Actors - George Harrison

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	Actors - George Harrison

George Harrison, MBE (February 24, 1943 – November 29, 2001) was a popular British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer, and film producer, best known as a member of The Beatles.

Harrison was the lead guitarist of The Beatles. During the band’s extremely successful career, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were its main songwriters. However, Harrison usually wrote and sang lead on one or two songs per album, including the popular "If I Needed Someone", "Taxman", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun", and "Something".

During the era of the Beatles, Harrison also became attracted to Indian music and Hinduism, sparking unprecedented interest in them in the Western Hemisphere. Both would subsequently play a prominent role in Harrison’s life and music.

Harrison also had an uneven but sometimes very successful solo career after the break-up of The Beatles, scoring major hits with "My Sweet Lord" (1970), "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)" (1973), "All Those Years Ago" (1981), and "Got My Mind Set on You" (1987). He also organized the first large-scale charity concert, The Concert For Bangladesh, which took place on August 1, 1971. Harrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2004.

Harrison was also a film producer and founded Handmade Films in 1979. The company's films include Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, Time Bandits
, Withnail and I
, and Mona Lisa. Harrison also has a cameo role in the Beatles parody film The Rutles
.

Early years

George Harrison was born in Liverpool, England in 1943. His sister has said that their mother wrote in her diary that he was born ten minutes after midnight on February 25, though Harrison subsequently claimed that he had, in fact, been born on February 24 at 11:40 PM. His full name is often given as "George Harold Harrison," but this is incorrect. Harrison had no middle name, as one can see on his birth certificate. Harold was his father's name.

Harrison’s childhood home is located at 12 Arnold Grove. He first attended school at Dovedale Infants, just off Penny Lane. Later on, he attended the Liverpool Institute for Boys (now the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts), a "smart school", but was regarded as a poor student, and contemporaries described him as someone who would "sit alone in the corner". In the mid-1950s he knew Paul McCartney (also a Liverpool Institute student) and beginning in February 1958 played lead guitar in the band (initially called The Quarry Men) that eventually became The Beatles.

In 1959, Harrison worked briefly as an apprentice electrician at Blacklers Stores in Liverpool. The training helped, and Harrison became the member who knew the most about rigging their sound equipment. Later he set up his own multitrack recording gear at his Esher home, Kinfauns, making song demos for himself and The Beatles.

Role in The Beatles

Harrison was a fluent, inventive and highly accomplished lead and rhythm guitarist, whose influences included Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and Chet Atkins. Although he was a creative soloist, several of his famous Beatles guitar solos were recorded under specific directions from Paul McCartney, who on occasion demanded that Harrison play what he envisioned virtually note-for-note. Other Harrison solos were directed or modified by producer George Martin, who also vetoed several of Harrison's song and instrument offerings; Martin admitted years later, "I was always rather beastly to George."

During the era of Beatlemania, Harrison was characterized as the "Quiet Beatle", noted for his introspective manner and his tendency not to speak in press conferences. He studied situations and people closely, though, and was the most interested of any Beatle in the band's finances, often quizzing Brian Epstein about them. He could also wisecrack as well as anyone in the band; when a reporter asked what they did in their hotel suite between shows, Harrison told him "We ice-skate." He also gave the 'Beatle haircut' a formal name: "Arthur!"

Harrison wrote his first song, "Don't Bother Me", during a sick day in 1963, as an exercise "to see if I could write a song", as he remembered. "Don't Bother Me" appeared on the second Beatles album (With the Beatles) late that year, on Meet the Beatles! in the US in early 1964, and also in A Hard Day's Night
. After that, the Beatles did not record another Harrison song until 1965, when he contributed "I Need You" and "You Like Me Too Much" to the album Help!

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for George Harrison ]

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Actors - George Harrison

Early years

Role in The Beatles

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