Beathoven

Beathoven

Studying the Beatles

Thanks For The Pepperoni

What does music tell us about a man? What can we know about George Harrison from his music?

Music is a language which moves us deeply, and yet not a language we can verbalise or a language we articulate, except in our feelings, or, of course, in music. Lyrics are more like hints, or helpers to point us in the direction, but George's songs still make sense to those who don't speak English. Or Indian: Hari Krsna, Hari Rama.

So, how can we tell who George was from his music?

He told us some things himself. He said that he thought he studied his instrument more than his Beatle friends. In addition to his well-known rock models George admired Segovia in his early years. We hear a touch of that in his nylon strong solo in And I Love Her" and in his beautiful rhythm playing in I Need You. George's touch" on the instrument is often meditative even in the early years: he apprehends the moment when the finger and string meet -- something we hear in another of his models, Chet Atkins.

In the mid-sixties his love of the fret board took him to the sitar and Ravi Shankar -- it was a new love so passionate that he simply forgot about the Beatlemania maelstrom raging about him. George had found a quiet space for his music and in that space he also found the lasting home for his spirituality, led there by Patti.

In the late sixties he built another lasting friendship with a man and a new instrument: The friend was Eric Clapton, the new instrument was the guitar -- he returned to the instrument with a new passion and a new love and finally found his voice and blossomed.

As the Beatles came to grips with the mortality of their band, George took on a job as a backing guitarist with Bonnie and Delaney. In this humble role he found his most distinctive musical voice: his truly glorious flying, swooping slide guitar that became a vehicle for his deeply beating heart. Slide is where George really opens up.

George was a lucky man to have Ravi Shankar, Eric Clapton, Bobby Dylan and many, many others as teachers or friends, as he was a teacher or friend to them as well. All stayed with him, and that's typical for George: he was a man who built lasting spaces and friendships. How many of his best songs were written in the house of a friend? It's fitting that his last moments were also spent in the house of a friend. His last recordings were done at the requests of friends. George was a friend to many people who never met him as well, and he knew that.

Paul McCartney says that he didn't suffer fools gladly, and the truth is he didn't always suffer us fans gladly either. He was his own man. His individual song writing traits are seen in his first songs Don't Bother Me. His decision to record a rock song with an Indian combo on REVOLVER shows a self-confidence that borders on audacity. Quiet audacity -- that's George. Just as John has been called a mediator between pop and the avant garde, so George has been the named the father of World Music by others. Within You, Without You, The Inner Light and WONDERWALL are amazing simply in the fact that he managed to pull them off.

George really started working on his songwriting in 1968 when he returned to the guitar. His growth in 1968 and 1969 is phenomenal, culminating with ABBEY ROAD where he wrote Frank Sinatra's "favorite Lennon/McCartney song", Something.

We see his sense of space, and his quiet audacity, again in his first solo project: his #1 triple album ALL THINGS MUST PASS. The title and the songs tell us that George had a good view of the space of a life. George's second project, another triple album, was no less audacious. Some credit his BANGLADESH with inventing the rock benefit concert. The single begins "a friend came to me". I guess it's no coincidence that George's last recording begins with the same line.

His last album came out only two years after the passing of John Lennon. George has been at pains over the past few years to point out the depth of his friendship with John, speaking of their bond in the psychedelic years and reminding us that it was he, the baby of the group, who taught Lennon to play guitar properly. We will never comprehend the bond between the Beatles and or the dimensions of the space that they shared together. Perhaps we can see a small part of it in the shared message and space that each carried alone after the break-up of the band. All of them seem to view a common horizon. Peace, love and understanding. Two of those friends remain today, to remember him, his work and his sense of humor.

George wasn't so much quiet as not overly loud. He sang about his passions. He loved his home and garden. We hear that first in a song he wrote in Eric Clapton's garden, Here Comes The Sun, but most of all in Let It Roll in which he captures all the mysterious beauty he saw in his own home. George sees the mystical symbolism in simply waiting for a friend in a borrowed house on a foggy night, where losing your way takes on a spiritual meaning.

What George's music teaches me has to do with *space* and space has to do with knowing where you stand and who you are. George Martin says he was a creative gardener. He had an ability to visualize the space a song would occupy as he began writing -- nothing else explains his uncanny ability to always come up with just exactly the right bridge for a song. He could *see* a song just like he no doubt saw his garden. We see George in his songs in the same way that some might also be able to see him in his garden. Bernie Taupin's lines for John Lennon fit George perhaps even better: "a Gardiner who cared a lot".

What does this music tell us about a man? It tells us everything, in the language of music, that he wished to say, and that should be more than enough for us. All we need to do is to learn the language, a rewarding task to keep us occupied within the limits of our own spaces.

There's so much of him left with us that goodbye doesn't seem to an appropriate word. Perhaps that's what makes goodbye so difficult. So, farewell George, farewell.

Thanks for the pepperoni.

Ian