The Answer’s At The End: George Harrison, 1943-2001 An Appreciation: The Art Of Living And The Art Of Dying
There'll come a time II hen all of us must leave here As nothing in this life that I’ve been trying Can equal or surpass the art of dying —George Harrison, 1970, “The Art of Dying”
BY TIMOTHY WHITE “The first song I ever wrote was because I needed a doctor." George Harrison said with a laugh in July of 1992, seated in the kitchen of his Friar Park estate in Henley-on-Thames, England. The former Beatle was reflecting on the creative impetus behind “Don't Bother Me,” his initial attempt in August 1963 at songwriting for the Beatles.
“I had a bug, and I was sick (in a hotel room in Bournemouth, England, with a concert to do that night), and so I was staying in bed all day long.
“So it was the first thing I thought of as a lyric,” he continued with a chuckle. “and I never really thought it was a great song. I just thought. 'I’m going to see if I can write a song, 'cause they’re writing them.' ”
Harrison was referring to the prolific team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who had already bestowed hits like “Love Me Do" and “Please Please Me” on the fortunes of the Fab Foursome, whose other member was drummer/vocalist Ringo Starr.
Harrison, Billboard's 1992 Century Award honoree, explained that the maiden composition—with its pointed assertion that “I've got no time for you right now”—was a comment not only on his bout with the flu and the further encumbrance of his doctor's clumsy care (“In those days they had this medicine that had morphine in it—you could buy it over the counter; I'm sure it must've been banned over the years, but I remember he prescribed it”), but it was also a statement about his thwarted creative drive.
The surge of loneliness engendered by Harrison's minor malady in the summer of '63, the too-potent prescription that was sapping his energy, and his frustrating non-writing status all suddenly pushed him into a statement of musical self-assertion.
Thirty years later, he said of his pathbreaking power ballad, “It’s pretty embarrassing stuff, really. But in those days, we didn’t know much about how to put a song over." Perhaps, but the swift rise starting the following week in 1963 of the Beatles’ “She Loves You” single to worldwide No. 1 status—propelled by Harrison’s lead Rickenbacker guitar riffs—indicated that all parties in the band were learning fast.
“Don’t Bother Me” was recorded Sept 11-12,1963, with Latin touches (Paul adding claves and Ringo some bongos) and a fierce guitar solo by George. The restive, resentment-laced track (which first appeared on the November ’63 With the Beatles U.K. album and then on the January '64 Meet the Beatles! U.S. collection) represented a novel detour for the Beatles—away from innocent “yeah, yeah, yeah" pop affirmation and toward a gritty adult depiction of hurt and indignation, followed by a healing process borne of mutual respect and acceptance.
Indeed, the abandoned lover at the center of “Don’t Bother Me” accepts all responsibility for his plight (“It’s not the same/But I'm to blame/It’s plain to see"). The song closes with a mordant dash of the sly wit evident in virtually all of Harrison’s work, the narrator portrayed as a caricature of over-the-top self-pity as he pleads: "But till she’s here please don’t come near/Just stay away/ I’ll let you know when she’s come home/Until that day... ”
The essence of George Harrison's affecting, often wryly confrontational art was its ability to make real feelings into believable songs with sincere and even unabashed messages, while maintaining a sense of humor, subtlety, and balance about the matter—before, during, and afterward.
As Harrison himself pointed out to this writer during a late-'90s walk around his Friar Park gardens, even a blissful signature song of his like “Something" contained a worldly perspective. The woman in question “attracts me like no other lover”: The confessional lyric is poignant precisely because the storyteller is experienced enough to know how special his beloved has become to him.
While Harrison was thrilled and flattered that Frank Sinatra covered “Something" in an Oct. 29,1970, session in Hollywood, Harrison thought it was hilarious that the Chairman of the Board revamped the gentle advice in the verse at the bridge, turning it into a virtual saloon taunt: “Stick around, Jack, it may show!”
