George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle

by Philip Norman

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Philip Norman is an expert at writing about The Beatles, so no one is better equipped to deliver the biography of George Harrison. Norman dives deep into who Harrison really was, from his sense of inferiority to his undoubted musical genius.

From the the author of the million-copy selling Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation and the bestselling John Lennon: The Life comes a revealing portrait of George Harrison, the most undervalued and mysterious Beatle.

Despite being hailed as one of the best guitarists of his era, George Harrison, particularly in his early decades, battled feelings of inferiority. He was often the butt of jokes from his bandmates owing to his lower-class background and, typically, was allowed to contribute only one or two songs per Beatles album out of the dozens he wrote.

Now, acclaimed Beatles biographer Philip Norman examines Harrison through the lens of his numerous self-contradictions.

Compared to songwriting luminaries John Lennon and Paul McCartney, he was considered a minor talent, yet he composed such masterpieces as “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Here Comes the Sun.” His solo debut album, All Things Must Pass, achieved enormous success, appearing on many lists of the 100 best rock albums ever. Modern music critics place him in the pantheon of Sixties guitar gods alongside Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards. and Jimmy Page.

Harrison railed against the material world yet wrote the first pop song complaining about income tax. He spent years lovingly restoring his Friar Park estate as a spiritual journey but quickly mortgaged the property to help rescue a film project that would be widely banned as sacrilegious, Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Harrison could be fiercely jealous, but not only did he stay friends with Eric Clapton when Clapton fell in love with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, but the two men grew even closer after Clapton walked away with her.

Unprecedented in scope, this rich biography captures George Harrison at his most multi-faceted: devoted friend, loyal son, master guitar-player, brilliant songwriter, cocaine addict, serial philanderer, global philanthropist, student of Indian mysticism, self-deprecating comedian and, ultimately, iconic artist and man beloved by millions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781797169484
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication date:	10/24/2023
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 5.63(h) x 1.61(d)

About the Author

Philip Norman grew up on Ryde Pier, Isle of Wight. His bizarre childhood as the son of an unsuccessful seaside showman inspired his memoir Babycham Night. Norman went on to win the Young Writer of the Year Award contest sponsored by the Sunday Times, where he became a star interviewer, profiling celebrities ranging from Stevie Wonder to Libyan President Moammar Gaddafi. Norman’s early career as a rock critic led to his first biography, Shout! which received critical acclaim and sold more than a million copies. He is the author of numerous highly praised works, including John Lennon: The Life; Paul McCartney: The Life; Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton; and Wild Thing: The Short, Spellbinding Life of Jimi Hendrix.

David Holt is a storyteller, musician, and host of the Public Radio International show, Riverwalk: Live from the Landing.

Editorial Reviews

'You've got him' 

Pattie Boyd

‘You have taken your readers right down the steps and into the Cavern as it really was’ 

editor of Mersey Beat Bill Harry

David Holt raises the level of this unadorned but deeply researched biography of George Harrison--the reluctant, shy, sometimes overlooked Beatle. The dichotomies and contradictions of his complicated life abound, a life sadly cut short by cancer. His excessive cocaine use is discussed as continuously as his life journey with deep meditation. Holt has a relaxed, comfortable style and a just-British- enough accent to inform and entertain. Harrison's excellent musicianship on lead guitar and sitar is at the heart of the narrative. Neither his personal strengths and weaknesses are sensationalized. While not covering any new ground, this is a workmanlike biography-- well narrated despite its unvaried tone. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2023 - AudioFile

09/18/2023

Following up biographies of two of the Fab Four (Paul McCartney and John Lennon), Norman turns his attention to George Harrison in this uneven and exhausting account. Self-described as “the quiet Beatle,” Harrison was a musician with a keen ear rather than a penchant for flashy guitar solos—an understated quality that sometimes left him devalued by the group and its fans, according to Norman. After the band met with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the head of the Spiritual Regeneration movement, in 1967, Harrison grew enamored with meditation and began to feel the Beatles were holding him back spiritually. Once the group split, he became famously reclusive—gardening and meditating, but also producing solo albums, including 1970’s All Things Must Pass, that sold better than those of John and Paul. Norman rushes through Harrison’s solo career, his divorce from Pattie Boyd, and his later marriage to Olivia Arias, while rehashing familiar stories and piling on laborious detail (as when describing the apartment that John shared with Stu Sutcliffe, where “ ‘college band’ rehearsal would often turn into one of John’s informal tutorials from Stu on anything from van Gogh and Benvenuto Cellini to Jack Kerouac, James Joyce, Kierkegaard or Sartre, and George, with his abhorrence of book learning, would feel himself excluded in yet another way”). This bloated biography is nonessential for all but the most devoted Beatles fans. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

George Harrison offers a full serving of Beatlemania through the specific lens of the group’s youngest member. The entire dynamic of The Beatles is on full display in these career-spanning chapters. Thanks to illuminating anecdotes that reveal the band’s complex relationships, Beatles fans will be enthralled page after page.”
—BookPage

“Being in the Fab Four might have given Harrison fame, wealth and boundless opportunity, but as Philip Norman shows in this absorbing biography [with] its eye for period detail, the burden it placed on his far-from-resilient shoulders stayed with him for the rest of his life.”
—Wall Street Journal

“Norman has fashioned an authoritative portrait of Harrison that leaves you liking and feeling sympathy for his subject while being fully aware of the tetchiness...that was never far away. Norman is something of a one-man Beatles industry.”
—The Times of London

“Norman has fashioned an authoritative portrait of Harrison that leaves you liking and feeling sympathy for his subject while being fully aware of the tetchiness...that was never far away. Norman is something of a one-man Beatles industry.”
—The Times of London

“[A] wonderful new biography. . . Philip Norman captures [Harrison’s] class consciousness vividly [and] does a marvelous job evoking Harrison’s working-class Liverpool upbringing. Norman writes with a mix of affection, irreverence and whimsy that feels perfectly aligned with his subject.”
—Robert Dean Lurie, The Spectator World

“Norman captures the creativity, the humanity, and the great humor of the man in this keen and lovely tribute.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Norman knows his subject and the soulful torments Harrison endured. A well-informed biography of an enigmatic musician.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“George Harrison was not just the reluctant Beatle. With his wizardly vim on the guitar, feathery voice, and knack for songcraft, he was certainly the most underrated one. Here, the Fab Four's inimitable chronicler Philip Norman gives us the portrait of Harrison's remarkable life that only he can: myth-dispelling, richly detailed, and full of humor. The story of how this young, poor, quiet Liverpool kid rose to musical mastery and fame is the triumph of an oft-overlooked hero—and a delight on every page.”
—Ian S. Port, author of The Birth of Loud

From the Publisher

09/22/2023

After writing two 800-page biographies of Paul McCartney and John Lennon, Norman turns to their fellow Beatle George Harrison (1943–2001). The book chronicles his life from childhood and early days in the nightclubs of Liverpool, England, and Hamburg, Germany, to the frantic heights of Beatlemania, the band's creation of increasingly complex studio works, and their protracted breakup and its repercussions. Consistently in the shadow of two of the century's greatest songwriters, Harrison ultimately received artistic and commercial triumph with his first post-breakup solo album, All Things Must Pass; the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh benefit; movies he produced for HandMade Films; and some musical peaks in the late 1980s. The book presents Harrison's life and personality with its complications and contradictions, his deep spiritual beliefs, and his skepticism and aversion to fame. Much of the story will be familiar to those who have read previous works about the Beatles. This book is short on immersive musical analysis of specific songs and recordings, and it's somewhat cursory in dealing with some of Harrison's later years. VERDICT Readers who are not extremely familiar with Beatles history or who are seeking a Harrison-focused biography will want this. They'll gain more insight into the most enigmatic member of the Beatles.—James Collins

Library Journal

2023-08-10
The author of biographies of John Lennon and Paul McCartney turns his attention to George Harrison (1943–2001).

“Fuck off…can’t you see I’m meditating?” Thus quoth George—never Sir George, for unlike bandmates Sir Paul and Sir Ringo, Harrison was never knighted. That fact, reports longtime Beatle-watcher Norman, seems to have rankled, for if Harrison seemed to be bucking for sainthood throughout much of his too-short life, he was also all too human. His wife, Pattie Boyd Harrison, once asked George’s assistant, “What’s he got his hands in today, the prayer-beads or the cocaine?” Norman is no mean-spirited, character-assassinating biographer in the Albert Goldman vein, but he does seem to take a certain pleasure in catching Harrison out doing things he shouldn’t have, such as seducing Ringo’s wife—no secret, and present in other Harrison bios, but lingered over all the same. The author makes a few things clear: Harrison was a nimble guitarist, one of the best in the business, but he was undervalued by both Lennon and McCartney as a songwriter, which resulted in his long-pent-up solo effort, All Things Must Pass, a dark horse that charted higher than any of their solo efforts. Regrettably, its biggest hit was legally proven to have been inadvertently plagiarized. A creature of “endless self-contradictions,” Harrison was the one Beatle who grew up in true poverty, and while he claimed to renounce the material world, he also spent fortunes on the creature comforts of his British estates and Hawaiian getaway. Given to bad puns (“Vengeance Is Mine Saith the Chord”) and occasional clunkiness—e.g., Tom Petty was “the blondest man in Country rock”; after the Beatles broke up, “Beatleness still ran through him like the grain in old oak”—Norman nonetheless knows his subject and the soulful torments Harrison endured. The quiet Beatle turns out to have feet of clay—a surprise to some, perhaps.

A well-informed, serviceably written biography of an enigmatic musician.

Kirkus Reviews