Martin O'Malley & Sabrina Saccoccio, CBC News Online
November 2001

He was the quiet Beatle, the private Beatle, and perhaps the most adventurous, introspective and enigmatic of the Fab Four who broke onto the world rock 'n' roll stage in the early 1960s. After recovering from lung and throat cancer, after surviving a brutal knife attack by an intruder at his home in England, Harrison finally succumbed to brain cancer on November 29, 2001 at the age of 58.

One of his last visitors was Paul McCartney, who spent six hours with Harrison, his old school chum when both attended the Liverpool Institute in the late 1950s. McCartney and Harrison, then only 15, joined John Lennon's band The Quarrymen, which later became the Beatles. Harrison was the youngest of the Beatles. He was born on Feb. 25, 1943 to a working-class family in Liverpool.

In the early days, Harrison was primarily the guitarist, overshadowed as a composer and singer by McCartney and Lennon. He eventually made his mark as a composer and singer with such hits as Here Comes the Sun, Taxman, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and Something. He was the first solo-Beatle to top the charts with My Sweet Lord in 1970 (though he had to pay $1.6 million in damages after a court battle determined he had "subconsciously" borrowed the tune from He's So Fine, a 1962 hit by the Chiffons).

In 1965, Harrison met and became a student of Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar player and composer who would have a lasting influence on Harrison's music – and spiritual life. Shankar's inspiration led Harrison to organize and perform in charity fund-raising events to aid famine relief in India. Harrison raised money for other projects. One of the most notable concerts was held in 1971 in Madison Square Garden in New York to raise money for Bangladesh.

Harrison's first marriage to Patti Boyd ended in the late-1960s when she left him to marry Eric Clapton, one of Harrison's close friends. Despite the break-up and marital rearrangement, the three remained good friends.

The 1990s were a quiet time for Harrison, but only in terms of the music and performance. He lived with his second wife, Olivia Arrias and son Dhanni in a 120-room mansion in Henley-on-Thames, 40 kilometres west of London. It was here, on Dec. 30, 1999, that an intruder broke into the home and stabbed Harrison in the chest, collapsing a lung. His wife Olivia probably saved his life when she cracked the intruder over the head with a lamp, knocking him unconscious.

Harrison lived almost as a recluse during the 1990s, mostly interested in gardening. Late in 2000, he told The Associated Press he wasn't a big fan of current pop music and liked to listen to music from the 1920s and '30s. "I think the popular music has gone truly weird," he said. "It's either cutesy-wutesy or its hard, nasty stuff." He made the remarks at the re-release of his 30-year-old album All Things Must Pass, when he was delighted to learn that it was well received by young people.

In the late-1970s, Harrison veered off from his musical career to try other things, not the least of which was his large collection of sports cars, and a lifetime interest in movies. He founded HandMade Films in 1978 and put his money into such productions as Monty Python's Life of Brian, and the 1980 film Time Bandits. In the 1980s, Harrison took up with Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison to form the Traveling Wilburys, which had a remarkably successful world tour and produced two platinum albums.

Harrison was diagnosed and treated for lung cancer and throat cancer, then early in the new millennium doctors detected brain cancer. Despite throat cancer and the stab wound to his chest, he somehow managed to record a highly successful new version of My Sweet Lord in the album All Things Must Pass. Dylan, Clapton and even Phil Collins – playing the congas for a song titled The Art of Dying– participated in the two-CD album.

When McCartney visited New York's Staten Island University Hospital in November, Harrison was in his final stage of life, kept alive and free of pain by radiosurgery and chemotherapy. They talked, laughed and wept for six hours.