His holy
names we connect with Him. So it’s really a process of actually
having a direct realization of God, which all becomes clear with the
expanded state of consciousness which develops when you chant.
Like I said in the introduction I wrote for Prabhupada’s Krishna book
some years ago, ‘If there’s a God, I want to see Him! It’s pointless
to believe in something without proof, and Krishna Consciousness
and mantra meditation are methods where you can actually obtain
direct God perception.’”
Date Unknown

195

At the press launch for the Radha
Krishna Temple on Thursday August
28, 1969.
196
“It takes a certain amount of time and faith to accept, or realize, there is
no difference between Sri Krishna and His name. To get to the point where
you’re no longer mystified by where He is. You know, like, ‘Is He around
here?’ You realize after some time, ‘Here He is, right here!’ It’s a matter
of practice. When I say that ‘I see God,’ I don’t necessarily mean to say
that when I chant I’m seeing Krishna in His original transcendental form
when He came five thousand years ago, dancing across the Yamuna river
in Vrndavana, playing His flute. Of course, that would also be nice, and it’s
quite possible. When you become very pure by chanting, you can actually
see God, I mean personally. But no doubt you can feel His presence and
know that He’s there when you’re sincerely chanting.”
Date Unknown
“The West always had this problem about the East, but Christ was from
the East. Christ spent ages in India, and even after, when He was wherever
He was, Jerusalem, or whatever, it’s still more East than Paris. The Eastern
thing says, “If there’s a God, we must see Him. Otherwise, it’s better not
to believe. It’s better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.” That’s
why I sang, “I really want to see You.” They think Christ is the only son of
God, and that you can’t see Him because we nailed Him up…I want to see
God and have Him in my life, moment to moment. Otherwise, who am I
kidding? You know, going around like the Pope, kissing the floor. I want a
direct experience, and fortunately, that is available. It’s not on your TV, you
can’t get it out of a magazine, it’s not on the dollar bill and it sure ain’t on
Macy’s windowsill.”
1987
“Prabhupada was great and I knew him quite well. If he had known
then devotees were [collecting funds in my name] they would have got
their behinds kicked…it’s biting the hand that feeds you. I was trying
to help them, and I’d find there’d be all that stuff going on behind my
back, giving me a bad name. I’ve been associated, and have friends in
ISKCON, but I never joined. I mean I joined in spirit, but not in the
spirit of trying to rip people off at airports. Although it did make a good
joke in the movie Airplane!”
1987
“Prabhupada’s accomplishments are very significant; they’re huge!
Even compared to someone like William Shakespeare, on any other
yogi, the amount of literature Prabhupada produced is truly amazing. It
boggles the mind. He sometimes went for days with only a few hours
sleep. Even a youthful, athletic, young person couldn’t keep the pace
he kept himself at seventy nine years of age. Prabhupada has had an
absolutely amazing effect on the world. There’s no way of measuring it.
One day I just realized, ‘God, this man is amazing!’ He would sit up all
night translating Sanskrit into English, putting in glossaries to make sure
everyone understands it, and yet he never came off as someone above
you. He always had that childlike simplicity, and what’s most amazing
is the fact he did all this translating in such a relatively short time,
just a few years. Without having anything more than his own Krishna
Consciousness, he rounded up these thousands of devotees, set the whole
movement in motion; it became something so strong it grew wildly even
after he left. It’s still escalating even now at an incredible rate. It will
go on and on from the divine knowledge he gave. It can only grow. The
more people wake up spiritually, the more they’ll begin to realize the
depth of what Prabhupada was saying, how much he really gave.”
1984

“You can’t just shout Bangladesh, give them something to help. You
can chant “Krishna, Krishna, Krishna,” and you’ll feel better. But if
you just shout, “Bangladesh, Bangladesh, Bangladesh,” it’s not going
to help anybody!”
1971

“My life belongs to the Lord Krishna and there’s me dog collar to prove it.
I’m just a dog and I’m led around by me collar by Krishna... I’m the servant In London.
of the servant of the servant of the servant of the servant of Krishna I’m just
a grovelling lumberjack lucky to be a grain of dirt in creation. That’s how I
feel. Never been so humble in all my life, and I feel great.”
1974
“For me caring about the planet probably began in a previous life.
When I was a kid, I used to walk around on my own and I was very
much in touch with nature and the sky and the trees and the plants and
the insects.”
Date Unknown

“You can destroy our planet, but the souls are going to keep on going,
they’ll keep on getting new bodies and going on to other planets. So in
the end, it doesn’t really matter.”
Date Unknown

“It was all good, that yoga period. I was getting up as they do
in India, having a bath, performing my yoga exercises, doing my
mantra meditation, then practicing sitar and having breakfast, instead
of jumping out of bed and having a cup of coffee. So it was a great
discipline, vital for me, to be able to start understanding a bit of real
Vedic culture.”
1980

