richy-782-441259 Stumbled onto the second part of this documentary and enjoyed it so much, I had to go looking for part 1. Love the way it was done with stories told through film clips of George himself and others in his life. Really personal insights into the man. I didn't realize how many great songs he had written. I don't consider myself spiritual at all, but found his philosophies and ideas to be extremely interesting. So many great photos and clips of him and all the Beatles. Mesmerizing to see the surreal life they lived, and very touching moments. I didn't know much at all about the quiet Beatle but, even though he had drug problems, I admire him greatly now. What an interesting guy who made such a mark on the world.

Robert J. Maxwell It's a little hard to watch this if you've lived through the period when the Beatles were churning out one astonishingly well-done album after another because, after all, two of the four are dead now, and the remaining two are old. I expect it's difficult for younger fans of pop music to understand what a revolution the Beatles were part of. Only a few years after Lennon's death, I heard a youngster in a shop exclaim, "Oh, look, Paul McCartney was in a band BEFORE "Wings." Directed by Martin Scorsese, it's a four-hour long documentary with nothing more than talking heads (including McCartney and Star) and newsreel footage and video clips of the group itself. It's aimed at adults mainly, so there is no narration telling us in chronological detail of the rise and ultimate disintegration of the bad. Pete Best's name is mention, but only in passing, and only once, so you either know who he was or you skip it. The names of albums hardly crop up.The central figure, of course, is George Harrison, the third in line, in almost all respects. He was quiet rather than outrageous, and not a goofy clown like Ringo. He was hired because he was a good man on the guitar, the best of the three, and could write songs too. ("Because", for instance.) Someone slipped him LSD as a joke and it appears to have turned Harrison eastward. He became spiritual in the broadest since, learned to play a modest sitar under Pandit Ravi Shankar, and introduced a strain of mysticism into some of the albums ("Within You and Without You").It's not a gossipy fan-magazine story. You'll never find out here who was responsible for the jaw-dropping combing of the Beatles' long hair from backwards to forward. Instead, you'll get a feel for what it was like to perform for peanuts in the Kaiser Keller in Hamburg on the roughest street in town.I didn't think I'd be able to watch it because I try not to think about the Beatles too much these days. It reminds me of happier times, when there was splendor in their costumes and fun in their irreverent wisecracks. It's painful to put any effort into researching time lost. But I was caught up in this. The interviewees include just about everyone who has anything of importance to say, and what they say isn't just interesting but deserves to be part of the historical record, the chronicle of a moment in the evolution of vernacular culture that we're going to have to wait a while before we see again.

kdhymes 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.

paul2001sw-1 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.