George Harrison, 1943-2001
'How fast has brother followed brother', once lamented Wordsworth, 'from sunshine to the sunless land!' - a thought that has sometimes occurred to me in the past year or two as several icons of the 1960s have died, few of them of old age. It wasn't long ago that I was writing about Adrian Henri in these pages; now the news is dominated by the death from cancer of fellow-Liverpudlian George Harrison.
The quiet Beatle
Born in February 1943, he became the youngest Beatle, but George Harrison was a late starter as a rebel. Like Paul McCartney, he attended the respectable Liverpool Institute school which had a long tradition of sober dress and smart appearance: he adopted a jeans-and-long-hair style but had to abandon it when his parents disapproved. Later he formed a skiffle band with his brother, but when they secured their first paid gig they had to leave home in secret to get there because they were both too young legally to perform in public.
When the Beatles became famous, he was known as 'the quiet Beatle' - Lennon and McCartney often dominated the stage while George in the background played guitar. Harrison was an accomplished songwriter - titles like Here Comes the Sun, Something and While My Guitar Gently Weeps emerge confidently from under the shadow of Lennon and McCartney - but his musicianship was his biggest contribution to the group. As a guitarist he was among the best, numbering the likes of Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan as colleagues and heroes.