George Harrison: Living in the Material World

I have never made a secret of the fact that I am a fan of the Beatles, always have been and always will be. So when I heard that Martin Scorsese was making a documentary about the life of George Harrison you can guess I was a tad more than interested. Knowing it was very unlikely to air at my local cinema, I was resigned to either waiting for the DVD release or for it to air on TV in about a years' time. Imagine my surprise when those nice people at the BBC aired it over the weekend of November 12th/13th 2011! Here's a bit about it before I give you my thoughts.

Using archive footage, much of which I had never seen before, and interviews with his friends and family, we are taken through the ups and downs of the life and times of this quiet guitar player from Liverpool. From the early days of the Beatles, through to their demise in the late 60's and then on through his solo career. We hear about how he came to finance a Monty Python film, his love of Indian mysticism, his love of motorsport and the many many friends he made along the way. How he formed a little group called The Traveling Wilburys and how they brought him a little success later in his career. It goes right up to his death from cancer in 2001.

It's a very touching and heartfelt tribute to a man who had an impact on so many lives whether it be through his music or in some other way. I must say I enjoyed it very much, although at just short of three and a half hours, it is pretty long! It's beautifully put together with just about the right mix of archive footage intercut with interviews. Some of the people who appear are; several Pythons, John Lennon (archive footage), Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Georges' wife, Olivia and his son, Dhani (who really looks like him), Eric Clapton, Ravi Shankar, Tom Petty and Phil Spector. At some stage I will definitely invest in the DVD of this documentary, it's really worth a look for any Beatles fan, or any fan of music for that matter… Just be warned that despite a 'U' certificate, there is a little swearing. Over all… Highly Recommended (but VERY long).

My score: 9.2/10 IMDb Score: 8.3/10 (based on 722 votes at the time of going to press).

I can't claim direct knowledge of the topics addressed by many reviewers here, but I can say that I have read just about every significant book published about The Beatles in general, and Harrison in particular. I totally understand the issues people express about this film: long without being either balanced or comprehensive; curiously silent on some key events (perhaps Olivia Harrison's wishes are a factor here?); missing some key points of view (though getting Dylan, for example, to talk about anything in a useful way is notoriously difficult). But I feel I must address a couple of points raised.

1. Re: Concert for Bangladesh. The amount raised by the concert itself was about a quarter of a million dollars. Sales of the iterations of the album and the movie raised about 12 million, to be administered by UNICEF. The money DID go to refugee relief, BUT was delayed by 11 years because of the failure of organizers to apply for tax-exempt status. So... bad planning, but not a scam or a failure.

2. Re: Harrison's relative contribution to the Beatles. On the one hand, the evidence is quite clear that Ringo was far more crucial to the Beatles sound in the studio than Harrison - the band simply did not function well with any other drummer (rumors of McCartney sitting in are based on photos, not the meticulous records kept by Abbey Road; when Ringo quit for 6 weeks in 1968, numerous replacements including Ginger Baker were tried, and no one was able to provide the subtle and generous and dare I say feminine approach that the Beatles suddenly discovered was a key ingredient in their process, causing them to beg for his return). Harrison was great at coming up with carefully planned, often double-tracked parts, which added beauty and flavor at a higher level than McCartney or Lennon could offer (the 15 seconds or so of Harrison on Getting Better, e.g., truly makes the recording). But he was an indifferent electric rhythm guitar player in my opinion. His songs were only occasionally as good as L&M's, however there is no denying the fact, attested to by Martin, Parsons, and others, that Harrison got short shrift in studio time to realize his ideas.

It is essential to keep in mind that L&M were given INCREDIBLE amounts of time for the era, virtually unlimited takes after 1965, to get the basic tracks right, and then to try dozens of approaches to the sweetening and vocals. Harrison was never given this opportunity until the last two real albums produced (White Album and Abbey Road), and suddenly his work shows a massive uptick in quality, both of writing and execution (Savoy Truffle, Piggies, Something, Long Long Long, Here Comes the Sun, While My Guitar Gently Weeps - all of these outclass his earlier work by miles). It can't be a coincidence that once the Beatles essentially stopped being a team and became each others' session players, Harrison flourished. Also worth noting that he produced the first truly satisfying album as a solo artist, All Things Must Pass - overly long, but a big hit and a good listen, using in part songs he had been carrying around for a few years.

With regard to the contradictions between his lifestyle and his purported spiritual values - in what way is this unusual or even notable? Seems like standard operating procedure for entertainment celebrities to either need a frame of self-justification, or to have trouble avoiding the temptations of riches, or both.

I obviously appreciate Harrison's work, but I'm not an uncritical fan - his "middle period" of solo work is pretty awful, just a few songs are keepers; and even Cloud Nine is really a few good songs surrounded by oddly paced, indifferently written material. His last album, Brainwashed, is weird but really interesting, and at a higher level lyrically than anything he had done since All Things Must Pass.

He was who he was: not a genius on the level of L&M, but an ingredient in their recorded output that would be sorely missed were we somehow able to remove it. And there is an argument that his presence and his influence enriched the Beatles philosophically, lyrically and musically. They were very competitive: if George was spiritual, well by jove they were going to be spiritual too. A thin veneer of spirituality perhaps, on lives that were primarily about fame and money and art, but again an ingredient that, if not present, would have made the Beatles a very different band.