197
 “The vibrations the soul sets up, the love and equally the hate we feel
causes the attraction of souls to one another from one life to another.
Those people you know more easily, or more quickly, are people whom
you’ve known in other lives. It is very specific. There’s more to this
that meets the eye.”
1980

“You need the outer aspect of life as well as the inner because
the outer is empty if you don’t have any spiritual side to life and
vice versa. The Western people needed to go through this material
life. Well, they’ve been through it now and we’ve got so many
material things it’s got to evolve into the other now. It’s all a part
of the evolution, taking the best from both worlds. Not only do
we have the yogis coming over here, but our business people are
going over there.”
Date Unknown

Hippie George hanging out. “Everywhere you go you’ve got a number of choices. There’s
a crossroads and you can go left or right, but if you just follow
yourself, your natural instincts, you don’t have to really decide.
You’ll naturally go down one of them and there’s always choices and
many different ways to go, but if you just keep following yourself
and what you feel then you automatically go down the right road. It
happened with me through constantly experiencing action, reaction,
action, reaction. It’s been about three years of thinking, looking
for why we’re really here, the purpose of what we’re doing in this
world, getting born and dying. I’ve found out that the only reason
we come is to get back to God.”
Date Unknown

“Reality is God alone. Everything else is an illusion.”

February 1968

“Your samsara is the concomitant karma of all your lives and deaths.
We’ve all been here before. I don’t know what as, though the friends
you had in the previous life are the friends you have in this one. You
hate all the people you hated last time. As long as you hate, there will
be people to hate. You go on being reincarnated until you reach the
absolute truth which is Sri Krishna. But heaven and hell are largely a
state of mind. Whatever it is, you make it.”
Date Unknown

“We were made John, Paul, George, and Ringo because of what
we did last time; it was all there for us, on a plate. We’re reaping

198
what we sowed last time, whatever it was. The reason we’re here,
why we’re all here, is to achieve perfection, to become Christ-
like. This actual world is an illusion.”
1967

“I think the sixties were very important. If you want to learn

tennis you go to somebody who can instruct you. If you want
to learn how to be a yogi, how to meditate, then you need an
instructor. Unfortunately, the word “guru” became a bit of a joke
because the press saw them as silly old fellas. There were as many
bogeys as there are yogis, without mentioning any names, there’s
been quite an influx of them over the years in America. You have
to be like the wise ant that crawls through the grains of sand to
find the grains of sugar. Each person must find their way to inner
realization. The only reason we’re on this planet is that each soul
is divine, and the goal is to personally manifest that divinity.
Everything else is secondary.”
Date Unknown

“Why live in the darkness all your life? If you are unhappy, look
for the light of Krishna within.”
Date Unknown

“Like Bob Dylan said, “Look out kid, it’s something you did. God
knows when, but you’re doing it again.” So what happens is your body
falls off? Gets tired, or for whatever reason, and you’re now in your
astral body, which is much more subtle and made of light. Then, just
like on your radio, where you change the frequency without turning
One of the four of the heads that
the dial, there’s a whole other thing happening. That’s what it’s like: shook the world.
all these different levels are all right here, but they’re all vibrating on
different frequencies. So death is just where your suit falls off and
now you’re in your other suit. But you can’t see it on this level, so it’s
all right. Don’t worry!”
Date Unknown

“I’d like to think that the old Beatle fans have grown up, they’ve got
married, and they’ve all got kids and they’re responsible, but they still
have a special space in their hearts for us”.
Date Unknown

“For every human is a quest to find the answer to why are we here? Who
am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? That to me became
the only important thing in my life. For me there is no alternative.”
Date Unknown

199
 “What do you think happens to people when they go home
and they take their suit off? That’s what I think when you die,
your body falls off, but you’ve still got two others bodies,
fortunately. This thing they call the soul. In the Bible, Jesus
said there are three cages for the Bird of Paradise. The Bird of
Paradise is the soul, this perfect thing that has its own identity
and then the three cages are three bodies. One is the causal body,
the Next is the astral body and the third is the gross physical
body. So death is only relative to birth. If you don’t want to die,
you don’t get born. But as long as you’re born, you’ve got to
die. Because just as sure as nighttime follows daytime, death is
going to follow birth.”
1987

November 20, 1976 Harrison “The only mistake anyone ever made was being born. All the
appears with Paul Simon on rest is just life.”
Saturday Night Live.
Date Unknown