“Jack!” Harrison exclaimed at his memory of first hearing Frank’s rendition. “How did he get in there? Is he a friend of Frank’s? Eh? It sounds like he'd better not stick around, whoever he is!” George Harrison, who was bom at 11: 42 p.m. Feb. 24, 1943, and who died Nov. 29,2001, was a man of wit, candor, and disarming directness. His art of living, of creating, and of dying were all of a cohesive piece. Immediately after his passing, his wife, Olivia, and 23-year-old son, Dhani, issued the statement that "he left the world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death, and at peace, surrounded by family and friends." In its thoughtful tenderness, the words echoed the poetic card the Harrison family had sent out to many well- wishers at the beginning of 2000, as George was recovering from the near- fatal stabbing that he suffered at Friar Park in December 1999 at the hands of a deranged intruder (his life was saved by Olivia, who struck the maniac with a brass poker after the 34-year-old man broke into the Harrisons’ home):
"Thank you for your kind thoughts, flowers and messages of concern and compassion for our ordeal. Your kindness and love were a great help and a desperately needed con- trast to our unfortunate experience. We would like to wish you and your families a happy new year and hope it will he a peaceful and loving one. We hope to see you again soon. George, Olivia and Dhany Harrison (Om Shanti)."
Even in the midst of their own travails, the Harrisons always instinctively thought of others and of the invisible bonds of hope and spirit shared by all families when tested by sorrow, transgression, and threats to their well-being.
Like their annual Christmas cards, with their charming hand made images of suns and stars and golden promise, the notes Harrison and his immediate km sent out to the world were warm and humble, yet profound in their appreciation of life’s small moments.
"I want to show you something,” a gleeful Harrison told his guest at Friar Park one radiant June afternoon in 1999, the soil-covered singer taking a break from his gardening chores to lure the visitor off the splendid expaase of front lawn seen stretching out behind Harrison in Barry Feinstein’s famous photo on the cover of All Things Must Pass. Leading the way across the veranda and through a glass door into the large kitchen on the right side of the Victorian Gothic house, Harrison stopped beside a handsome, oven-fresh spice cake cooling on the counter.
“Olivia and the cook just put the yogurt icing on this,” he whispered, his eyes twinkling. “It’s really meant to be for dessert after dinner tonight, but teatime is in a half-hour, and I think we can each have a piece then.”
For all he had gained or stood to lose in his remarkable life, Harrison never failed to exhibit either the common touch or the ordinary enthusiasms that enriched it. He saw love, eternity, and the God-decreed fragility of the human experience in every flower bed he weeded and every sweet that emerged from the family stove. And he had the wisdom to bow with a full heart before all that was good.
Just before they took the ashes of Harrison’s cremated remains to the holy Hindu city of Varanasi (coincidentally, the birthplace of George’s musical guru, Ravi Shankar) to be scattered at the point where the sacred rivers of the Ganges, Yamuna, and Saraswati unite, Olivia said on behalf of herself and her son: “We are deeply touched by the outpouring of love and compassion from people around the world. The profound beauty of the moment of George’s pass- ing—of his awakening from this dream—was no surprise to those of us who knew how he longed to be with God. In that pursuit, he was relentless.” As Harrison sang on “Awaiting on You All”: “If you open up your heart/Then you will see He’s right there/He always was and will be/He'll relieve you of all your cares.” Despite all the largely well-intentioned eulogies of Harrison since his untimely death at the age of 58, lingering misconceptions of Harrison continue to obscure him from the general public. Dour images persist of the ex-Beatle (choose one or more): (A) the Quiet One (B) the Reclusive One (C) the Serious One (D) the Spiritual One (E) all of the above.
Having met the artist in the late-1970s, interviewed him extensively in the 1980s for print and radio, and remained in regular personal touch with him throughout the 1990s, this journalist found none of these narrow and stilted descriptions of his nature to be accurate.
"Don’t worry! I’ll show you the way!” Harrison volunteered on a crisp evening in 1994, suddenly hopping into a London taxi following his customary attendance at one of Ravi Shankar’s local concerts at the Barbican Hall. (The Indian maestro was often co-billed there with his daughter/protege, Anoushka).
