Shapiro - All Things Must Pass: the Life of George Harrison

George Harrison was always known as the quiet Beatle. As part of the biggest band in pop history, he took a back seat to Paul McCartney and John Lennon, but his talent shone through in the composition of classic songs such as Something and Here Comes The Sun. In his solo career he occasionally threatened to eclipse both John and Paul on the world stage, and he joined forces with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne to create the massively succsessful supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

However, the success of his professional life was often met by turmoil in his private life, and the loss of first wife Patti to best friend Eric Clapton, the traumatic attempt on his life by a knife wielding intruder and his final struggle against cancer meant that George Harrisons life was nothing if not dramatic.

Bestselling author Marc Shapiro has exclusively interviewed friends and former colleagues of the enigmatic guitar legend. This revealing biography reaffirms Harrisons importance as an innovative and hugely talented musician and shows that, as a member of the most important band ever, as well as in his multi-faceted career after the Beatles, George Harrison was no ordinary man.

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George Harrison might have been the happiest person on the planet. But you could not tell that by looking into his eyes.

Contemplative? Yes. Enlightened? Occasionally. Resigned? Certainly. But the twinkle of joy? The glint of happiness? In the case of George Harrison, it was never really ever there. Even during the heyday of the Beatles, when anything and everything seemed possible, there was something around the edges of Harrisons seemingly set-in-stone wide-eyed bemused stare that said This is not real, and that he was not comfortable with living this fantasy life.

The smiles during the endless press conferences always seemed a bit too forced and a bit too false. During his time as part of the Beatles, the look on Georges face perhaps reflected the desire to slow down while his life was rushing past him at the speed of light. Did he ever look content? Yes. There were those moments, captured in the millions of photographs taken of him, when he was alone at his home or on the street, signing an autograph for an adoring fan, where the emotions of somebody who was enjoying life crept through. And once again, the tell-tale evidence was in the eyes.

George Harrison went through a lot since the days when his passion for music put him on the road to stardom and, late into 2001, the fates, karma and his own personal and professional choices combined to put sadness in those puppy-dog eyes. In the classic sense, George Harrison had arrived, well into his fifth decade, a bloodied but ultimately unbowed creation: a long-haired, pop icon-cum-Don Quixote who had tilted at one too many windmills and who had won, but, just as often, also lost.

As the subject of a celebrity biography, it all sounds too much like work, heavy on the melancholy and more than a bit downbeat. In All Things Must Pass: The Life of George Harrison, dont look for the fairy-tale ending or an odyssey without a bump in the road. Because to cloak the life and times of George Harrison in anything but flawed and imperfect terms would be a gross miscarriage of history and of the truth. And, it would probably not have made George happy.

Because what makes George Harrison the endearing icon and the subject of just as much conjecture and speculation as blind fan praise, well beyond the expected curiosity attached to his Beatles years, are his emotional and human imperfections. Hardly a badge of honour but rather a badge of living, Harrisons story is finally a tale of hard-fought, scarred redemption.

In Harrisons own mystical universe, he would no doubt have described his life in terms of ying and yang, the chance encounters of spiritual elements and religious planes. And the musician would be fairly on target. His well-known generosity, patience and religious zeal has been equally balanced out in the ledge of life by stories of a rigid, often puritanical nature, philandering and rampant infidelity, questionable, often misguided creative and personal choices, and a penchant for drink and drugs.

His creative frustrations are legendary. His experiments in solo ventures were occasionally successful, his three-record opus All Things Must Pass being the prime example, but just as often pretentious and undermined by his unshakable religious beliefs. Extra Texture: Read All About It and Dark Horse, being major offenders, are famous and infamous. Harrisons on-and-off love affair with stardom is alternately understandable and perplexing, as is the man himself.

Consequently, unlike many legendary performers who always seemed to make the right choices, George Harrisons career has not been universally praised. More than one observer of the pop-music scene has lamented Harrison as somebody not willing to take a chance, preferring to play it safe rather than creatively roll the dice. It has also been said that while he was an intregal part of the Beatles, he never reached discernible heights as a solo artist.