George Harrison

[chedrob]

With the first anniversary of the death of George Harrison approaching, I would like to start this thread by re-posting this message from last year, just after he died. =========== When John Lennon was killed I was thinking that more people in the world mourned him than did JFK. Not taking anything away from President Kennedy, but he was a politician in a world seriously divided by ideology, so he had enemies. John Lennon was a singer who wrote 'songs the world will sing' for hundreds of years. In the time that George Harrison spent with John Lennon and afterwards, he participated in the creation of those 'songs the world will sing' and wrote a few of his own. These songs were mainly about joy and peace and love - not just remnants of the hippie age but heart felt thoughts about what we all as human beings want and need to have. These wonderful songs had no borders or ideological boundaries, they reached everyone. When I listen to George's fantastic and economical guitar parts in the songs, it seems he knew he was creating part of an eternal masterpiece and he had to get it just right. With the world in the volatile state it is in now, we are all suddenly reminded of that message of joy and peace and love, by the death of George Harrison. Everywhere in the world we hear his music and his message. We are constantly reminded by the pictures of him on the newsstands and on TV. A Westerner who embraced Eastern philosophy and presented it to us all in the most unobtrusive manner possible. No guns, no B52s, no suicide bombers or rocket launching helicopters. Just songs. In a world on the brink of man-made disaster, he made it past all the negativity to be the top item on the news. Amid the reports of 'collateral damage' and 'friendly fire', we hear George singing "Give me love, give me love, give me peace on earth" punctuated by two tracks of slide guitar working together to create a beautiful uplifting sound that would not be possible by one single track alone or if each track went off on its own path. It is sad for the world to lose George Harrison to such a horrible thing as cancer, something we all fear for ourselves, but in a way, I am happy for him. He has reached the end of this painful leg of his journey and has gone to wherever it has led him. I was thinking "now you know where the next place is - if only you could speak to us now - what would you say?". Then I realized that he is speaking to us. He is speaking to the entire world. He is probably getting more attention now than he has ever had since Beatlemania, but this time he's not one of the mop-tops cracking jokes for the press but a true messenger for the universality of the human spirit. I remember seeing the news two years ago when the announcer said George had been stabbed in his own home by someone who was trying to kill him. Then it switched to a video of him singing "All You Need Is Love" . In spite of all the negativity, that message is still being heard. Maybe someone is trying to tell us something and who better to deliver that message to a world divided by religious philosophy than master musician George Harrison. We hear you George. "Nothing in this world that I've been trying Can equal or surpass The Art Of Dying"