George Harrison
Real name: L'Angelo Misterioso
Born: Feb 25, 1943 in Liverpool, England
Died: Nov 29, 2001 in Los Angeles, CA
Genres: Rock
Styles: Album Rock, Experimental Rock, Pop/Rock, Psychedelic, Singer/Songwriter
Instruments: Slide Guitar, Vocals, Guitar (Electric), Guitar




In 1966, Harrison finally seemed to find his voice, with two of his songs on the Revolver album, "Taxman" and "Love You Too." In the wake of the group's decision to stop touring, Harrison's playing and songwriting grew exponentially. The period from 1968 onward was Harrison's richest with the Beatles. He displayed a smooth, elegant slide guitar technique that showed up on their last three albums, and contributed two classic songs, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Here Comes the Sun," along with "Something," which became the first Harrison song on the A-side of a Beatles single.



Harrison followed All Things Must Pass with rock's first major charity event, The Concert for Bangladesh, which was staged as two shows at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1971 to help raise money for aid to that famine-ravaged nation. The second of the two all-star shows was released as a movie and a live triple album. Harrison's next studio album, Living in the Material World, initially sold well, but its leaner, less opulent production lacked the majestic force of All Things Must Pass, and it lacked the earlier album's mass appeal. Subsequent Harrison albums from the 1970s into the '80s always had an audience, but except for Somewhere in England (1981), released in the wake of the murder of John Lennon with the memorial song "All Those Years Ago," none seemed terribly well-crafted or executed. During this same period, Harrison embarked on a successful career as a movie producer with the founding of Handmade Films.



He withdrew into private life after that, devoting himself to his life with his second wife and their son, and only re-emerged before the public when necessary, such as defending the Beatles' copyrights in court cases. In 1999, Harrison was assaulted in his home and seriously injured by a deranged fan, but he recovered and in 2000 he began work on remastering and expanding his classic All Things Must Pass album. The reissue of that album at the outset of 2001 heralded an unusually public publicity campaign by Harrison, who accompanied its re-release with an interview record that anticipated the eventual reissue of the rest of his catalog. Harrison had been treated for throat cancer in the late 1990's, but in 2001 it was revealed that he was suffering from an inoperable form of brain cancer. At the time of his death on November 29, 2001, The Concert For Bangladesh album had been announced for upgraded reissue in January of 2002, and a DVD of the film was in release internationally.