George Harrison played an understated but significant role in pop history during his 44 year long musical career, writes Philip Pank

Philip Pank
Friday November 30, 2001
The Guardian

George Harrison played in the shadow of the Beatles' dominant songwriters, but wrote some of their finest anthems, injected rock'n'roll with an Eastern flavour and was the first of the Fab Four to top the charts with a solo hit.

The quiet lead guitarist had a playing style modelled on Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, jangling his 12-string Rickenbacker guitar on "A Hard Day's Night" and other hits and sounding inspiration for a host of musicians.

While his songwriting was overshadowed by the dominant Lennon-McCartney duo, Harrison contributed such classics as Here Comes the Sun and Something, later covered by Frank Sinatra.

Pundits say that his songwriting talent put him up there with the greats.

"As he said himself, how do you compare with the genius of John and Paul? But he did, very well," Bob Geldof told the BBC.

"All the way back, he measured up. Maybe because of the necessary competition between the other two, his standard of songwriting was incomparably better than most other contemporaries."

It was Harrison who taught Lennon, then a schoolboy, to play the guitar.

His musical influence continued into the group's heyday and while the band was filming the movie Help! in 1965, Harrison became interested in the sitar.

He introduced the classical Indian instrument to a generation of popsters on the track Norwegian Wood from the Rubber Soul album.

In 1966, he studied sitar music with one of its most well-known masters, Ravi Shankar, a journey that led him into Eastern mysticism.

His biographer, Alan Clayson, said that Harrison's greatest legacy was the input of alternative cultures into British pop music.

"His most far reaching effect on both pop music and culture in general was that he introduced the idea that it was possible to take aspects of other cultures and insert them in Western pop," he said.

"He was somebody who took the sitar, for example, seriously rather than treating it as some sort of fancy guitar."

He wrote more and more music, including the songs I Need You for the soundtrack of Help, If I Needed Someone on Rubber Soul, Taxman and Love You To on Revolver, Within You, Without You on Sgt Pepper, and While My Guitar Gently Weeps on the White Album.

But disillusionment with Beatlemania led Harrison into a solo career.

He was the first Beatle to top the charts with a solo single, My Sweet Lord, taken from the 1970 triple album, All Things Must Pass.

Fans said that the volume of material on the album showed how he had been stifled in the shadows of Lennon and McCartney.

However, the hit single My Sweet Lord led Harrison to court.

He lost a lawsuit brought by the copyright owner of He's So Fine, a track written by Lonnie Mack and recorded by The Chiffons, who said that Harrison had stolen the music.

Critics began to question his talent.

The Village Voice critic, Robert Christgau, likened him to a "borderline hitter they can pitch around after the sluggers [Lennon and McCartney] are traded away."

After the break-up of the Beatles, Harrison teamed up with old friends, including Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison in a band, The Travelling Wilburys.

He is still riding high in the charts, having returned only last month to the recording studio for the first time since being treated for the cancer that ultimately killed him.

He wrote the song A Horse To Water with his son Dhani and recorded it for Jools Holland's collaborative album Small World Big Band, which was released two weeks ago.

"George suggested we do a track and this finally happened this month. It was wonderful to work with one of the great, legendary artists in the world," Holland said.

The album is currently at number 18 in the charts.