“Sometimes you just want to yell about God because it’s

right there, but the moment you try and explain it, it’s like
rabbiting. Reality is a concept. Everybody has their own reality
(if they are lucky). Most people’s reality is an illusion, a great
big illusion. You automatically have to succumb to the illusion
that ‘I am this body’. I am not George. I am not really George
(karma name only). I am this living thing that goes on, always
has been, always will be, but at this time I happen to be in
‘this’ body. The body has changed; was a baby, was a young
man, will soon be an old man, and I’ll be dead. The physical
body will pass but this bit in the middle, that’s the only reality.
All the rest is the illusion, so to say that somebody thinks that
we, the ex-Beatles, are removed from reality is their personal
concept. It does not have any truth to it just because somebody
thinks it. They are the concepts which become layer upon layer
of illusion. Why live in the darkness time, why not just look at
it. Why are you in the darkness? Look for the light. The light is
within. That is the big message.”
Date Unknown

200
“It doesn’t matter what happens, the plan can’t
be affected, even having wars or dropping an
H bomb; none of it matters. It’s only what
happens in ourselves which matters. The whole
point of life is to harmonize with everything
and every aspect of creation.”
George Harrison, 1967

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 APPENDICES THREE

REMEMBERING THE MUSIC

“Love You Too was one of the first tunes I wrote for sitar. Norwegian
Wood was an accident as far as sitar was concerned, but this was the
first song where I consciously tried to use sitar and tabla on the basic
track: I overdubbed the guitars and vocals later.”
LOVE YOU TOO

“All Too Much was written in a child-like manner from realizations

that appeared during and after some LSD experiences which were later
confirmed in meditation.”
ALL TOO MUCH
The Fab three meet the press in
America, 1964.
“The Inner Light came from Within You Without You. There was a
David Frost show about meditation, Maharishi was interviewed on
tape with John and myself live. Amongst many others in the audience
was Juan Mascaro, who is a Sanskrit teacher at Cambridge University.
He wrote me a letter later saying ‘...a few days ago two friends from
abroad gave me the recording of your song, Within You Without You.
I am very happy, it is a moving song and may it move the souls of
millions; and there is more to come, as you are only beginning on the
great journey.’”

“I worked with Indian musicians at the EMI/HMV studios in Bombay.

Bhaskar Menon (later to become the head of EMI world wide) brought
a two-track stereo machine from Calcutta on the train for me, because
all they had in Bombay was a mono machine. It was the same huge
machine we used in Abbey Road; they’re called Steeds. I’ve got one
in the kitchen now, the one we recorded Paperback Writer on. I came
back and added a lot more in Abbey Road.”
THE INNER LIGHT

“Klaus Voorman had a harmonium in his house, which I hadn’t played

before. I was doodling on it, just playing to amuse myself, when Within
You started to come. The tune came first, then I got the first line. It came

202
out of what we’d been discussing that evening.” “I’m writing more songs
now that we’re not touring. The words are always a bit of a hang up for
me. I’m not very poetic.”

“Within You Without You was written after dinner one night at Klaus
Voormann’s house. He had a harmonium, which I hadn’t played before.
The first sentence came out of what we’d been doing that evening... ‘We
were talking.’ That’s as far as I got that night. I finished the rest of the
words later at home in Esher.”
WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU

“Derek Taylor got held up one evening in LA and rang to say he’d be
late. I told him on the phone the house was in Blue Jay Way. He said he
could find it okay, he could always ask a cop. Hence the song.”

“I waited and waited. I felt really knackered with the flight, but I didn’t
want to go to sleep until he came. There was a fog and it got later. To
keep myself awake, just as a joke to pass the time, I wrote a song about
waiting for him in Blue Jay Way. There was a little Hammond organ in
the corner of this house so I messed around on it and the song came.”
BLUE JAY WAY

“Not Guilty was written in 1968, although it appeared for the first time
on the 1979 George Harrison album. I wrote it before The Beatles
White Album and it seems to be about that period: Paul-John-Apple-
Rishikesh-Indian friends, etc.”

“I wrote that after we got back from Rishikesh on the Maharishi trip. It
was for the White Album. We recorded it but we didn’t get it down right
or something. Then I forgot all about it until a year ago, when I found
this old demo I’d made. We spent hours getting drum, bass, and guitar
sounds, then balancing them and doing the take. That was, in effect, a
backing track and then we later added overdubs. Nowadays you overdub
individually with each person having his own channel to record on. Back The walrus was Paul!
then we’d have to think of all the instrumental overdubs, say, a guitar
coming in on the second verse, a piano in the middle, then a tambourine.
We’d routine all of that get the sound, the balance, the mix and do it as a
performance. If one person got it wrong we’d have to back up, and do the
entire overdub of all the parts again.”
NOT GUILTY

“When I got back from this incredible journey to India, we were about
to do Sgt. Pepper, which I don’t remember much at all. I was into my
own little world, and my ears were filled with all this Indian music. So

