Personal life
Hinduism
By the mid-1960s Harrison had become an admirer of Indian culture and mysticism, introducing it to the other Beatles.[273] During the filming of Help! in the Bahamas, they met the founder of Sivananda Yoga, Swami Vishnu-devananda, who gave each of them a signed copy of his book, The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga.[274] Between the end of the last Beatles tour in 1966 and the beginning of the Sgt Pepper recording sessions, he made a pilgrimage to Bombay with his wife Pattie, where he studied sitar, met several gurus, and visited various holy places.[275] In 1968 he travelled to Rishikesh in northern India with the other Beatles to study meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.[275]Harrison's use of psychedelic drugs encouraged his path to meditation and Hinduism. He commented: "For me, it was like a flash. The first time I had acid, it just opened up something in my head that was inside of me, and I realized a lot of things. I didn't learn them because I already knew them, but that happened to be the key that opened the door to reveal them. From the moment I had that, I wanted to have it all the time—these thoughts about the yogis and the Himalayas, and Ravi's music."[109]
Harrison became a vegetarian in the late 1960s, and a devotee of the Indian mystic Paramahansa Yogananda.[276] In mid-1969, he produced the single "Hare Krishna Mantra", performed by members of the London Radha Krishna Temple. Soon after, Harrison embraced the Hare Krishna tradition, particularly japa-yoga chanting with beads, and became a lifelong devotee.[277][nb 20] He respected people of other faiths and once remarked: "All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call."[279] He commented on his beliefs:
Krishna actually was in a body as a person ... What makes it complicated is, if he's God, what's he doing fighting on a battlefield? It took me ages to try to figure that out, and again it was Yogananda's spiritual interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita that made me realise what it was. Our idea of Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield in the chariot. So this is the point—that we're in these bodies, which is like a kind of chariot, and we're going through this incarnation, this life, which is kind of a battlefield. The senses of the body ... are the horses pulling the chariot, and we have to get control over the chariot by getting control over the reins. And Arjuna in the end says, 'Please Krishna, you drive the chariot' because unless we bring Christ or Krishna or Buddha or whichever of our spiritual guides ... we're going to crash our chariot, and we're going to turn over, and we're going to get killed in the battlefield. That's why we say 'Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna', asking Krishna to come and take over the chariot.[280]
Before his religious conversion, the only British performer known for similar activities had been Cliff Richard, whose conversion to Christianity in 1966 had gone largely unnoticed by the public. "By contrast," wrote Inglis, "Harrison's spiritual journey was seen as a serious and important development that reflected popular music's increasing maturity ... what he, and the Beatles had managed to overturn was the paternalistic assumption that popular musicians had no role other than to stand on stage and sing their hit songs."[281]
Family and interests
Harrison married the model Pattie Boyd on 21 January 1966, with McCartney as best man.[282] Harrison and Boyd had met in 1964 during the production of the film A Hard Day's Night, in which the 19-year-old Boyd had been cast as a schoolgirl.[283] They separated in 1974 and their divorce was finalized in 1977.[284] Boyd said her decision to end their marriage and leave Harrison was due largely to his repeated infidelities, culminating in an affair with Starr's wife Maureen, which Boyd called "the final straw".[285] She characterized the last year of their marriage as "fuelled by alcohol and cocaine", and she stated: "George used coke excessively, and I think it changed him ... it froze his emotions and hardened his heart."[286] She subsequently moved in with Clapton, and they married in 1979.[287][nb 21]
Harrison married Dark Horse Records' secretary Olivia Trinidad Arias on 2 September 1978. They had met at the Dark Horse offices in Los Angeles in 1974, and together had one son, Dhani Harrison, born on 1 August 1978.[289]
He restored the English manor house and grounds of Friar Park, his home in Henley-on-Thames, where several of his music videos were filmed including "Crackerbox Palace"; the grounds also served as the background for the cover of All Things Must Pass.[290][nb 22] He employed ten workers to maintain the 36-acre (150,000 m2) garden.[293]Harrison commented on gardening as a form of escapism: "Sometimes I feel like I'm actually on the wrong planet, and it's great when I'm in my garden, but the minute I go out the gate I think: 'What the hell am I doing here?'"[294] His autobiography, I, Me, Mine, is dedicated "to gardeners everywhere".[295] The former Beatles publicist Derek Taylor helped Harrison write the book, which said little about the Beatles, focusing instead on Harrison's hobbies, music and lyrics.[296] Taylor commented: "George is not disowning the Beatles ... but it was a long time ago and actually a short part of his life."[297]