Throughout the late ’80s and ’90s, Harrison traveled regularly between London, New York City, Los Angeles, his vacation home in Hawaii, and assorted pilgrimage points in India. Rather than seclude himself, Harrison preferred to go gracefully with the flow of everyday humanity.
Olivia once kidded George in this writer’s presence about his insistence on flying commercially for his Indian trips, since it usually made for a heightened stir in the Air India flight lounges. “But the people are so interesting to talk to,” he rejoined sheepishly, as if to apologize for the commotion he usually created.
Spontaneous in his social impulses as well as his travel arrangements, Harrison recommended a group meal after the ’94 Shankar concert at the Barbican, inviting this writer and his spouse as well as Ravi; Anoushka; Ravi’s wife, Sukanya; and Olivia's friend Sandra Kamen, wife of composer Michael Kamen.
Harrison figured everybody could converge in the Chinese dining room at the St. James Hotel, where Ravi was staying. Handing his car keys to Olivia so that she and the others could follow' behind, Harrison stepped out into Beech Street and hailed a taxi. I le ushered the two Americans in his party into the back seat, while he took the fold-down seat behind the cabbie in order to direct him.
Harrison passed much of the taxi ride talking about his summer and how' it had been marred by his $11.6 million lawsuit agaiast former HandMade Films partner Denis O'Brien, during which his one-time business manager (1973-1993) had been charged with fraud and the deceitful siphoning of millioas from Harrison’s accounts. (Harrison won a summary judgment against O'Brien Jan. 10,1996.) He joked that he was writing a song about the whole affair tentatively titled “O’Brien Is Lyin’.”
The cab paused at a stop light at Piccadilly Circus, immediately opposite a massive Tower Records window display for the impending release of the previously unissued radio performance album, The Beatles: Live at the BBC. A large crowd was clustered before the imposing promotional product presentation, oblivious to the former “Fab” staring at their backs from a cab window 10 feet away.
“Well, look,” Harrison said, chuckling softly as he pointed to the huge sepia photo blow-ups of the four early- ’60s Beatles in dark suits and overcoats as they ambled outside the headquarters of the British Broadcasting Company. “Isn’t that my old band?” Hearing this, the cabbie cocked his head to get a good look at Harrison and gasped. Struck by the drama of the moment, the driver asked his famous fare to autograph a £10 note.
“Oh!" Harrison said with an impish grin as he took the bill from the hack. “Would I do that to the Queen?" Then he signed his name across the likeness of Elizabeth II and handed it back.
Arriving at the Chinese bistro just as it was closing, George petitioned the elderly owner/manager with polite dismay, saying, “Please understand, Ravi Shankar is coming and hopes to have dinner! This is Ravi Shankar, one of the world's greatest living musicians! I'm sure you understand. It’d be terrible to disappoint him.”
Harrison never made any reference to himself and who Ac might be. The owner finally gave in, due largely to George’s patient charm. But when the young staff filed out and saw who they’d have to work overtime to serve, they nearly fainted. One startled woman dropped an armload of ceramic soup bowls.
Harrison regaled his guests for the next 2½ hours with tales of his recent travels interspersed with anecdotes about Beatlemania and the archival research under way for the next year’s first installment of the three-part Beatles “Anthology" series, which would feature studio outtakes, alternate tracks, and unissued music. “It’s a shame John isn’t here,” he laughed, “so we could re-record it all one last time and maybe finally get it right."
"Do you have any messages for Arnold Grove?" Harrison asked the desk clerk in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel one November evening in 1994. The former Beatle often stayed at the Plaza in the decades since the demise of what,sons irony, he regularly referred to as “the Fabs." He usually registered under the pseudonyms of either Grove (the name of a cul-de-sac in the Waver- tree area of Liverpool, where he was bom) or Rick Veda (a play on the sacred ancient Hindu verses of the Rig Veda). After he’d received his messages, Harrison headed straight out the front door of the midtown hotel and down Fifth Avenue, strolling alone except for his invited dinner companion and exhibiting no discernible wariness beyond a limber respect for pedestrian traffic lights.
