In his latest musical documentary, film-maker Martin Scorsese dispels the myth that George Harrison was ‘The Quiet One’ in The Beatles. We’ve whittled the three-and-a-half-hour movie down to 10 interesting facts you (possibly) never knew…
1 George Harrison’s haircut had a name… and someone opened a club in its honour...
During the height of Beatlemania, Harrison was asked the particularly irrelevant question: "What do you call your hairstyle?" With righteous disdain, he replied, "Arthur". A while later a fan of the band dedicated his latest venture to George’s famous follicles and “Arthur” the nightclub was born. "I was proud,” Harrison said, “until I saw the nightclub.”
2 He should have had another track on Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band..
Far from being ‘the shy one’, Harrison happily spoke up (usually via the medium of music) when something pissed him off. One such protest song never reached its intended destination when Only A Northern Song was removed from Sgt Pepper’s in favour of a reprisal of the title track. One of George’s bitterest songs, it was a dig at the band’s publishing company and the concept of the album (it was intended to be a collection of ‘Northern’-themed tunes). It later showed up on Yellow Submarine.
3 He nearly went electric...
Before he got swept up by the proto-Beatles, The Quarrymen, George had an altogether more sensible gig as an apprentice electrician at the age of 16. His dad Harry hoped that his three sons – the other was a mechanic and another a groundskeeper – would all go into business together. Unfortunately for fans of quality workmanship, it was never to be.
4 He introduced the sitar to the world of pop...
Famously well into Indian mysticism and all that palaver, Harrison was the first musician to introduce the sitar to the pop world when he played it on Norwegian Wood on Rubber Soul. He beat fellow peaceniks The Rolling Stones and their sitar-hit Paint It Black by a good 12 months or so.
5 He played a lot of instruments...
26 in all. He was a regular player of (deep breath) guitar, sitar, 4-string guitar, bass guitar, arp bass, violin, tamboura, dobro, swordmandel, tabla, organ, piano, moog synthesizer, harmonica, autoharp, glockenspiel, vibraphone, xylophone, claves, African drum, conga drum, tympani, ukulele, mandolin, marimba, and Jal-Tarang (whatever that is).
6 He was the first Beatle to make a solo album...
Long before the split that would shake the world, Harrison was the first of the moptops to make a solo album when he released the soundtrack album to a 1968 film called Wonderwall. Strictly speaking, by that time Paul McCartney had already composed the score for a film called The Family Way, but he didn’t produce or play on the recordings so the credit goes to George with his cameo-packed curio.
7 He was a lover…
The twice-married musician found himself in the corner of a famous love triangle when fellow guitarist Eric Clapton started vying for the affections of Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd. Having written Layla about her and with his advances spurned, Clapton turned to drugs. However, in a twist deserving of a daytime soap, Pattie later felt abandoned by George’s obsession with India and turned to Clapton. The pair later married and Harrison proved there were no hard feelings when he attended the Claptons' wedding reception and stated, "I'd rather she was with him than some dope."
© George Harrison Living in the Material World
8 … And a fighter...
He may have been a peace sign-flicking hippy but that didn’t mean that George wasn’t a hard bastard all the same. In late 1999, an intruder broke into his Oxfordshire mansion and stabbed Harrison with a kitchen knife. The attack resulted in seven stab wounds, a punctured lung and head injuries before George and his wife Olivia fought back with a fireplace poker and a lamp before somehow incapacitating the attacker until police arrived. All hail the badass Beatle.
9 Even death couldn’t stop the record breaking
Following his passing in 2001, a re-release of his classic song My Sweet Lord saw George breaking one final record. When the track reached number one in the UK charts, replacing Aaliyah's More Than A Woman, it was the first time that there had been two consecutive posthumous number one hits. Curiously, My Sweet Lord was the subject of a plagiarism case when George was accused of copying He’s So Fine by The Chiffons – Harrison put paid to the whole thing when he eventually bought the rights to He’s So Fine.
10 And finally…
George spoke German, but not fluently, he was a very successful Monopoly player, an anagram of his name is ‘Rogering A Horse’ and he remortgaged his house to finance the making of Monty Python's Life Of Brian – the success of which saw the creation of the much-loved production company Handmade Films.
George Harrison: Living In The Material World is released in cinemas today and on DVD from Friday. You can download George Harrison’s back catalogue at iTunes and get with the Beatles at Apple Corps
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