Our Fabulous Five: Celebrating George Harrison

Today would of been George Harrison’s 71st birthday…a great musician and songwriter, advocate of Hinduism and Hare Krishna and all round British cultural icon whether you love vintage or not.  Find out even more about the great man here at the official website.

George Harrison MBE was born in Liverpool in 1943 and achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the band’s primary songwriters, most of their albums included at least one Harrison composition, including “While my Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Here comes the Sun” and “Something”, which became the Beatles’ second most covered song.  Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer, such as “My sweet Lord” and in 1988 co-founded the super-group “the Traveling Wiburys”.  He died on the 29th November 2001 of lung cancer.

So in honour of him and his work todays blog features five great buys with a link to him – all available online now.

1.  Vintage Beatles memorabilia is a great thing to collect and will only go up in value.  We love a random collectible – how about a rare 1977 Love Songs promotional doormat?  We’d wipe our feet on the Fab 4 any day of the week…

2.  A dream buy would be a vintage Fender Stratocaster guitar – these look great mounted on the wall as a piece of art and if you play…they are the best.  George Harrison painted his Fender Stratocaster in a psychedelic design and played it in the Magical Mystery Tour film and throughout his solo career so it seems a pretty good choice to us!

3.  Indian mysticism became a big part of George Harrison’s life from the late 60’s onwards.  Indian design looks great in a retro home – look out for brightly coloured textiles, art, metalwork and rugs such as this gorgeous example…

4.  In 1965 Harrison met Ravi Shankar and described him as “the first person who ever impressed me in my life … and he was the only person who didn’t try to impress me.” He became fascinated with Ravi, the sitar and immersed himself in Indian music.  Grab yourself a vintage album of Ravi Shankars music and see what all the fuss was about.

5. In 1978, in an effort to produce “Monty Pythons Life of Brian”, the film production and distribution company HandMade Films was created.  Harrison served as executive producer for 23 films with HandMade, including Mona Lisa, Shanghai Surprise, A Private Function and Time Bandits.  Harrison’s executive role in HandMade Films helped to sustain British cinema at a time of crisis, producing some of the country’s most memorable movies of the 1980s.  An all time classic they created was Withnail and I…and start quoting lines such as “We want the finest wines available to humanity. And we want them here, and we want them now!”

 

George Harrison MBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001)

Written by Sarah Gorlov