I saw Harrison on a regular basis during the '90s, when he visited New York City for Apple Records board meetings and other appointments. He was usually alone unless in the company of his wife or son. On the street, Harrison was recognized no more than 50% of the time by passersby (and those who did recognize him merely smiled and nodded or offered a discreet, hand-fluttering hello, as if sharing a mutual secret).
Harrison was casual about dinner reservations at his favorite Indian restaurants on Manhattan's East Side, sometimes preferring to simply show up around 7 p.m. and hope for a handy table. If he had to wait with his guest he stood in line or at the bar and chatted.
Harrison was gregarious and a good listener. He loved talking about books, recent films, British and Indian history, and the annals of the recording industry—whether it was about early English vaudeville, Cab Calloway and Hoagy Carmichael, the transition from big bands to bebop, country and Western music at its most rustic or iastru- mentally skilled, or the evolution of recording techniques.
He also liked decompressing after Apple board meetings by recounting the various wrinkles of the moment. There was a voting process between the surviving Beatles and Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, that sometimes got stick)'. Harrison also explained the longstanding determination on the part of the Beatles to see their entire album catalog restored to its original British configurations, complete with full track listings and original artwork, so that the “extra” U.S. releases cobbled together from cuts deleted in the U.S. for licensing reasons were eliminated forever.
A huge fan of Grand Prix auto racing since the age of 12 (when he pinned a photo of 1955 ace Mercedes-Benz driver Juan Fangio on his bedroom wall), Harrison followed the Formula One circuit from the 1960s through the last year of his life. As a friend of such famed drivers as Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, and Emerson Fittipaldi, he accepted their invitations to visit and mingle with their pit crews during key races around the world.
Harrison himself drove in charity events at such leading tracks as England’s Brand’s Hatch, including one event in the late 1970s for Swedish driver Gunnar Nilsson—who died of cancer—during which George drove a 1960 Lotus once ridden in championship meets by Sterling Moss. Harrison donated the money from his 1979 “Faster" single from the George Harrison album to a cancer fund in Nilsson’s memory.
During an impromptu February ’99 phone chat from Australia, Harrison enthused for nearly an hour about Formula One racing and its political power struggles over rules and regulations. It was a subject about which he’d just written an untitled song intended for his next solo album.
One of the biggest critical drubbings he ever got was in 1974 for his Dark Horse tour, a 42-show, 25-city road trip he’d embarked on immediately after completing his overdue Dark Horse album. Plagued by throat problems since childhood, he sang his voice out after four consecutive concerts and had to complete the tour in poor health, amid savage reviews of his singing stamina. Although he never dared headline a tour again until his friend Eric Clapton volunteered to back him with Clapton’s band for a 1991 Japan circuit, Harrison always waggishly referred to his ’74 ordeal as “the Dark Hoarse tour.”
Sometimes portrayed as a press detractor, he actually disdained not journalism but what he called the modem phenomenon of “the gossip industry,” which he viewed as a lucrative engine of social decay and an increasingly commonplace assault on human dignity.
Harrison could spend the morning reading from the Upanisads and other volumes of the Vedanta philosophy, do some gardening and hedge trimming in his topiary after lunch, listen to vintage recordings before dinner by bygone British ukelele-banjo performer George Formby, and then watch a VHS tape of Mel Brooks’ The Producers.
Harrison was the producer, via his HandMade Films company, of such projects from the ranks of the Monty Python troupe as Time Bandits and The Life of Brian. Many observers questioned why the man behind “My Sweet Lord” and “Living in the Material World" would back a supposedly sacrilegious biblical farce. “A-ha!” Harrison would rejoin. “Actually, all it made fun of was the people’s stupidity in the story. Christ came out of it looking good!”
Harrison was a big fan of famed ’50s/’60s hipster comedian Lord Buck- ley (1906-1960). His 1977 hit “Cracker- box Palace” was inspired by memories of Buckley’s jive monologues. As George later mock-lamented, "Everybody thought I was talking about the other Lord.”
One of the finest and (tinniest parody documentaries of a rock band ever filmed was The Duties (All You Need Is Cash) (1978). This lovingly detailed pseudo- biography of the Beatles (complete with the more-than-adequate companion album) was mounted by Mont)'Pythons Eric Idle with the full and indispensible cooperation of Harrison, who also appeared (behind a gray mustache and wig) in the role of a TV joumalist/inter- viewer—a symbolic treat for Harrison.