203
 I wasn’t really into sitting there, thrashing through, and ‘I’m fixing a
hole...’ Not that song, anyway. Now that we only play in the studios, we
have less of a clue what we’re going to do. Now when we go in we have
to start from scratch, just thrashing it out and doing it the hard way. If
Paul has written a song, he comes into the studio with it in his head. It’s
very hard for him to give it to us, and for us to get it. When we suggest
something, it might not be what he wants because he hasn’t got it in his
head like that. So it takes a long time. Nobody knows what the tunes
sound like until we’ve recorded them and listen to them afterwards.
During the Sgt. Pepper sessions we had old microphones and pretty
antiquated machines, but we’d find new meanings in old equipment. I
think it was largely because of the times and the state of mind everyone
was in that it was exciting to try and come up with new ideas.”
SGT. PEPPER

George, Mike Love, and John Lennon
in Rishikesh.
“If I were doing it now, it would not be so produced. But it was the first
[solo] record, and I had Phil Spector helping me working on it. Anybody
who’s familiar with Phil’s work knows it was like Cinemascope sound!
If I was doing it today I would have less production. I did that on my
next album, Living In The Material World. I dropped the big production
and did it more like a small group.”
MY SWEET LORD

“Taxman was when I first realized that even though we’d started earning
money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes. Why should this
be so? Are we being punished for something we had forgotten to do?”
TAXMAN

“To get it straight, if I hadn’t been with John and Paul I probably wouldn’t
have thought about writing a song, at least not until much later. They were
writing all these songs, many of which I thought were great. Some were
just average, but, obviously, a high percentage were quality material. I
thought to myself, ‘If they can do it, I’m going to have a go.’ But it’s true: it
wasn’t easy in those days getting up enthusiasm for my songs. We’d be in a
recording situation, churning through all this Lennon/McCartney, Lennon/
McCartney, Lennon/McCartney! Then I’d say, ‘Can we do one of these?”

“The first song I wrote, as an exercise to see if I could write was in

a hotel in Bournemouth, England, where we were playing a summer
season in 1963. I was sick in bed, maybe that’s why it turned out to be
Don’t Bother Me. I don’t think it’s a particularly good song, but at least
it showed me all I needed to do was keep on writing and then maybe
eventually I would write something good.”
DON’T BOTHER ME

204
“The song from Help! I wrote the tune in about twenty minutes. But it took
me about three or four days churning out the lyrics. That’s the trouble.”
I NEED YOU

“Around the time of Rubber Soul and Revolver we became more

conscious of so many things. We even listened deeper, somehow. That’s
when I really enjoyed getting creative with the music, not just with my
guitar and songwriting but with everything we did, including the songs
the others wrote. It all deepened and became more meaningful.”
‘RUBBER SOUL’

“Think For Yourself must be about somebody from the sound

of it. I don’t quite recall who inspired that tune! Probably the
government.”
THINK FOR YOURSELF

“That was actually inspired by a Birds song, The Bells Of Rhymney.

Any guitar player knows that, with that open position D chord, you just
move your fingers around and you get all these little maladies. I mean
melodies! That became a thrill; to see how many more tunes you could
write around that open D, like Here Comes The Sun.
IF I NEEDED SOMEONE
G e or g e a n d Patt i p o s e w i t h a
p h o to of A . C . B h a k t i v e d a n t a
“John and Paul’s standard of writing has bettered over the years, so it’s Sw a m i Pr a b h u p a d a .
very hard for me to come straight on par with them. They gave me an awful
lot of encouragement. If it hadn’t I would have just crawled away. We all
put a lot of suggestions in after we’ve recorded a take. That’s why we take
so long to record a number. We’ve always cooperated with one another.
Paul might come into the studio and say, ‘Do this,’ if he has worked out
the chords beforehand. But they always need changing. When we make a
record, we may be knocked out by it when we first do it. But then when we
listen a few times we begin to feel it’s not as good as we think it is. That’s
the way it happens. With ‘Revolver’, when we first did it, we were really
knocked out with lots of the tracks. But by the time the record is issued,
we’re a bit fed up with it and looking towards the new one.”
‘REVOLVER’

“That’s an E7th with an F on the top, played on the piano. I’m really
proud of that, because I literally invented that chord. The song was about
the frustration we all feel trying to communicate certain things with only
words. I realized the chords I knew just didn’t capture that feeling. So after
I got the guitar riff, I experimented until I came up with this dissonant
chord which really echoed that sense of frustration. John later borrowed
it on Abbey Road. If you listen to I Want You (She’s So Heavy) its right

205
 after John sings, ‘It’s driving me mad!’ To my knowledge, there’s only
been one other song where somebody copped that chord, Back On The
Chain Gang by the Pretenders.”
I WANT TO TELL YOU

“Paul came up with the concept of Yellow Submarine. All I know is that
every time we’d all get around the piano with guitars and, listening to it
and arranging it into a record, we’d all fool about. John’s doing the voice
that sounds like someone talking down a tube, or a ship’s funnel, as they
do in the merchant marine. On the final track there’s actually that very
small party happening!”
YELLOW SUBMARINE

“People don’t understand. In John’s song, I Am The Walrus, he says:

