And then there were two

[Guest guest]

And then there were two: quiet Beatle passes to 'higher level'

 

Youngest band member dies at peace after cancer struggle

 

Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent

Saturday December 1, 2001

The Guardian

 

George Harrison, the most spiritual, sardonic and ultimately most

elusive Beatle, has died of cancer, six years short of reaching the

64th birthday celebrated in song by the world's most famous band.

The youngest of the four Liverpudlian musicians who changed not only

pop music but society itself in the 1960s, passed "to a higher

level" late on Thursday evening in a friend's home in Los Angeles,

causing a worldwide twinge of mortality in a generation still half

in love with the idea of eternal youth.

 

Harrison went well-prepared. He died, according to his long-time

friend, the security guru Gavin De Becker, "with one thought in

mind - love one another". His Mexican-born wife Olivia and son Dhani

were by his side.

 

"He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of

death, and at peace, surrounded by family and friends," Olivia said

yesterday in a statement. "He often said: everything else can wait

but the search for God cannot wait."

 

Nothing more exemplified this than when, on millennium eve, having

scoured the world for a cure for his lung and throat cancer, he was

stabbed 10 times by a deranged drug addict who broke into his

mansion near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. With the knife still

in his chest Harrison chanted, "Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!" so

throwing the man that it allowed his wife time to knock him out with

a lamp and a poker.

 

The experience appears to have resigned him to his death, and only

two months ago, with typical bone-dry wit, he recorded a track, co-

written with 23-year-old Dhani, on Jools Holland's new album under

the nom de plume of RIP Publishing.

 

Yesterday, Paul McCartney, who smuggled the underage Harrison to

Hamburg to play on the Silver Beatles' first tour - before the

promoters discovered he was only 17 and he was sent him home by the

authorities - said he had lost his "baby brother".

 

"We were school friends together, and we joined the Beatles

together. I love him, he is like a baby brother to me. He went

peacefully, and that's a blessing. I would prefer now to think of

all the great times we had together. His music will live on forever,

as will his personality. He was a very strong, loving man, who

didn't suffer fools gladly, as anyone who knew him would know."

 

Sir Paul said he had his last moments with Harrison a few weeks

ago. "He was quite ill, but we were laughing and joking all the

same. He has always been a very brave guy."

 

He needed all that sly, sarcastic wit in the years of squabbling

leading up to the Beatles' split in 1970, leaving him at 27 rich

beyond his dreams.

 

Yet he was the first of the Fab Four out of the trap with a solo

career and number one hit, and in 1971 set the template for pop

philanthropy with a concert in New York with Eric Clapton and Bob

Dylan that raised $9m (£6m) to relieve famine in Bangladesh.

 

Bob Geldof, who launched Live Aid with Harrison's advice to "watch

out for the bloody lawyers" ringing in his ears, said: "George

wasn't a reluctant Beatle. He knew that his place in popular culture

was absolutely secure. He was very curmudgeonly about the fame

thing. But he was very gentle."

 

But it was his openness as much as his peacemaking which was his

greatest contribution to the band, introducing the Beatles to Bob

Dylan, Ravi Shankar and bringing them to India to learn yoga and

meditation at the feet of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. "When you have had

all the experiences, met all the famous people, made some money,

toured the world and got all the acclaim, you still think - is that

it?" he once said. "Some people might be satisfied with that - but I

wasn't."

 

He may have been the quiet one, but he made his words count, as the

Beatles' producer George Martin recalled yesterday, having been

skewered by Harrison on their first meeting. "I don't like your

tie," was his acerbic assessment of the man who would preside over

the making of their greatest albums at the Abbey Road studios in

London.

 

He grew wary very quickly of all the hangers-on - the first song he

wrote for the Beatles was Don't Bother Me.

 

And that in many ways was the motto of his later years, particularly

after the assassination of John Lennon in 1980, which shocked him

into spending a fortune on security around his 120-room mansion and

estate near Henley. Before Lennon was killed, Harrison would often

wander into a local pub for a pint, but never afterwards.

 

Even so he often entertained with gusto at home, said the writer and

comedian Michael Palin, who paid tribute to the hugely important but

relatively little-known role Harrison's Handmade Films company

played in the renaissance of British cinema. It was he who stepped

in to finance Monty Python's now classic Life Of Brian when no one

else would touch it.

 

"He actually mortgaged his house in Henley to put the money down to

set up Handmade Films, a brave decision which resulted in one of the

most successful small production companies in Britain, producing

Time Bandits, Mona Lisa and some of the best British films of the

1980s," said Palin.

 

"George stood by what films he thought he would enjoy seeing himself

and there are very few who had that kind of enlightened attitude

which brought such powerful results.

 

"Purely as a friend, George was equally generous. I am eternally

grateful to him for producing the Pythons' version of the Lumberjack

song which got to number 51 in the charts."

 

Such is the world-stopping power of the Beatles still that Blair - once a lead guitarist himself with a band called the Ugly

Rumours - and his Irish counterpart Bertie Aherne broke away from

their talks on Northern Ireland to pay tribute to Harrison.

 

The Queen also expressed her sadness at his death. In a further

royal gesture, which would have surely appealed to Harrison's wit,

the Coldstream Guards played a medley of his songs while the Lord

Mayor of Liverpool paid the highest tribute of all, calling him

a "true Scouser".