{"id":1888,"date":"2011-10-05T12:36:04","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T16:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=1888"},"modified":"2012-07-15T20:12:01","modified_gmt":"2012-07-16T00:12:01","slug":"george-harrison-living-in-the-material-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/george-harrison-living-in-the-material-world\/","title":{"rendered":"George Harrison: Living in the Material World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george6.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1890\" title=\"george6\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george6.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"585\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george6.jpg 585w, http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george6-300x128.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 585px) 100vw, 585px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left; padding-left: 30px;\" align=\"center\">\u201cSometimes I feel like I\u2019m actually on the wrong planet, and it\u2019s great when I\u2019m in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think: \u2018What the hell am I doing here?\u2019\u201d\u2014George Harrison<\/p>\n<p>By the time he was 21 years old, George Harrison\u2014along with John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr\u2014had conquered the pop world. Within a few years, when the so-called \u201cSummer of Love\u201d swept over the world, the Beatles had invaded Western consciousness to a degree unmatched before or since. In June 1967, the Beatles released their legendary <em>Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em> album to worldwide acclaim. As author Langdon Winner remarked: \u201cThe closest Western Civilization has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the week the <em>Sgt. Pepper<\/em> album was released.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, while the world was captivated with the Beatles, the foursome was less enchanted with life in the fishbowl. George, the so-called \u201cquiet one,\u201d was so bothered by the trappings of fame that he began to disentangle himself from the group. As he explained:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The mania side of it started happening in 1963, when we began touring seriously in England. And then we did some tours around Europe, and I think it was because of the mania that was happening then that the Americans caught on\u2014they did features on us in <em>Time<\/em> and <em>Life<\/em> and <em>Newsweek<\/em>. That set us up for the trip to the USA in 1964. The mania got to me in 1966, and around that time I got a bit tired of what they call the adulation. I\u2019m still not that keen on that side of it. It\u2019s nice to be popular. It\u2019s nice to be loved. But it\u2019s not so nice to be chased around and on the front page of the paper every day of your life, with people climbing over the wall all day long.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, in later years George seemed determined to leave his Beatle past in the past. As his son Dhani remarked:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">My earliest memory of my dad is probably of him somewhere in a garden covered in dirt, somewhere hot, a tropical garden, in jeans, khakis covered in dirt just continuously planting trees. I think that\u2019s what I thought he did for the first seven years of my life. I was completely unaware that he had anything to do with music. I came home one day from school after being chased by kids singing \u201cYellow Submarine\u201d, and I didn\u2019t understand why. It just seemed surreal: why are they singing that song to me? I came home and I freaked out on my dad: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you tell me you were in The Beatles?\u201d And he said, \u201cOh, sorry. Probably should have told you that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Oqoa9VtQ5Gs\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">George\u2019s nonchalant attitude about his near-mythic experiences as a Beatle was indicative of his overall approach to life, one shaped by his own human frailty, the ambiguities of life in general and his keen spirituality. \u201cHe was at odds with himself,\u201d writes author Paul Theroux, \u201cbut who isn\u2019t? In that respect\u2014\u2018living proof of all life\u2019s contradictions,\u2019 as he put it\u2014he resembles most of us. We recognize him as a kindred soul in his contradictions\u2014and though his life was lived on a vast scale, he was unusually truthful, and in his songs much more explicit than we dare to be. He made it his mission to explore his contradictions in his own way, through his music.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe had karma to work out,\u201d his wife Olivia said of George. \u201c[H]e wasn\u2019t going to come back and be bad. He was going to be good and bad and loving and angry and everything all at once. You know, if someone said to you, \u2018Okay, you can go through your life and you can have everything in five lifetimes, or you can have a really intense one and have it in one, and then you can go and be liberated,\u2019 he would have said, \u2018Give me the one, I\u2019m not coming back.