(Credits: Far Out / The Travelling Wilburys)
Wed 11 February 2026 4:00, UK
For all of the acclaim that The Beatles received throughout their career, George Harrison always seemed to be above it all.
As much as he loved the idea of being one of the best guitarists of his generation, there was more to life than money and acclaim every single time that the Fab Four got onstage to play or released a new album. He was more interested in the person he could be underneath all of those accolades, which is probably why he was more interested in downplaying his celebrity every single time he released a solo album.
Then again, that was going to be a bit difficult when he released an album as huge as All Things Must Pass. The whole record was an excuse for him to get his songs out into the world after being kept down for so long, but across three discs, you would have sworn that he was a good enough songwriter to go toe-to-toe with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, especially on tunes like ‘Wah-Wah’ and the title track.
But aside from his debut and a few highlights across his next few albums, Harrison wasn’t that interested in having a solo career. He wasn’t cut out to be the frontman of his own outfit every time he played, and even when he went out on the road, he felt a lot more comfortable having some of his friends doing the heavy lifting, whether it was going out with Billy Preston or having countless living legends at his side when putting on the Concert for Bangladesh.
At the same time, Harrison gave all of us good food for thought every single time he made a solo record. His later Beatles songs already had a bit of mysticism to them, like ‘Within You Without You’ and ‘The Inner Light’, but a lot of his best lyrics were about discovering his own inner peace. He had no problem singing a catchy tune like ‘Handle With Care’ with the Traveling Wilburys, but it worked just as well for him to sprinkle in his own beliefs on tunes like ‘Awaiting On You All’.
That kind of passion was pouring out of every song he made, but he wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere without Ravi Shankar. Harrison may have given up on the idea of being a master sitar player when he saw Shankar play, but if you look at the way that he played during the Concert for Bangladesh, you can see how the Eastern music virtuoso had a massive impact on Harrison’s state of mind.
Shankar was practically reaching another level of spirituality through his instrument, and that mattered more to Harrison than any other blues lick, saying, “Well, I’m certainly not a guitar hero. I’m not trying to be the best guitar player. I don’t really care about it. To me, you can get the greatest guitar player in the world and in my eyes he’s still nothing compared to the musicians I really admire, the Ravi Shankars of the world.”
And if you go back to any of the footage of Shankar playing, you can hear what Harrison was talking about. There are plenty of guitarists out there who want to spend their whole lives trying to outdo the person next to them, but Shankar was never trying to impress Harrison. He was always looking to play music for himself, and when approaching his own solo career, the ‘Quiet One’ seemed to have the same mentality when it came to how well some of his albums sold.
Not all of them were going to be knockout hits by any stretch, but that hardly mattered to Harrison half the time. He was making music that would make him happy before anything else, and while that wasn’t always the best commercial success, he knew he couldn’t go wrong by following his heart before the charts.