10 Things You Didn't Know George Harrison Did
"I play a little guitar, write a few tunes, make a few movies, but none of that's really me," George Harrison once said. "The real me is something else." Harrison was many things – including a master of understatement. But he was right to point out that his true character remains elusive. He was one of the most famous men in the world, but he loathed superstardom. He preached piety and simple pleasures, yet he lived in a 120-room mansion and collected ultra high-end cars. His studious facade belayed a brilliant sense of humor, which led him to produce some of the greatest comedies of all time. The songs he wrote focused on both the glory of God and the petty annoyances of day-to-day life.
While undoubtedly proud of the band that vaulted him into immortality, he was loath to measure himself by their success. "The Beatles exist apart from myself," he once said. "I am not really Beatle George. Beatle George is like a suit or shirt that I once wore on occasion, and until the end of my life people may see that shirt and mistake it for me." It's been 15 years since Harrison's death, so today we honor the man with 10 tales that shine a light on his life outside the mop-topped artifice of the Fab Four.
1. He visited the United States before any of his fellow Beatles, and played a show with another band. Americans regard the Beatles' arrival at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport on February 7th, 1964, as a seismic event in popular culture, but only a handful of citizens realized that one of the Fabs had already walked among them. "I'd been to America before, being the experienced Beatle that I was," Harrison recalled in 1995's Beatles Anthology documentary. "I went to New York and St. Louis in 1963, to look around, and to the countryside in Illinois, where my sister was living at the time."
By: Jordan Runtagh
Source: Rolling Stone