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" title=\"george book\" src=\"http:\/\/www.classicpopicons.com\/images\/george_harrison_living_in_a_material_world_book.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"235\" height=\"294\" \/>Olivia Harrison\u2019s fascinating book <em>George Harrison: Living in the Material World<\/em> (Abrams, 2011), published in conjunction with Martin Scorcese\u2019s two-part HBO documentary, takes readers on a visual and archival journey of Harrison\u2019s life pattern. Drawing from Harrison\u2019s own photographs, letters, diaries, and memorabilia, Olivia traces George\u2019s life arc from his boyhood in Liverpool through the Beatle years to his discovery of and eventual conversion to Hinduism, his later interest in film producing and as an independent musician, and finally his years as a recluse and avid gardener.<\/p>\n<p>With quotes from Paul McCartney, Ravi Shankar, Eric Clapton and others, Harrison\u2019s intriguing sojourn in the material world is laid bare before our eyes, revealing a complex character who confronted the reality of a world gone mad. Indeed, George\u2019s sense that all was not well with planet Earth was not only reflected in his music but spurred him to create a sanctuary out of his gardens, hiding him from the world and keeping the world from him. \u201c[I]t\u2019s great when I\u2019m in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think: \u2018What the hell am I doing here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What George was doing was simply trying to be the best person he knew how to be, whether that pertained to his music, his spirituality or his relationship with the universe. As a guitarist, George spawned a generation of Harrison wannabes. According to Paul McCartney:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">George was the best guitarist in the group. I mean, we were all pretty good, but George was lead guitar. John would take turns because John was good too. He had a more primitive style, but George was more technical, more practical, and we all thought he was a great guitar player. The nice thing was that he didn\u2019t really emulate anyone.<\/p>\n<p>Or as Eric Clapton puts it:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">He was clearly an innovator: George, to me, was taking certain elements of R&amp;B and rock and rockabilly and creating something unique. I had quite a lot of self-confidence going in my concept of myself as a sort of blues missionary, and I wasn\u2019t looking for any favours from anybody. And George recognized me as an equal because I had a level of proficiency even then that he saw as being fairly unique too.<\/p>\n<p>Harrison\u2019s influence as a great musician is equaled only by his spiritual influence, which extended to his band members. It is difficult to imagine Lennon\u2019s \u201cAcross the Universe\u201d or \u201cInstant Karma\u201d or McCartney\u2019s \u201cLet It Be\u201d without George Harrison. Even Ringo was impacted. \u201cOver the years, I got to love the music myself and now I\u2019m a Christian Hindu with Buddhist tendencies,\u201d says Starr. \u201cThanks to George, who opened my eyes as much as anyone else\u2019s.\u201d And as Olivia Harrison recognizes in her book, George not only made great music but music with an amazing, uplifting spiritual message.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Nothing I can say about George speaks louder than his music. Knowing how reluctant he was to talk about himself led me to illustrate his years mostly in pictures. His life was fascinating not entirely by chance. He worked hard, was curious and energetic. He plunged into the heart of people, places and things he encountered, the good and bad. He claimed to be a sinner but never a saint.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Life to him was a quest for deeper meaning and everything was important to him but nothing really mattered. His particular way of embracing and dismissing life\u2019s joys and disasters was completely disarming. He could let go as easily as I held on. <em>\u2018Be here now\u2019<\/em> was repeated so often we actually did begin to live in the moment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Time was shortened, stretched and often completely disregarded by his personal clock. At times he moved with the hours and days and then to the rhythm of heavenly bodies in the cosmos. So life was a blink of an eye, but eternal. When he sang, \u2018<em>Floating down the stream of time, from life to life with me\u2019<\/em>, he made parting so soon seem like waving goodbye for the afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Besides writing such great songs as \u201cSomething\u201d (which Frank Sinatra called the greatest love song ever written), Harrison wanted to teach his listeners about the truths of eastern spirituality. From \u201cWithin You Without You\u201d (which forms the center of the <em>Sgt. Pepper\u2019s <\/em>album) to \u201cRising Sun,\u201d George knew something most of us didn\u2019t and still don\u2019t: there is a reality beyond the material world and what we do here and how we treat others affects us eternally. As he sings in \u201cRising Sun\u201d:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">But in the rising sun you can feel your life begin<br \/>\nUniverse at play inside your DNA<br \/>\nYou\u2019re a billion years old today<br \/>\nOh the rising sun and the place it\u2019s coming from<br \/>\nIs inside of you and now your payment\u2019s overdue.