As Harrison told this writer in 1991, “Now u'e’re all pretty much at ease about the Beatles, because so much time has elapsed. But there was a period when we were persecuted for years by the public and the press, and then we persecuted ourselves with all the lawsuits and stuff. There was a point when just a mention of the word ’Beatles’ used to make my toes curl. “In that period when Eric Idle was doing The fhitles,” Harrison explains, “I fed him video tapes and all this footage of us [that] we’re still only just putting together finally as the Beatles [Anthology] documentary. He used to analyze it and then write the Rutles’ story. And in The Rutles is that shot where [an announcer] is saying, ‘The Rutles are coming to town to talk about their trousers!’ There’s a lot in The Rutles that is really spot-on. And anyway, it was good for me, and it in away kind of exorcised the things about the Beatles that bothered me in that period of time.”
Thank you for your kind thoughts, flowers and messages of concern and compassion for our ordeal. Your kindness and love were a great help and a desperately needed contrast to our unfortunate experience.
We would like to wish you and your families a happy new year and hope it will be a peaceful and loving one. We hope to see yon again soon.
George, Olivia and Dhani Harrison
Contrary to popular belief, Harrison’s interest in Indian culture and Hindu religion was free of the false piety and sanctimonious attitudes that he and sitar mentor Ravi Shankar were vigilant about warding off in themselves or each other.
“I played a role in his life, changing his view and getting him interested in old values and philosophies,” Shankar says of Harrison, who became his sitar student in 1966. “I didn’t do any sermonizing. Firstly, I just handed him a book, The Autobiography of a Yogi [by Paramahansa Yogananda]. That was the first thing that got him so interested in Indian literature. I used to joke sometimes that he was overly serious. I’d say, ’Come on, George!’ But he has such a childlike quality of appreciation.”
“His health is getting a little uncertain, and at the same time, he’s still not really appreciated for his incredible music— most of his best rec- ordings are out of print!” The voice on the phone in the winter of 1994 was Harrison, phoning from Friar Park to a hotel room in Chicago. Harrison had tracked down this writer to speak of Shankar, whose slow recovery from physical injuries suffered in recent mishaps had prompted Harrison’s concern that his musical teacher was growing frail in health as he was fading in the public’s imagination.
“Ravi is one of the greatest figures of the 20th century—the godfather of world music,” Harrison stated, his voice unsteady with emotion. He sought support from Billboard to help remind the music industry of Shankar’s accomplishments as the sitar virtuoso neared his 75th birthday in April 1995.
This writer spent the next 1½ years working with Harrison, Shankar, producer Alan Kozlowski, research archivist Harihar Rao, and Angel Records’ Steve Murphy and Jay Landers in amassing and annotating the 1996 In Celebration boxed set on Dark Horse/ Angel that heralded the reissue of highlights from Shankar’s vast EMI catalog and kicked off a stream of new releases.
The sad circumstance that the 81-year-old Shankar has now outlived the pupil he regarded as a son is lost on no one who considers the amazing 35-year journey they shared together.
Harrison was passionate about his ideals and impatient with cynicism. He was tolerant of criticism and calm even in the face of extended commentary by co-workers—whether or not he ultimately took any of the proffered advice. One night at Friar Park in 1999, he spent hours playing unreleased archival tracks—including all-star studio jams, covers of Bob Dylan songs and rock classics, outtakes from the two scampish Traveling Wilburys albums (cut in 1988-1990 with Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne), his own ver- sions of songs he’d given to Eric Clapton and other artists, and cuts dropped from his Capitol and Dark Horse solo albums that he intended to provide as bonus tracks in a planned reissue series. He chortled as he cued up an especially raucous hard-rock jam, introducing it as “The Quiet One From the Quiet One.”