Harrison had an interest in sports cars and motor racing; he was one of the 100 people who purchased the McLaren F1 road car.[298] He had collected photos of racing drivers and their cars since he was young; at 12 he had attended his first race, the 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree.[298][299] He wrote "Faster" as a tribute to the Formula One racing drivers Jackie Stewart and Ronnie Peterson. Proceeds from its release went to the Gunnar Nilssoncancer charity, set up after the Swedish driver's death from the disease in 1978.[300] Harrison's first extravagant car, a 1964 Aston Martin DB5, was sold at auction on 7 December 2011 in London. An anonymous Beatles collector paid £350,000 for the vehicle that Harrison had bought new in January 1965.[301]
Relationships with the other Beatles
For most of the Beatles' career the relationships in the group were close. According to Hunter Davies, "the Beatles spent their lives not living a communal life, but communally living the same life. They were each other's greatest friends." Harrison's ex-wife Pattie Boyd described how the Beatles "all belonged to each other" and admitted, "George has a lot with the others that I can never know about. Nobody, not even the wives, can break through or even comprehend it."[302]
Starr said, "We really looked out for each other and we had so many laughs together. In the old days we'd have the biggest hotel suites, the whole floor of the hotel, and the four of us would end up in the bathroom, just to be with each other". He added, "there were some really loving, caring moments between four people: a hotel room here and there – a really amazing closeness. Just four guys who loved each other. It was pretty sensational."[303]
Lennon stated that his relationship with Harrison was "one of young follower and older guy ... [he] was like a disciple of mine when we started."[304] The two later bonded over their LSD experiences, finding common ground as seekers of spirituality. They took radically different paths thereafter, Harrison finding God and Lennon coming to the conclusion that people are the creators of their own lives.[305] In 1974 Harrison said of his former bandmate: "John Lennon is a saint and he's heavy-duty, and he's great and I love him. But at the same time, he's such a bastard – but that's the great thing about him, you see?"[306]
Harrison and McCartney were the first of the Beatles to meet, having shared a school bus, and often learned and rehearsed new guitar chords together.[307] McCartney stated that he and Harrison usually shared a bedroom while touring.[308] McCartney was best man at Harrison's wedding in 1966, and was the only Beatle in attendance.[309] McCartney has referred to Harrison as his "baby brother".[310] In a 1974 BBC radio interview with Alan Freeman, Harrison stated: "[McCartney] ruined me as a guitar player".[311] Perhaps the most significant obstacle to a Beatles reunion after the death of Lennon was Harrison and McCartney's personal relationship, as both men admitted that they often got on each other's nerves.[312] Rodriguez commented: "even to the end of George's days, theirs was a volatile relationship".[313]
Humanitarian work
Harrison was involved in humanitarian and political activism throughout his life. In the 1960s, the Beatles supported the civil rights movement and protested against the Vietnam War. After the band's break-up, Ravi Shankar consulted Harrison about how to provide aid to the people of Bangladesh after the 1970 Bhola cyclone and the Bangladesh Liberation War.[314] Harrison recorded the song "Bangla Desh", and pushed Apple Records to release his song alongside Shankar's "Joy Bangla" in an effort to raise funds.[315] Shankar then asked for Harrison's advice about planning a small charity event in the US. Harrison responded by organizing the Concert for Bangladesh, which raised more than $240,000.[316] In June 1972, UNICEF honoured Harrison and Shankar with the "Child Is the Father of Man" award at an annual ceremony in recognition of their fundraising efforts for Bangladesh.[317]
The George Harrison Humanitarian Fund for UNICEF, a joint effort between the Harrison family and the US Fund for UNICEF, aims to support programmes that help children caught in humanitarian emergencies.[318] In December 2007, they donated $450,000 to help the victims of Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh.[318] On 13 October 2009, the first George Harrison Humanitarian Award went to Ravi Shankar for his efforts in saving the lives of children, and his involvement with the Concert for Bangladesh.[319]
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