Sydney Recording Studio: Born on February 25, 1943, in Liverpool, England, George Harrison formed a band with schoolmates to play clubs around Liverpool and in Hamburg, Germany. The Beatles became the biggest rock band in the world, and Harrison’s diverse musical interests took them in many directions. Post-Beatles, Harrison made acclaimed solo records and started a film production company. He died of cancer in November 2001.
Sydney Recording Studio: Early Life
Pop star, songwriter, recording artist and producer George Harrison was born on February 25, 1943, in Liverpool, England. The youngest of Harold and Louise French Harrison’s four children, George played lead guitar and sometimes sang lead vocals for the Beatles.
Like his future bandmates, Harrison was not born into wealth. Louise was largely a stay-at-home mom (who also taught ballroom dancing), while her husband Harold drove a school bus for the Liverpool Institute, an acclaimed grammar school that George attended and where he first met Paul McCartney. By his own admission, Harrison was not much of a student, and what little interest he did have in his studies washed away with his discovery of the electric guitar and American rock and roll.
As Harrison would later describe it, he had an “epiphany” of sorts at the age 12 or 13 while riding a bike around his neighborhood and getting his first whiff of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” which was playing from a nearby house. By the age of 14, Harrison, whose early rock heroes included Carl Perkins, Little Richard and Buddy Holly, had purchased his first guitar and taught himself a few chords.
Sydney Recording Studio: Forming the Beatles
Impressed with his younger friend’s talents, Paul McCartney, who had recently joined up with another Liverpool teenager, John Lennon, in a skiffle group known as the Quarrymen, invited Harrison to see the band perform. Harrison and Lennon actually shared some common history. Both had attended Dovedale Primary School, but oddly had never met. Their paths finally crossed in early 1958. McCartney had been pushing the 17-year-old Lennon to let the 14-year-old Harrison join the band, but Lennon was reluctant to let the youngster team up with them. As legend has it, after seeing McCartney and Lennon perform, George was finally granted an audition on the upper deck of a bus, where he wowed Lennon with his rendition of popular American rock riffs.