Harrison also unveiled material intended for his next solo album, whose whimsical working title was a Python- esque play on words: Portrait o f a Leg End. He had enlisted such musicians as former Traffic member Jim Capaldi and noted drummer Jim Keltner to flesh out the tracks he’d laid down himself, and he freely solicited observations concerning the still- evolving arrangements of such new songs as “Valentine,” “Pisces Fish,” “Brainwashed,” his composition about the politics behind Grand Prix racing, and his caustic rock soliloquy about his former manager.
“I need to get that last song out of my system,” he explained as his wife and son looked on. ‘To have someone sit at your table with your family every night and then betray your trust is one of the worst experiences imaginable. Sometimes songwriting is the only way I can respond to the outside world, to exorcise its demons.”
Harrison was reminded that same evening that back in 1979, he had recorded a song on his Russ Titelman co-produced George Harrison album called “Soft Touch.” It was a song first inspired by Keltner’s remarks about Harrison being a soft touch business-wise, but it was later transformed by Harrison into a tribute to “my baby boy”—Dhani.
Now, in 1999, Dhani is standing with his mom beside the mixing board in the control room of his dad’s home studio. He is listening to outtakes of the music made in the years after Harrison and the former Olivia Arias (a one-time employee in the merchandising department of then-Dark Horse distributor A&M Records) met, fell in love, and celebrated the birth on Aug. 1,1978, of their child at Princess Christian Nursing Home in Windsor, England.
Dhani—perhaps the greatest source of pride in Harrison’s adult life—took up guitar as he grew. At the age of 12, he joined his father onstage during Harrison’s 1991 Japanese tour to play “Roll Over Beethoven.”
In 1996, Harrison was very excited about the pending world release of Volume 2 of the Beatles’ “Anthology” recordings series. But Harrison had an even bigger personal cause for delight “Dhani’s going to be going to Brown University!” his father exclaimed. “It was his first choice, and he got in straight away. On the SATs for those American universities, he seemed to handle it quite easy and got very high scores. And they accepted him in [to Brown], and they also loved the idea that he’s a coxswain with the rowers in Henley, because Brown is a big rowing school.
“He’s a bit stressed out at the moment, because he’s doing these A- Level [secondary-school final] exams for, like, physics. You know," his father said with a chuckle, “I couldn’t do that at all. So he’s got into Brown, and he wants to take a year out when he gets out of school in June or July rather than go straight there. He needs it, too, because it’s been a lot for him. “But also,” George added, “he has to deal with that thing of being ‘the son of,’ which isn’t easy either. So it’s great, but we may have to go and live there in Providence, R.I.—I remember we played there in 1974—and get a little house, otherwise I will have lost my son!”
One of the last creative acts of Harrison's life would be the collaboration with his college-educated son on the writing and recording of “Horse to the Water,” a song included on Jools Holland’s new album, Small World Big Band, bearing the forbidding copyright “R.I.P. Limited 2001.”
"Not being able to do anything for suffering family or loved ones is an awful experience,” Harrison told this writer in 1987. He was speaking of the care and comfort he struggled to offer his parents when both were in the hospital in 1970, his mother for a brain tumor [from which she later expired], and his father for ulcers. But George was also describing the inspiration for one of his most touching solo songs, “Deep Blue”—the B-side of his 1971 hit song to benefit Indian refugees from war and famine, “Bangla-Desh.”
The A-side of the single was the result of a request for help from Ravi Shankar. The concert and album that ensued was the first international rock- sponsored humanitarian relief effort.
In his music, in his epic passage from “Don’t Bother Me” to “Horse to the Water,” George Harrison conveyed his distress, confessed his vulnerabilities, and expressed his longing—as did the ancient Vedic poets—for the nearness of God. Through his recordings, he prayed for the human race. Perhaps, in the days to come, each of us—in his or her own way—might spare a moment to pray for him.
Last Christmas, George Harrison said that after his recording/reissue work in 2001 was done, he wanted very much “to go to someplace sunny, someplace warm.” Hopeftilly, that place will be in our hearts.
92-ая (задняя) страница этого номера издания с данью уважения от Capitol.
Sunrise doesn’t last all morning A cloudburst doesn’t last all day Seems my love is up, And has left you with no warning But it’s not always going to be this grey