‘I am he as you are he as you are me.’ People look for all sorts of
hidden meanings. It’s serious, but it’s also not serious. It’s true, but
Escaping Heathrow, 1969. also a joke.”
I AM THE WALRUS

“I think in a way it was a mistake doing four sides, because it’s just too
big for most people to really get into. I listen mainly to side one, which
I like very much.”
The ‘White Album’

“When we started recording While My Guitar Gently Weeps it was

just me playing acoustic guitar singing and nobody was interested.
Well, Ringo was, but John and Paul weren’t. When I went home
that night, I was really disappointed, because I thought, ‘Well, this
is really quite a good song, it’s not as if it’s shitty! The next day, I
happened to drive back into London with Eric Clapton, and while
we were in the car I suddenly said, ‘Why don’t you come and play
on this track?’ He said, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that. The others wouldn’t
like it.’ We’d had oboe and string players and other session people
in for overdubbing, but there hadn’t really been other prominent
musicians on our records. So Eric was reluctant, and I finally said,
‘Well, sod them! It’s my song and I’d like you to come down to the
studio.’ Actually, I was really disappointed with take number one. I
later realized what a shitty job I did singing it. Toilet singing! That
early version has been bootlegged because Abbey Road Studios used
to play it when people took the studio tour. My voice has improved. I
was happy with the final version with Eric. That galloping piano part
on While My Guitar Gently Weeps was Paul’s and it’s brilliant to this
day. On the Live in Japan album, I got our keyboardist to play it note
for note.” Paul wasn’t sensitive to stepping on other people’s egos or

206
feelings. I also contributed many things to Lennon/McCartney songs
for which I was never given credit. Paul and George Martin dictated,
and preempted some good stuff, but he has since apologized. Having
said that, when it came to do the occasional song of mine, Paul would
always be really creative with what he’d contribute. You just have to
hear the bass line Paul played on Something to know that when he
wanted to, Paul could give a lot. I don’t know about the version with
John on guitar. There was one that just a kind of demo, when I wrote
it, that was done with an acoustic guitar, then there’s the version that
was on the Beatles White Album, with Eric Clapton. There’s only ever
really been the one with Eric on it. Even the one I did on the Prince’s
Trust album had Eric playing on it.”

“Eric played that live as we were figuring out the song. Paul played
piano on the original record in 1967. There was Ringo on drums.
I don’t believe John was there. Eric played live with us and then
Paul overdubbed the bass later. Eric just made up the guitar part
spontaneously, so this is when we went to rehearsal for the Live
In Japan tour, he listened to the old version as the basis for where
he started. I guess sometimes you forget about good stuff you’ve
already done.”
WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS

“Piggies is a social comment. I was stuck for one line in the

middle until my mother came up with the lyric, ‘What they need’s
a damn good whacking!’ which is a nice simple way of saying they
need a good hiding. It needed to rhyme with “backing”, “lacking”,
and had absolutely nothing to do with American policemen, or
Californian shagnasties!”
PIGGIES An unpublished image from a rare
Sunday feast held by ISKCON at the
home of John Lennon in the temple at
“The “you” in Long, Long, Long is God. I can’t recall much about the Titenhurst Park estate. Devotee
it except the chords, which I think were coming from [Bob Dylan’s] Mukunda sp eaks on Vaishnava
Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, D to E minor, A, and D, those three philosophy.
chords and the way they moved.”
LONG LONG LONG

“Savoy Truffle on the White Album was written for Eric. He’s got this
real sweet tooth and he’d just had his mouth worked on. His dentist said
he was through with candy. So as a tribute I wrote, ‘You’ll have to have
them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle.’ The truffle was some kind
of sweet, just like all the rest, cream tangerine, ginger sling, just candy,
to tease Eric.”
SAVOY TRUFFLE

207
 John played a brilliant solo on Honey Pie, it sounded like Django
Reinhardt. It was one of them where you just close your eyes and
happen to hit all the right notes... it sounded like a little jazz solo.”
HONEY PIE

“Revolution 9 wasn’t particularly like a Beatles number...it worked

quite well in the context of all those different songs. I find it heavy to
listen to myself, in fact, I don’t, really.”
REVOLUTION 9

“There were albums which weren’t any good as far as I was concerned,
like Yellow Submarine.”
YELLOW SUBMARINE

“It was at the point I realized Dick James conned me out of the
copyrights for my own songs by offering to become my publisher.
As an eighteen-year old kid, I thought, ‘Great, somebody’s going
publish my songs!’ But he never said, ‘And incidentally, when you
sign this document, you’re assigning me the ownership of the songs,’
which is what it is. It was just blatant theft! By the time I realized
what happened; when they were going public and making all this
A very hairy George, 1969 money out of this catalog, I wrote Only A Northern Song as a ‘Piss
take,’ just to joke about it.”

“When we were younger we were told, you have to have your song
published, which in my mind was only to protect the copyright
so nobody steals it and you get paid if it sells. Dick James who
came around and said how much you were going to get, so I signed
because they told me that is what you did. What they failed to say
was, “I am actually stealing your song when you sign this, you are
signing the copyright over to me!” I was ripped off, so that song
was just a joke on that.”
ONLY A NORTHERN SONG

“I just wanted to write a rock song about the whole psychedelic times,
‘Sail me on a silver sun/ Where I know that I’m free/ Show me that I’m
everywhere/And get me home for tea.’ Because you’d trip out, you see,
all this stuff, and then whoops! you’d just be back having your evening
cup of tea! ‘Your long blond hair/ And your eyes of blue,’ that was all
just this big ending we had, going out. As it was in those days, we had
the horn player’s play a bit of trumpet voluntarily, and so that’s how
that Prince Of Denmark bit was played in the fade-out. Paul and John
just came up with and sang that lyric of, ‘Your eyes of blue.’”
IT’S ALL TOO MUCH

208
I thought it was quite nice. On the whole, I think it’s a pretty good album.
“We worked it all out carefully in advance. All of those mini songs
were partly completed tunes; some were written while we were in India
a year before. We welded them all together into a routine. Then we
actually learned to play the whole thing live. Obviously there were
overdubs. Later, when we added the voices, we basically did the same
thing. We learned all the backing tracks, and as each piece came up on
tape, like Golden Slumbers, we’d jump in with the vocal parts. Because
when you’re working with only four or eight tracks, you have to get as
much as possible on each track.”
ABBEY ROAD

“I wrote the song on the piano. I don’t really play the piano, which is
why certain chords sound brilliant to me, then I translate them onto
the guitar, and it’s only C. I was playing three finger chords with my
right hand and the bass notes with my left. On the piano, it’s easy to
hold down one chord and move the bass note down. If you did that on
the guitar, the note change wouldn’t come in the bass section; it would
come somewhere more in the middle of the chord.”

“I remember doing the solo on Something and it was dark in the

studio and everyone was stoned. But Ringo, was also doing a drum
overdub on the same track, and I seem to remember the others
were all busy playing. Every time I said, ‘Alright, let’s try another George goofing on a photographer
trying to look sexy, London, 1969.
take,’ because I was working it out and trying to make it better, they
all had to come back and redo whatever they’d just played on the
last overdub. It all had to be squeezed onto that one track, because
we’d used up the other seven. That’s why, after laying down the
basic track, we’d work out the whole routine in advance and get
the sound and balance. You’d try and add as much as possible to
each track before you ran out of room. On one track we might go,
‘Okay, here the tambourine comes in, then Paul, you come in at the
bridge with the piano and then I’ll add the guitar riff.’ That’s the
way we used to work.”

“Something is an example of that kind of thing where I find roughly

where I can go. In those days, I don’t know if that was an eight-track,
but I remember specifically it wasn’t a clean, empty track to put that
solo on. Ringo was overdubbing something, and Paul was overdubbing
something at the same time I was doing my solo. So in order for me to
practice, I’d say, ‘Let’s do it again, and again.’ But they’d have to do
their bits, too. Even in those days, there were times when we were also
very cooperative, and we’d do that to help each other. Also I smoked
something, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I did that solo a

209
 number of times, and then we left and went on holiday, came back, put
the tape back up, and I was very pleasantly surprised, because I did hit
some right notes. It did have a certain spontaneity to it.”

“Of my songs, Here Comes The Sun and Something are probably the
biggest. Frank Sinatra, who sings it with his ‘Stick around, Jack,’
says Something is the greatest love song of all time. At last count,
which was years ago, there were 140 covers of Something. Sinatra,
Smokey Robinson, Ray Charles. My personal favorite is the version
by James Brown. It was one of his B-sides. I have it on my jukebox
at home. Taxman was done not too long ago by Berry Gordy’s son,
so I’ve done all right.”

“I just wrote it and then somebody put together a video and what they
did, was they went out and got some footage of me and Patti, Paul and
Linda, Ringo and Maureen, and John and Yoko and they just made up
a little video to go with it, so then everybody presumed I wrote it about
Patti, but actually when I wrote it I was thinking of Ray Charles! He’s a
better singer, but that’s what I was thinking of, I could hear in my head
Ray Charles singing it.”
Harrison following the Concert for SOMETHING
Bangladesh on August 1, 1971.
“You Never Give Me Your Money was, during all these business
things that we had to go through to sort out the past. So, it came out
in Paul’s song. Here Comes The Sun was the same period, we had
meetings and all these bankers, lawyers, contracts and shares. It’s not
the sort of thing we enjoy. One day I didn’t come into the office, it
was like sagging off school. I went to a friend’s house in the country
and it was just sunny and it was all just the release of the tension that
had been building up on me. It was just a really nice sunny day and I
picked up the guitar, which was the first time I’d played for a couple
of weeks because I’d been so busy. The first thing that came out was
that song. I finished it later when I was on holiday in Sardinia.”
HERE COMES THE SUN

“At the time, Albatross was out, with all the reverb on guitar. So we said,
‘Let’s be Fleetwood Mac doing Albatross, just to get going.’ It never
really sounded like Fleetwood Mac...but that was the point of origin.”
SUN KING

“I started the chord sequences on the piano (which I don’t really play) and
then began writing ideas for the words from various opposites... Again it’s
the duality of things, yes-no, up-down, left-right, right-wrong, etc.”
OLD BROWN SHOE

210
“At that point in time, Paul couldn’t see beyond himself. He was
so on a roll, but it was a roll encompassing his own self. In his
mind, everything that was going on around him was just there to
accompany him.”

“It was just weird vibes. I found I was starting to be able to enjoy
being a musician, but the moment I got back with the Beatles, it
was too difficult. There were just too many limitations based upon
our being together for so long. Everybody was sort of pigeonholed.
It was frustrating.”
LET IT BE

“At this time we were at Twickenham, and I wrote this song, it took
five minutes just from an idea I had. I went into the studio and sang
it to Ringo, and they happened to film it. And sequence was quite
nice, so they wanted to keep that sequence in the film, but I hadn’t
really recorded it in Apple with the rest of the songs. So we had to
go in the studio and re-record it.”
I ME MINE

“Ringo played on the track with me. We were all sad at that time
and I think it brought us together a bit more. Then I called Paul up.
I thought, ‘Well, I might as well see if he wants to sing on it.’ The
song was just something I had to do and I don’t know if people
thought it was any good or not, but at least I got it out. It was just
a few thoughts on the subject.”
ALL THOSE YEARS AGO Giving an autograph to a fan, circa 1976.

“The lyrics from That Which I Have Lost are right out of the
Bhagavad Gita. In it I talk about fighting the forces of darkness,
limitations, falsehood & morality.”
THAT WHICH I HAVE LOST

Different ideas had been talked about, that we could do the

background music [for The Beatles Anthology TV Specials] or even
write a new song or something, but this became the perfect vehicle
because we always had a thing between the four of us that if any
one wasn’t in it, we weren’t going to get Roger Waters and go out
as the Beatles. So therefore the only other person who could be in
it was John.
FREE AS A BIRD & REAL LOVE

“Angel [Records] did those big Chant records with the monks, of
course, but those monks chanting always remind me too much of
being a Catholic. That stuff is spooky, whereas the Indian stuff is
going to be warm and sweet.”
CHANTS OF INDIA

211
 APPENDICES FOUR
GEORGE HARRISON 1984
Giuliano following his interview
with George Harrison in 1984.
212
Geoffrey Giuliano: How do you remember Prabhupada?
George Harrison: Prabhupada always used to say he was ‘the servant
of the servant of the servant of Krishna.’ He was very, very humble.
The thing about Srila Prabhupada, he was more like a dear friend than
anything. We used to sit in my house and talk for hours.
Geoffrey: I understand on his deathbed he called you his archangel,
took a ring from his finger, and instructed his disciples to make sure
you got it. Did you?
George: Yes, I’ve got it. I have it.
Geoffrey: Were you his disciple?
George: As far as being a full fledged devotee, no. I was never really
into it that far. I liked him and his philosophy, though. I never followed
all the rules and regulations that strictly, however. Except for maybe a
few months.
Geoffrey: Anything else to say about the Hare Krishna movement?
George: Well, I love the food. When I visited their place in India
[Mayapur] last year, I got up with them at four in the morning and after
mangle arty [early morning prayers] they brought me a forty course
breakfast, all on silver. I was the honored guest. Which, of course, is
better than being the un-honored guest!
Geoffrey: What is your attitude towards spiritual life these days?
George: I was at the airport in Honolulu and I met a guy dressed in
these old saffron corduroys. He approached me with a book and said,
‘My guru wants you to have this.’ I couldn’t make out if he recognized
me or not. I said, ‘What do you mean, your guru wants me to have this?
Does he know I’m here?’ The book said, ‘Something Something Guru,
the World’s Spiritual Leader.’ I read the book and this guy doesn’t like
anybody. He ran down Sai Baba, Yogananda, and everybody. Although
he did quote Prabhupada’s books (and everyone else’s for that matter).
It seemed very dogmatic. I’m just not into that. It’s the organization of
religion that turns me off a bit. I try to go into myself. Like Donovan
said, ‘You’ve got to go into your own temple once a day.’
Geoffrey: How do you feel about the Beatles’ myth today?
George: All this stuff about the Beatles being able to save the world
was rubbish. I can’t even save myself. It was just people trying to put
the responsibility on our shoulders. The Beatles saved the world from
boredom. Even when we got to America the first time, everybody was
running around with Bermuda shorts on, brush cuts, and braces on
their teeth. But we didn’t really create any great change, we just...
Geoffrey: Heralded it?
George: Heralded that change of consciousness that happened in the
sixties. We went along with it, that’s all.
Geoffrey: Gave it a voice, maybe?
George: Yeah, I guess.
Geoffrey: I met Yoko recently. She seems fine, you know. She seems
to be trying to carry on with life, her and Sean, who, by the way, is a
very bright kid.
George: Yeah. I’d love to meet Sean. I bet he is. I don’t know, the
whole Beatles thing is like a horror story, a nightmare. I don’t even like
to talk about it. I just hate it.
Geoffrey: Sorry. What about gardening? I know you love that. Don’t
you have all kinds of exotic plants and trees from around the world up
at Friar Park?
George: No, not really. I get all my stuff from a local nursery here in Los Angeles 1977.
Henley. I’ve got a few gardeners working the place. Trying to spruce
it up a bit. It was let go for years, but it’s coming along, little by little.

