Devotees and family take Bhakta George Harrison's ashes to the Yamuna

[Guest guest]

Beatle's ashes are flown to India

By Martin Bentham and Charles Laurence

(Filed: 02/12/2001 on Daily Telegraph)

 

AS Beatles fans mourned the death of George Harrison yesterday, his widow

and son were reported to have flown to India to scatter his ashes.

 

Olivia Harrison and Dhani, 23, left Britain on a private jet with friends

from the Hare Krishna movement, to which the former Beatle was deeply

committed, to conduct a ceremony in which his ashes will be scattered over

the Yamuna river in northern India.

 

Elsewhere, fans gathered to sign books of condolence in Liverpool, where

Bernadette Byrne, who was 17 when she dated Harrison, spoke of her sadness

at his death, and recounted how his Liverpudlian charm had swept her off her

feet.

 

"I have shed a few tears over George because he was part of such a happy

period of my life and he was a special person," she said. "He is often

described as the quiet Beatle but as soon as he got to know you he was like

most other Liverpudlians, with a wonderful dry sense of humour.

 

"I treasure my memories from that time and, like many other people around

the world, I am deeply saddened by his death. He was too young to die."

 

Mrs Byrne, who is married with two adult children, met Harrison at the

Cavern nightclub in Liverpool, shortly before the Beatles became famous and

departed for London and worldwide fame.

 

"George and I were girlfriend and boyfriend and we had a lovely time. I

remember one time when the Merseybeat paper was running its Face of Beauty

series, where they would picture girls in the audience at the Cavern. One

time they used my picture while George was away on holiday and the day

before he was due back I was dolling myself up at home with those big hair

rollers. But the door went and there was George, back a day earlier than I

thought. He took one look at me and said 'So this is the face of beauty!' "

 

Mrs Byrne, who still lives in Liverpool, runs the Beatles Story museum, on

the city's Albert Dock, where admirers of Harrison queued yesterday to sign

a book of condolence.

 

There was also a steady flow of people to sign another condolence book at

Liverpool town hall, where the Union flag has flown at half-mast since

yesterday.

 

Mourning also continued in New York as crowds gathered in the patch of

Central Park renamed Strawberry Fields in memory of his fellow Beatle John

Lennon, killed by a gunman in 1980 outside the nearby Dakota Building where

he had an apartment. Middle-aged men and women who become fans of the Fab

Four when they stormed America in 1964, gathered by the mosaic creating the

word Imagine - Lennon's signature song - and strummed guitars as they

recalled the songs with which they had grown up.

 

Others sought to pay tribute to Harrison, who died from cancer on Thursday

night in Los Angeles, aged 58, by buying his records.

 

In London, demand for his records was so great that the record company EMI

laid on a Saturday delivery of his first solo album All Things Must Pass to

replenish stores in the city.

 

"There has been a massive increase in demand for that album," said Mark

Goodwin, the manager of HMV in Oxford Street. "Sales are up 200 per cent on

last week."

 

Meanwhile, the mayor of Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, where Harrison lived

in a 120-room gothic manor, proposed turning the home into a Graceland-style

tourist attraction, which would act as a shrine to the former Beatle. Lane said: "The home he loved so much should be able to stay untarnished in

an everlasting shrine to George." Speculation over Harrison's last days

continues. He is believed to have died in the Studio City mansion of his

friend Gavin de Becker, his security consultant, a place as secure as any in

America.

 

Harrison's widow and son were at his side and with two Hare Krishna friends,

Shayam Sundara and Mukunda , they sang soft chants as he died serenely.