All things must pass

George Harrison the most influential Beatle? Don’t be so shocked. The lead guitarist for the most influential pop band in history is now reportedly dying of cancer, and has revealed to the press that his days are numbered. Which makes it very timely to consider Harrison’s place on the musical map, from his earliest guitar licks to While My Guitar Gently Weeps, from his work as philanthropist (the Concert for Bangladesh) to his role as film producer.

Born Feb. 25, 1943, George was actually the youngest Beatle, the one who, from the start, lived in the shadow of the songwriting talents of Lennon-McCartney for much of the band’s skyrocketing career. His early songs (such as Don’t Bother Me) did not exactly set the world on fire; but he was learning, always learning. And experimenting.

It was George’s brush with a sitar player on the set of the second Beatles movie, Help, that sparked his interest in Indian music. Subsequently, he took up with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in studying transcendental meditations (TM). The other Beatles reluctantly followed, and being such cultural icons at the time, even their momentary whims and impulses became international fads: TM caught on, as did sitar music in the late ‘60s.

George’s use of the sitar was not superficial, by the way. As a guitarist, he quickly learned how to distill the sitar’s sound into the pop song format. Woven into the acoustic melody of Norwegian Wood, for instance, the Indian instrument acts as a perfect accompaniment: just enough exoticism for the beginning of the Beatle’s most experimental years (1965-1968). Harrison used the sitar to even greater effect on Revolver (1966), where its droning reverberations (on Love You, Too and Tomorrow Never Knows) became the blueprint for the emerging psychedelic sound. (Even the ever-trendy Chemical Brothers sample a few seconds of George’s droning sitar on 1997’s Setting Sun).

But Harrison went even deeper with Indian music, penning pop ragas such as Within In, Without You (for Sgt. Pepper). I always used to skip over that track (along with When I’m Sixty-Four), but it’s easier now to appreciate what Harrison was up to: languorous, rhythmic, serpentine, the song is like a cobra charming its way out of a basket: full of epic pizzicato strings (courtesy of producer George Martin) playing cat and mouse with the sitar lines, and lyrics that actually make sense! The melody, by the way, was more recently "appropriated" by the experimental band Dead Can Dance (on their album Spiritchaser). So Harrison was making waves, even back in 1967, even when most people were dismissing his "Indian phase."

From the start, George was the "quiet" Beatle, the one who glowered at cameras instead of mugging. He was also the first Beatle to release an experimental electronic album on Apple Records, as early as 1968 (even before John and Yoko’s vaunted noise collages). It was called Wonderwall, and the name, at least, survived to catch the imaginations of a later Brit foursome, Oasis, who titled their biggest-selling album after it.

When the Beatles broke up in 1970, Harrison seemed to explode with repressed material, releasing a triple-album, All Things Must Pass. At times experimental and chaotic, it was mostly the work of a songwriter long trapped in the shadows of his former bandmates. One song, My Sweet Lord, became a huge hit, only to spawn a lawsuit from the group The Chiffons, who claimed the melody was a direct rip-off of their song, He’s So Fine. (It was, at least according to the courts. Though the chord-by-chord replay seems more like an homage than bald thievery, especially since legendary producer Phil Spector manned the studio controls on both songs.)

Harrison, meanwhile, commenced a solo career that never really fulfilled his early avant garde promise: his hit songs were pleasant enough, but they never broke new ground. His patented slide guitar licks launched a thousand Beatle imitators in the ‘70s, from Badfinger to Big Star. But it was actually in his backstage work that Harrison began a new phase in his career.

Staged by Harrison (with a lot of help from his friends), The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 brought together all the reigning superstars of the day: Clapton, Dylan, the Band, etc. All took the stage for several nights to raise money for a starving country. God knows if it helped, but it was the first and biggest concert of its kind, a full decade before Live Aid and Bono’s continuing efforts to feed the world.

Harrison had another latent talent: as a movie producer. Early on, he hooked up with the English comedy group, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and helped finance their films. He managed to spoof himself long before it was fashionable, guesting on the Rutle’s TV show, All You Need Is Cash. Later, he helped launch Terry Gilliam’s demented imagination upon the world, producing the films Time Bandits, and Brazil and Baron Munchausen. One can see a definite strain of Beatlesque wit and humor in all these projects, which must have appealed to Harrison.

Since then, the moody ex-Beatle has kept out of the limelight, pretty much. He did a stint with The Traveling Wilburys in the ’80s, and cashed in on the growing Beatle’s nostalgia with the Anthology, TV series and recordings. It must have given him a chuckle to see the Beatle’s 1, a re-release of their numbers one hits, trounce everyone from Ricky Martin to the Backstreet Boys on the charts.

Now George is about to join the choir of immortals, along with John and so many others. Well, instead of singing Isn’t It A Pity, just remember Harrison’s own wise words of consolation and transition: "All things must pass away…"