213
 APPENDICES FIVE

PLACES

Some of the many places special to George Harrison over the

course of his amazing life.

The precise date is unknown, but towards the end of May 1968
The Beatles met at Kinfauns, George Harrison’s bungalow in
Esher, Surrey. There they recorded demo versions of a number
of songs written in India, nineteen of which later appeared on
the White Album.

214
215
216
217
 The Harrison family home on Star Route 1,
Hana Maui, Hawaii.

218
George Harrison’s final home in Swiss Alps. Harrison bought the house in July 2001 for ten million dollars
(he was receiving treatment for cancer at a nearby facility), and died a mere four months later in Los Angeles.
It was later sold in 2012.

219
 APPENDICES SIX

COSMIC WHEELS

“George was always a keen car enthusiast and he began the rush to buy a Mercedes. He really wanted a
Rolls Royce but he soon lost interest when the snooty salesman told him there was a 14-month waiting list.
George tried Mercedes instead and received an instant lesson in German efficiency. He fell in love at first
sight with the huge new Mercedes 600 model. It had power everything - brakes, steering, windows, seats, air-
conditioning. It was more expensive than the Rolls and George wanted one in black. There was just a five-day
wait while Mercedes specially contoured the driver’s seat to fit George’s back. It was delivered to Kinfauns,
his fabulous home near Esher, within a week.” — Alistair Taylor, With The Beatles

220
221
 Just a very few of the many classic cars George owned over the years.

222
223
 APPENDICES SEVEN

PERSONAL EFFECTS

Some examples of Harrison’s natty wardrobe.

224
225
“Love one another.” George Harrison’s last words
 Sriman George Harrison Dasa Adikari Prabhu

Forever In Our Hearts

 Other titles in the Illustrated Series
Geoffrey Giuliano

Download
iconeditions.net
theillustratedseries.com

228
Other George Harrison titles
Geoffrey Giuliano

Download
iconeditions.net

229
 George Harrison Audio Works
Geoffrey Giuliano

Download
iconaudiobooks.net

230
 Acknowledgments

Series designer: Emilio Romero Mateu

Pu b l i s h i n g e xe c u t i v e : Av a l o n G i u l i a n o
Graphic specialist: Macc Kay
Any profits due the author of this work will be donated in aid of The
Vrndavana Widows and Children’s Trust. The VWCT is a project of Sri
Radhe International Incorporated, which is a registered New York State
501 C 3 Not For Profit Religious Corporation. For over two decades the
Trust has distributed food, clothing and other much needed goods to
the holy widows of Radha Kund in rural U.P. India.

Further information: milesfar@gmail.com

231
 Photo Credits

D e l i b e r a t e A l c h e my A r c h i v e s :
Pr e l i m s : a , b, c , d , f M a i n b o d y : 1 1 , 1 2 , 1 3 , 1 4 , 1 5 , 1 6 , 1 7 , 1 8 , 1 9 , 2 0 ,
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39,
40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58,
59 ,60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77,
78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96,
97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111,
112, 113, 114, 115, 122, 123, 124, 125 (bottom), 126 (top), 127, 128,
129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142,
143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156,
157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170,
171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176,178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185,
186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199,
200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214,
2 1 5 , 2 1 6 , 2 1 7 , 2 1 8 , 2 1 9 , 2 2 0 , 2 2 1 , 2 2 2 , 2 2 3 , 2 2 4 , B a c k p a g e.

J a s m a n & Pe a c h A r c h i v e s :
116, 117, 120, 121, 125 (top), 126 (bottom).

G e r a l d R . Fo r d Pr e s i d e n t i a l L i b r a r y :
118, 119.

G e o f r e y G i u l i a n o Co l l e c t i o n :
Pr e l i m s ( b y G i u l i a n o ) : a 1 M a i n b o d y : 1 3 6 , 1 7 7 , 2 0 8 .