“If someone said you can have everything in five lifetimes or if you can have a really intense one, he would have said, ‘give me the one, I’m not coming back here.’” ~ Olivia Harrison
“People say I’m the Beatle who changed the most, but really that’s what I see life is about. You have to change.” ~ George Harrison
“He was looking for an out, for peace of mind. And I was interested in that. And It has to do with spirituality, but intellectual spirituality, not supernatural spirituality. A search for meaning, a search for the part of being human that seems to yearn for something that is more than the physical world. He ultimately may have found a way to live with himself, to a certain extent, to deal with the end of his life. That’s inspiring.” ~ Martin Scorsese
Note: A slightly different version of this post is also available at Creative Synthesis.
Last night, watching the final part of the new Martin Scorsese documentary about George Harrison, Living in the Material World, I became entranced by the quiet Beatle all over again.
I was too young to follow the Beatles when they were together, but when I was in grade school, I played my treasured Red and Blue Album collections until the grooves were nearly worn through (my son now plays them on his “retro” record player). Harrison’s songs, in particular, massage and awaken my emotions in that way that only music can. “Here Comes the Sun” lightens my heart. “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” ignites my hope. “Something” brings tears shed for sheer beauty, and every song by “The Traveling Wilburys” simply makes me glad to be alive.
What Scorsese’s documentary shows is the fascinating complexity of the gifted individual. The point is not whether he was a good person or a bad person. The point is that he lived fully, every moment of his life. As he said, “You have to change.”
From a story in the London Telegraph about Harrison’s photography:
‘What we are now is a result of our past actions, and what we’re going to be is a result of our present actions,’ he once said. ‘So for certain things there’s no way out. There’s no way I wasn’t going to be in the Beatles, even though I didn’t know. In retrospect that’s what it was, it was a set-up. At the same time, I do have control over my actions… I can try being a pop star for ever and go on TV and be a celebrity. Or I can be a gardener.’ Which is what ‘Beatle George’ ultimately chose to be.
Compare Harrison’s thoughts, above, with those from an interview he gave at age 33 (on a side note, the interviewer says, in 1976, “You look at the Stones now, and perhaps they are too old. Perhaps they should have stopped”):
Martin Scorsese on making the documentary:
The trailer for Living in the Material World:
“Something,” from the 1971 concert for Bangladesh:
