Dear Listener,

I have never understood the quite spoken rivalry between The Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  I remember being a ten year old who loved the White Album.  I was frequently chastised by stupid petty adults for being anti-Rolling Stones.  Why would liking The Beatles make me anti-Rolling Stones?  Why would anyone have to choose a side? I’ve always considered them rigidly different bands.  My favorite Rolling Stones album is Some Girls.  I consider Some Girls to be the most folky jangly country Americana album any non American has ever released.  Trying to compare that to Revolver, my favorite Beatles album, would be like comparing light bulbs to blankets.  No one would like light bulbs more than blankets or vice versa.  No one would ever consider the two synonymous enough to pick a favorite.

With that said, George is my favorite Beatle.  He always has been.  His persona (at least how I imagine it) was always quiet, talented, emotional, and empathetic.  While in The Beatles, he was often overpowered by John and Paul, and had only a handful of his songs make it to the album.  It wasn’t because he didn’t write songs.  Far less than a year after The Beatles called it quits, George released his triple album All Things Must Pass.  A TRIPLE album.  Considering, I empathize with George.  He will always be my favorite.

I am writing this on November 29, 2011.  Ten years ago today George Harrison died of cancer at the age of 58.  

Martin Scorsese recently directed a documentary for HBO on George Harrison called George Harrison: Living in the Material World.  There is a book by the same name that was written by George’s widow Olivia Harrison.  In the forward, Martin Scorsese writes

Something beautiful happened whenever George played the guitar – I’m thinking of that lyrical break on “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl’, among so many other magical moments with The Beatles – and here he was reveling in a newfound freedom, making music that was all his own.  There was real joy in the sheer act of creativity.  I remember feeling that it had the grandeur of liturgical music, of the bells used in Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies.  The wonder I felt the first time I heard that music has never left me.

To see original pictures, drawings, and lyrical sheets from George Harrison that encompass this book, come check our music section.  You know we have a copy.

by Simon

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