Harrison

George Harrison was one of the most adored and accomplished musicians of the rock & roll era. His brilliant, understated guitar playing helped define the sound of the Beatles, and his songs -- including "Something," "Here Comes the Sun" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" -- are among the group's finest. Harrison's lifelong quest for new sounds had a profound influence on the Beatles; he introduced the sitar and other Eastern instruments into the group -- and to rock & roll. In the late...
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George Harrison was one of the most adored and accomplished musicians of the rock & roll era. His brilliant, understated guitar playing helped define the sound of the Beatles, and his songs -- including "Something," "Here Comes the Sun" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" -- are among the group's finest. Harrison's lifelong quest for new sounds had a profound influence on the Beatles; he introduced the sitar and other Eastern instruments into the group -- and to rock & roll. In the late sixties he also led the Beatles to explore Eastern religion and embarked on a personal spiritual journey that continued for the rest of his life. In 1970, following the Beatles' breakup, Harrison released a solo masterpiece,All Things Must Pass,and the next year he pioneered rock's first large-scale charity event with the Concert for Bangladesh. Harrison launched a solo tour in 1974 and made a series of wonderful solo albums and side projects with friends like Eric Clapton, Ravi Shankar and fellow Beatle Ringo Starr. In the late eighties he formed the Traveling Wilburys with his friends Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne, but Harrison spent most of that decade and the nineties at home in England and Hawaii, tending to his garden, playing the ukulele and enjoying a quiet life with his wife, Olivia, and son, Dhani.ROLLING STONE featured George Harrison on its cover three times for his post-Beatles work and eight times as a Beatle. He was also featured on the cover of a special commemorative issue, as well as on the magazine's regular edition, following his death from cancer at age fifty-eight, on November 29, 2001. Now, in a definitive tribute that features a new foreword by Olivia Harrison, the editors have drawn on their archives and hundreds of photographs, both the iconographic and the rarely seen, to celebrate the life and career of one of the most important musicians in rock & roll history.Compiled by the editors of ROLLING STONE,Harrisonchronicles the guitarist's life before, during and after the Beatles. Contributing editor Mikal Gilmore offers an expansive, thoughtful new essay, "The Mystery Inside George." ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award winner and ROLLING STONE senior editor David Fricke tells the stories behind Harrison's best-known songs, and offers a guide to twenty-five essential Harrison recordings.Harrisonalso features news stories and interviews with the guitarist from throughout ROLLING STONE's history -- from his first Q&A with the magazine, in 1968, to his last, a 1987 interview with ROLLING STONE contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis.Harrisonalso collects more than one hundred photographs -- from intimate, never-before-seen family photos to iconic images of Harrison as a member of the world's most photographed band. The work of nine renowned photographers is featured in a stunning sixty-page gallery. Included among them are German photographers Max Scheler's and Jürgen Vollmer's early photos of the band's wild days in Hamburg. There is also the deeply personal work of Astrid Kirchherr, who shot the Beatles' earliest formal portraits in a Hamburg fairground and became a close friend of George's. P.J. Griffiths photographed the band for a newspaper article in 1963 on the Liverpool scene. David Hurn shot the filming ofA Hard Day's NightandHelp!Curt Gunther was one of the few photographers allowed to travel with the group during their 1964 North American tour. And Mark Seliger shot what became the definitive late-period portrait of Harrison for ROLLING STONE's twenty-fifth anniversary issue in 1992.