The last words George Harrison spoke to the public, in a statement on his illness, were "Please do not worry." The first words he spoke to the public, or at least the title of his first Beatles song, were "Don't bother me." No other member of a legendary band ever carried out the role of "the quiet one" with more aplomb.

Of course, Harrison was more than the quiet Beatle. He was also the guitar slinger and rockabilly aficionado, the one who probably brought in the Carl Perkins covers. He was the youngest of the Fabs, and -- according to an informal poll of female friends -- the most crush-worthy one. He later orchestrated rock's first big humanitarian gesture with the Concert for Bangladesh, and he almost single-handedly introduced rock and roll to non-Western spirituality. Personally I'd say it's all overshadowed by his having written "It's All Too Much" and "Old Brown Shoe" (both released by the Beatles in 1969), a truly sublime pair of songs. The sound and feel of those two numbers -- the first a heavy-metal prototype, the second a sprightly shuffle, both of them soaringly melodic and unabashedly joyful -- would be an impressive enough legacy without the many hit singles he wrote (including "Something," which was the first -- and, wisely, only -- Beatles song to be covered by Frank Sinatra). As the '60s drew to a close, rock stars were suddenly talking about spiritual fulfillment; but Harrison was writing songs that showed how it felt.

Yet the Beatle fans among us are bound to feel more than a little cheated by Harrison's loss -- not only from his dying too young, or from the inevitable cultural shock that half the Beatles (and two-fifths of the Traveling Wilburys) are now dead. The real problem is that we had so little chance to get to know him. Long the least prolific of the surviving Beatles, during the '90s he seemed estranged from music itself, along with the spotlight and the band's legacy. His last real musical venture was an abortive 1991 world tour that never got farther than Japan, reportedly because he fell out with his bandleader, Eric Clapton. During the newly filmed interviews for 1995's Beatles Anthology series, he didn't appear the least bit interested in recycling history, shrugging off more questions than he answered. His diffidence seemed alienating at the time, though in retrospect it looks refreshing in the face of that year's semi-reunion hoopla.

Before his illness was revealed, his last time in the headlines was two years ago, when he was stabbed by an intruder in his London home -- an uncomfortable parallel to the shooting of John Lennon 19 years earlier. It seemed cruelly ironic that the Beatles' two most outspoken pacifists were the ones who fell victim to violent attacks. At least we got a satisfying, long-overdue payback when Harrison's wife, Olivia, broke a lamp over the guy's head.

If it's hard to sum Harrison up, that's partly because he was a mass of contradictions. Private as he was, he revealed a lot of his personal life during his spotty string of '70s albums: after Clapton ran off with then-wife Pattie, he recorded a version of the Everly Brothers' "Bye Bye Love" (on the 1973 Apple album Dark Horse) that put both their names in the lyric. For all his spiritual leanings, he was at home in the material world, having run the successful production house Handmade Films (with credits including Withnail & I and The Long Good Friday, Handmade's track record is flawed only by the Madonna/Sean Penn flop Shanghai Surprise). And he apparently spent most of the '80s indulging a passion that had nothing to do with music or spirituality: hanging out at auto races.

Although he didn't care for performing live, he remained quite good at it. The best evidence is on the cable-TV special Carl Perkins: Blue Suede Shoes, which was taped in the mid '80s and is probably still available at rental stores that carry music video. In the company of a few close contemporaries -- Perkins, Clapton, Dave Edmunds, Ringo Starr -- Harrison really shines, looking spiffy in a '50s-style jacket, tearing off rockabilly licks, wearing both his years and his guitar with pride. He didn't return to that well very often, though his last solo hit, 1989's "Got My Mind Set on You," was an updated bit of vintage rockabilly. But the Perkins special proved that his new image as a cool cat of roots music was there for the taking.

Harrison made music only when he had something to say -- he didn't do oldies package tours for the money, like Ringo, or incessantly release albums out of second nature, like Paul. After a while he wasn't aiming for the charts, either: to some extent he peaked with the grandiose triple-album epic All Things Must Pass, which was released just months after the Beatles dissolved. His later albums play like an ongoing diary, and most of them have been written off because of their session-slick Los Angeles sound. But there are a few gems on each disc; and his 1979 George Harrison album (now out of the catalogue) included "Blow Away," a lovely single whose lyrical message boils down to "Please do not worry." Before his death there was talk of new recordings with old friend Jeff Lynne that haven't yet appeared; neither has "Horse to the Water," the song he recorded just last month with ex-Squeeze man and UK TV personality Jools Holland. In a nice bit of symmetry, the last new song he did release was a credible remake of his first solo single, "My Sweet Lord."

The other curious fact is that Harrison took immense pride in having been part of a great group; he made mention of them whenever possible and maintained a touch of their freewheeling spirit in everything he did. But that group wasn't the Beatles: it was Monty Python, of whom he was an auxiliary member and a devoted fan. He even formed Handmade Films to finance Monty Python's Life of Brian. Whereas Harrison showed no interest in rejoining or discussing the Beatles, it was the Pythons who kept drawing him out of retirement. He made cameos in Life of Brian, in Eric Idle's Fab Four send-up The Rutles (during a scene that made savage fun of the Beatles' business fiasco with Apple), and in the Pythons' 1975 concerts at New York's City Center (Rolling Stone ran a photo of an unrecognized Harrison in costume joining the chorus of the "Lumberjack Song"). At times his love for the Pythons was taken to extremes. In the preface to his early-'80s autobiography, I Me Mine, he wrote that "I've suffered for this book; now it's your turn" -- a great line, but one he neglected to credit to a fellow Python and Rutles associate, songwriter Neil Innes.

Although the somber title track of All Things Must Pass will probably go down as Harrison's epitaph, it was the Pythonesque sense of humor that came to distinguish his work and his personality. That's why the superstar holiday project the Traveling Wilburys proved the perfect vehicle for his last comeback. The humor was something Harrison turned to in his last days (the still-unreleased "Horse to the Water" is published by RIP Music), and it's what holds his eclectic life and career together. The only question is whether he'll spend more time in the next life running around with John Lennon or Graham Chapman, Dale Earnhardt or Lefty Wilbury.

Issue Date: December 7 - 13, 2001