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george5.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1894\" title=\"george5\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"585\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george5.jpg 585w, http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george5-300x128.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 585px) 100vw, 585px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As Harrison explains, we can choose to do good or bad, but our present state of being in this world is controlled by such choices:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Although we do have control over our actions right at this moment, I think what we are now is a result of our past actions, and what we\u2019re going to be is going to be a result of our present actions. So for certain things there\u2019s no way out. There\u2019s no way I wasn\u2019t going to be in The Beatles, even though I didn\u2019t know. In retrospect that\u2019s what it was, it was a set-up. At the same time, I do have control over my actions. I can do good actions or bad actions.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, we human beings make a myriad of bad choices that result in pain and devastation. As George laments in \u201cIsn\u2019t It a Pity\u201d:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Isn\u2019t it a pity<br \/>\nNow, isn\u2019t it a shame<br \/>\nHow we break each other\u2019s hearts<br \/>\nAnd cause each other pain<br \/>\nHow we take each other\u2019s love<br \/>\nWithout thinking anymore<br \/>\nForgetting to give back<br \/>\nIsn\u2019t it a pity<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Some things take so long<br \/>\nBut how do I explain<br \/>\nWhen not too many people<br \/>\nCan see we\u2019re all the same<br \/>\nAnd because of all their tears<br \/>\nTheir eyes can\u2019t hope to see<br \/>\nThe beauty that surrounds them<br \/>\nIsn\u2019t it a pity<\/p>\n<p>George Harrison was 58 when he died from cancer on November 29, 2001. While he blamed his life-long cigarette addiction for his early demise, he was obviously traumatized by a knife attack in late 1999 from an intruder in his home who believed he was on a \u201cmission from God\u201d to kill George. Although Olivia fended off the assailant by striking him repeatedly with a fireplace poker and a lamp, Harrison suffered seven stab wounds and a punctured lung.<\/p>\n<p>Harrison\u2019s son Dhani, next on the scene, knelt by his prostrate father and was \u201cimmediately covered in blood.\u201d The knife had left its mark on George\u2019s thigh, cheek, chest and left forearm, as well as his lung. \u201cHe was drifting,\u201d noticed Dhani. \u201cI honestly believed he was going to die. He was so pale. I looked into his eyes and saw the pain. Dad kept saying, \u2018Oh Dhan, oh Dhan.\u2019 He looked even paler in the face, and he was groaning and saying, \u2018I\u2019m going out.\u2019 He made little sense, and I knew he was losing consciousness. It was about ten to twelve minutes\u2014although it seemed like a lifetime\u2014before the paramedics arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1892\" title=\"george4\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"585\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george4.jpg 585w, http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/george4-300x128.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 585px) 100vw, 585px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Against all odds, George Harrison survived long enough to give us hope and preach love and peace on Earth. \u201cFrom the day I met him he was defiant,\u201d Olivia writes, \u201cand so determined that nothing was going to stop him from leaping as far as he could.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>George Harrison, the Liverpool kid who survived Hitler\u2019s blitzkrieg and the pressures of celebrity as a Beatle and found comfort in spirituality, left an amazing legacy. In the end, Harrison knew that a life lived well and with purpose can overcome the pain and travails of this world. As he sings in \u201cHere Comes the Sun\u201d:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Little darling<br \/>\nI see the ice is slowly melting<br \/>\nLittle darling<br \/>\nIt seems like years since it\u2019s been clear<br \/>\nHere comes the sun<br \/>\nHere comes the sun<br \/>\nAnd I say<br \/>\nIt\u2019s alright.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AGMMXK-661M\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cSometimes I feel like I\u2019m actually on the wrong planet, and it\u2019s great when I\u2019m in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think: \u2018What the hell am I doing here?\u2019\u201d\u2014George Harrison By the time he was 21 years old, George Harrison\u2014along with John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr\u2014had conquered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,223,219],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1888"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3262,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions\/3262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}