50 facts about George Harrison: achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles

Harrison was often referred to as "the quiet Beatle". Learn 50 facts about George Harrison.

1. George Harrison, MBE was an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and music and film producer.

2. Achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles.

3. He was often referred to as "the quiet Beatle".

4. Harrison embraced Indian mysticism and helped broaden the horizons of his fellow Beatles as well as their Western audience by incorporating Indian instrumentation in their music.

5. Although the majority of the Beatles' songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contained at least two Harrison compositions.

6. His songs for the group included "Taxman", "Within You Without You", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", the last of which became the Beatles' second-most covered song.

7. Harrison's earliest musical influences included George Formby and Django Reinhardt; Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins and Chuck Berry were subsequent influences.

8. By 1965 he had begun to lead the Beatles into folk rock through his interest in the Byrds and Bob Dylan, and towards Indian classical music through his use of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)".

9. After the band's break-up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, a critically acclaimed work that produced his most successful hit single, "My Sweet Lord", and introduced his signature sound as a solo artist, the slide guitar.

10. He organised the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh with Indian musician Ravi Shankar, a precursor for later benefit concerts such as Live Aid.

11. In his role as a music and film producer, Harrison produced acts signed to the Beatles' Apple record label before founding Dark Horse Records in 1974 and co-founding HandMade Films in 1978.

12. Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer.

13. In 1988 co-founded the platinum-selling supergroup the Traveling Wilburys.

14. A prolific recording artist, he was featured as a guest guitarist on tracks by Badfinger, Ronnie Wood and Billy Preston, and collaborated on songs and music with Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and Tom Petty, among others.

15. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

16. He is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee - as a member of the Beatles in 1988, and (posthumously) for his solo career in 2004.

17. Harrison's first marriage, to model Pattie Boyd in 1966, ended in divorce in 1977.

18. Then he married Olivia Harrison.

19. With Olivia Harrison he had one son, Dhani.

20. Harrison died in 2001, aged 58, from lung cancer.

21. After his death his body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India, in a private ceremony according to Hindu tradition.

22. He was born in Liverpool, England, on 25 February 1943.

23. Harrison was the youngest of four children of Harold Hargreaves Harrison and his wife Louise.

24. He had one sister, Louise, and two brothers, Harry and Peter.

25. His mother was a shop assistant from a Catholic family with Irish roots.

26. His father was a bus conductor who had worked as a ship's steward on the White Star Line.

27. According to Boyd, Harrison's mother was particularly supportive: "All she wanted for her children is that they should be happy, and she recognized that nothing made George quite as happy as making music."

28. While pregnant with George, his mother often listened to the weekly broadcast Radio India. Harrison's biographer Joshua Greene wrote, "Every Sunday she tuned in to mystical sounds evoked by sitars and tablas, hoping that the exotic music would bring peace and calm to the baby in the womb."

29. Harrison was born and lived the first six years of his life at 12 Arnold Grove, Wavertree, Liverpool; a terraced house in a dead end street. The home had an outdoor toilet and its only heat came from a single coal fire.

30. Harrison's earliest musical influences included George Formby, Cab Calloway, Django Reinhardt and Hoagy Carmichael.

31. In early 1956 he had an epiphany: while riding his bicycle, he heard Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" playing from a nearby house, and the song piqued his interest in rock and roll.

32. He often sat at the back of the class drawing guitars in his schoolbooks, and later commented, "I was totally into guitars."

33. Harrison cited Slim Whitman as another early influence: "The first person I ever saw playing a guitar was Slim Whitman, either a photo of him in a magazine or live on television. Guitars were definitely coming in."

34. Although apprehensive about his son's interest in pursuing a music career, in late 1956 Harrison's father bought him a Dutch Egmond flat top acoustic guitar.

35. A friend of his father's taught Harrison how to play "Whispering", "Sweet Sue" and "Dinah".

36. Inspired by Donegan's music, Harrison formed a skiffle group called the Rebels with his brother Peter and a friend, Arthur Kelly.

37. On the bus to school Harrison met Paul McCartney, and the pair bonded over their shared love of music.

38. Harrison became part of the Beatles when they were still a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, with McCartney and John Lennon as members.

39. McCartney told Lennon about his friend George Harrison, who could play "Raunchy" on his guitar. In March 1958, Harrison auditioned for the Quarrymen at Rory Storm's Morgue Skiffle Club, playing Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith's "Guitar Boogie Shuffle", but Lennon felt that Harrison, having just turned 15, was too young to join the band. During a second meeting, arranged by McCartney, he performed the lead guitar part for the instrumental "Raunchy" on the upper deck of a Liverpool bus. He began socialising with the group, filling in on guitar as needed, and became accepted as a member.

40. Although his father wanted him to continue his education, Harrison left school at 16 and worked for several months as an apprentice electrician at Blacklers, a local department store.

41. Before the Beatles' break-up, Harrison had already recorded and released two solo albums: Wonderwall Music and Electronic Sound, both of which contain mainly instrumental compositions.

42. Released in November 1968, Wonderwall Music was the first solo album by a Beatle and the first LP released by Apple Records. Indian musicians Aashish Khan and Shivkumar Sharma performed on the album, which contains the experimental sound collage "Dream Scene", recorded several months before Lennon's "Revolution 9".

43. In December 1969, Harrison participated in a brief tour of Europe with the American group Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. During the tour that included Clapton, Bobby Whitlock, drummer Jim Gordon and band leaders Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, Harrison began to write "My Sweet Lord", which became his first single as a solo artist.

44. Delaney Bramlett inspired Harrison to learn slide guitar, significantly influencing his later music.

45. In 1997, Harrison was diagnosed with throat cancer and treated with radiotherapy, which was thought at the time to be successful. He publicly blamed years of smoking for the illness.

46. On 12 November 2001, in New York, Harrison, Starr, and McCartney came together for the last time.

47. On 29 November 2001, Harrison died at a friend's home in Los Angeles, aged 58. He was cremated at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, his funeral was held at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in the Pacific Palisades, California, and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers near Varanasi, India, by his close family in a private ceremony according to Hindu tradition.

48. Harrison's final album, the posthumously released Brainwashed, was completed by his son Dhani and Jeff Lynne.

49. George Harrison wrote his first song, "Don't Bother Me", while sick in a hotel bed in Bournemouth during August 1963, as "an exercise to see if I could write a song", as he remembered. "Don't Bother Me" appeared on the band's second album, With the Beatles, later that year, then on Meet the Beatles!

50. In line with the Hindu yoga tradition, Harrison became a vegetarian in the late 1960s.