Monthly column on the arts

George Harrison, 1943-2001

'How fast has brother followed brother', once lamented Wordsworth, 'from sunshine to the sunless land!' - a thought that has sometimes occurred to me in the past year or two as several icons of the 1960s have died, few of them of old age. It wasn't long ago that I was writing about Adrian Henri in these pages; now the news is dominated by the death from cancer of fellow-Liverpudlian George Harrison.

The quiet Beatle

Born in February 1943, he became the youngest Beatle, but George Harrison was a late starter as a rebel. Like Paul McCartney, he attended the respectable Liverpool Institute school which had a long tradition of sober dress and smart appearance: he adopted a jeans-and-long-hair style but had to abandon it when his parents disapproved. Later he formed a skiffle band with his brother, but when they secured their first paid gig they had to leave home in secret to get there because they were both too young legally to perform in public.

When the Beatles became famous, he was known as 'the quiet Beatle' - Lennon and McCartney often dominated the stage while George in the background played guitar. Harrison was an accomplished songwriter - titles like Here Comes the Sun, Something and While My Guitar Gently Weeps emerge confidently from under the shadow of Lennon and McCartney - but his musicianship was his biggest contribution to the group. As a guitarist he was among the best, numbering the likes of Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan as colleagues and heroes.

Interviewed in Australia in 1996, he regretted that as the Beatles became famous, 'the musicianship kind of went out the window'. Partly it was the price to be paid for the group's innovative record production, which created brilliant sound odysseys that could never be reproduced on stage. Partly it was audience demand: 'we pigeonholed ourselves by the mania that was going on... we just did 20 or 30 minute shows of our latest singles'. Harrison spoke wistfully of Eric Clapton, who never stopped touring and became 'fluent on his instrument'.

Harrison's much-publicised interest in Indian philosophy and religion was not only a spiritual quest: when he was taught the basics of sitar-playing by Ravi Shankar, he said, 'It was the first time I had ever really learned music with a bit of discipline', and he hardly touched a guitar for two years except in the recording studios.

Spiritual hunger

But it was also, of course, a spiritual quest. 'If there's a God, I want to see him', he said in 1970. At that time deeply influenced by the Krishna movement, he believed that God was both personal and impersonal, and that it was possible to know God personally. The language sounds almost evangelical, but George Harrison believed that the way to knowing God was through yoga, meditation and chanting Hare Krishna. Looking back, it is sad that such a deep spiritual hunger never quite found a biblical satisfaction: 'Having all these material things, I wanted something more. And it happened that just at the time I wanted it, it came to me in the form of Ravi Shankar, Indian music, and the whole Indian philosophy.'

People like George Harrison prompt difficult questions for Christians, and no more so than when they die. His personal spirituality seems to have been genuine and consistent over many years. The deep spiritual hunger he spoke of is plain to hear in his songs for anybody with half an ear: and even where the songs may seem superficial, his performance often communicated profound conviction. There's a deeply moving video of him performing My sweet Lord, a song that at the time prompted a few optimistic reports that Harrison had become a Christian.
What does it all add up to? What value does God place on spiritual quests that seem to us to stop in the wrong places? There is no salvation by sincerity. Accepting - as one must - the truth that, in God's perspective, to miss the mark by an inch is the same as missing it by a million miles, what does that imply for Harrison's long search? With sadness, one has to say there are no biblical grounds for confidence.

My pastor once preached at the funeral of a good, but by no means confessedly Christian, woman, and brought much peace to a troubled congregation by expounding Genesis 18.25: 'Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?' As I re-play the recorded legacy of one of rock music's most brilliant individuals, it's that thought that sticks in my mind. And I am reminded that for those of us who have been blessed with Christian teaching over many years, it is still going to be rather more important to scrutinise our own hearts than the hearts of other people.

PS:
May I end this month by thanking all those EN readers, known and unknown to me, who remembered me in their prayers during my recent visit to hospital. I am well on the way to recovery now, and feeling a lot better, thanks to superb care by the NHS and my family. Having never been hospitalised before, three operations in four days was a new experience, but one in which I felt the support of my extended family of Christian friends very much indeed.

You really don't want to know the details of my illness, but I would suggest that if anybody ever offers you an ischeal abscess, just say 'No' ...

David Porter

© Evangelicals Now - January 2002
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