Why did Martin Scorsese decide to make a film about George Harrison? Why did he decide to make a film about the Dalai Lama? Or The Age of Innocence? While this is another documentary about a rock-star icon, following along from Scorsese's own The Last Waltz, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and Shine a Light, it's closest in style and tone to the Dylan doc, as a profile of a man of his time and how he lived through it.

Unlike Dylan, who is a mystery even to the most curious of fans (or just one of the more obnoxious, depends how you look at it), George Harrison seems to be, from accounts and interviews, to be a man of spiritual and artistic integrity who had various concerns and ideas, and he expressed them throughout his life - or, if not in the recording studio or as a producer of films, then with his garden. One may not be able to find the link between the sarcastic (if 'quiet') kid from A Hard Day's Night with an old man in a garden (or for that matter the old man having to defend his life against a burglar, as he did, in 1999), but it's all here.

I may not have found Harrison quite as enlightening as Bob Dylan, but should he be? Maybe in his own simple way though Scorsese finds a more direct path or personal link to him through the spiritual side. Harrison was someone who found through the Maharishi, Indian music, transcendental meditation, some kind of path through the noise of Western civilization.

The clash is what's interesting here, and Scorsese knows it too. While the director is fascinated with BIG emotions in his films (see anything with De Niro for more on that), he's also fascinated how someone operates with a calm demeanor on the surface burning with emotion underneath. Harrison was the guitarist for the Beatles and then when the break-up happened, he had to break-off and find another way. He was still a pop star, and his first solo album, the great 'All Things Must Pass' went into the top ten of the charts. But how did he reconcile a working class British-Liverpool upbringing with the teachings of Haria Krishna?

Of course, the first hour of this massive three 1/2 hour films are dedicated to him and the Beatles, and it's wonderful to see the footage, hear the songs, find out some details about the songs Harrison wrote for the group (i.e. the first song he ever wrote, 'If I Needed Someone'). Then the second part is about the spiritual search, or what's close to it, mixed with the start of the solo career (and of course some of the famous tales of romantic highs and lows via Patti and Eric Clapton are included).

There's a section for the film-part of his career, where as a man of faith, though not exactly (it's complicated you see) he helped pay "the most ever anyone's paid for a movie ticket" for Monty Python's Life of Brian. And then about his gardening, his second wife Olivia (and - kind of a shock to me - the candor which Olivia, who was a producer on the film and wrote the book spin-off of the film, talks about Harrison's infidelities in their marriage, something I really admired), and other things like friendships, the burglary in 1999, and his untimely passing from cancer.

It wouldn't be a Scorsese movie without music, and hey, it's George Harrison so there's lots of good stuff here (sadly, for me, no 'I Got My Mind Set on You'), and there's the director via editor David Tedeschi's marvelous way of navigating the story with music. Watch the opening and how 'All Things Must Pass' goes over the WW2 footage, then mixed in with some of the more traditional music of the 1940's period to see some of the brilliance with which Scorsese does this. And the interviews are mostly illuminating and nice, once or twice piling on the adulation (perhaps as one might expect) while still giving some moments for the quirks Harrison had - such as a story Tom Petty tells about ukuleles - and some of his flaws as a man and artist.

I'm not sure if for fans the film will shine a whole lot of new light, though for newcomers it should provide the bulk of know-how. What's great about the film ultimately is the thread of the story, and how the filmmaker is not afraid to jump around, or jump ahead, and expect the audience to keep up. It's not as straight-thru as, say, The Beatles Anthology. We're seeing a life in various dimensions, time-spans, and it's as if not more post-modern than the Dylan doc. It's joyous, meditative, somber, happy, funny, a little daft and a little less than perfect. I can't wait to revisit the life and work.

George Harrison was a creative force in the Beatles; not as much a creative force as Lennon and McCartney, but still someone who contributed to their amazing, transformative body of music in a significant way. He was also unusually interested (for a westerner) in eastern mysticism; but was not without his attachments to aspects of the material world. The man's life is told, through old and new interviews with himself and his friends, and archive footage (of which there is plenty), in Martin Scorcese's film. It's fair to say the film is somewhat hagiographic, telling an overwhelming sympathetic story: a reference to a period of heavy drug abuse is made, but not directly commented upon, and no reference is made to the Natural Law Party (whose bizarre platform in the 1992 British general election was actively supported by Harrison). And one might question how much of the story of his later life is really that interesting, or whether his apparent contradictions were the simple consequence of having too much money and time. But one thing does come over: for all his failings, he seems to have been a genuinely loved human being, in a decidedly unusual way; to combine that with the musical legacy of the Beatles is not such a bad epitaph for a life.

I had very low expectations- I have seen so many movies about the Beatles and they all use the same tired old video clips we've all seen a million times.

Much to my surprise, most of the material was fresh , amazing material that I'd never seen before.. with insights from Paul and Ringo that held me spellbound.. how George was introduced to John Lennon and the first song he played on top of a bus(watch the movie for the details) -just the little things you'd never know unless you saw the movie..

In my opinion, the first half was better than the second half, I think mostly because I knew how things would end... and I really, really didn't want it to end. But it did.

I miss George and John. It was a fantastic movie.