Happy Birthday, George Harrison! He would have been 82 years old today. Known as “The Quiet Beatle”, he joined John Lennon and Paul McCartney in their original band, The Quarrymen in 1958 when he was just 15 years old. While most of the band’s songs were written by Lennon and McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 on contained at least 2 Harrison compositions. His songs include “Taxman”, “Here Comes the Sun”, and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.
By 1965 he started leading the Beatles toward folk rock and classical Indian music through use of instruments like the sitar, which he started playing during the filming of Help!. Harrison played sitar on several songs, starting with “Norwegian Wood”. After the Beatles broke up, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass. It was critically acclaimed and included his most successful single, “My Sweet Lord”. Both the record and that single spent weeks atop the Billboard charts, making him the first ex-Beatle to simultaneously top both the singles and album charts.
In 1971, Harrison and sitar player Ravi Shankar organized the Concert for Bangladesh. It was the first music benefit concert for a humanitarian cause, with performances by Harrison, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Leon Russel, and Badfinger. They played 2 sold out shows at Madison Square Garden, and Harrison also arranged for a release of a concert album and film. In all, more than $12 million had been raised by 1985.
Harrison died of numerous cancers in 2001 at the age of 58. Just two years prior, he had survived a knife attack by an intruder at his home. His remains were cremated and the ashes scattered in India according to Hindu tradition.
In December 1992, Harrison was the first recipient of the Billboard Century Award, given to artists for significant bodies of work. He’s a 2-time Rock and Roll Fame inductee, as member of the Beatles in 1988 and posthumously for his solo career in 2004. There’s also an Illinois State Historical Society marker in Benton, Illinois, commemorating his visit to the town in 1963 to visit his sister – making him the first Beatle to visit the United States.