'The quiet Beatle' loses battle with cancer at 58

Former Beatles guitarist George Harrison died in Los Angeles Thursday at the age of 58. He died with his wife, Olivia, and his son, Dhani, at his side.\nHe suffered from lung and throat cancer. He was also nearly murdered in 1999 by a fan, contributing to the decline of his health.\nA Harrison family statement released Friday said "He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death and at peace, surrounded by family and friends. He often said, 'Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait,' and, 'Love one another.'"\nFans gathered around the world to grieve and share memories of Harrison: Strawberry Fields in New York, Abbey Road Studios in London and the Harrison mansion outside London. The Harrison family has already held a private ceremony and there are no plans for a public funeral.\nGlenn Gass, professor of IU's Music of the Beatles class, said of Harrison, "He was a Beatle. That's all you really have to say. Everything they did was a group effort. I've heard a lot of things the past few days about how he was the soul of the group, and I think that was really true. He had a presence. He was the perfect balance from John and Paul."\nHarrison was born into a working-class family in Liverpool on Feb. 25, 1943, the fourth and last child of Harold and Louise French Harrison. At age 15, at the invitation of Paul McCartney, he began sitting in with a local skiffle group called the Quarrymen, whose founder was an 18-year old named John Lennon. By the age of 16, he was a full-fledged member of the gang.\nIn three more years, Harrison and the other Quarrymen, by then including Ringo Starr and renamed the Beatles, would find themselves in the beginnings of Beatlemania in their hometown of Liverpool and in Hamburg, Germany. In just two years, they would be on the front page of every newspaper and magazine and would be known throughout the world.\nThe Beatles' legacy is infamous. Even in the year 2000, the greatest hits collection, Beatles 1 spent weeks in the upper reaches of the Billboard album charts.\nWith the Beatles, Harrison provided the delicate touches that drove rock music from its infancy into the perception of the art world. He was the first to popularize use of the sitar in pop music, playing it on the 1965 Beatles song "Norwegian Wood." He also used the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar (his was the second one ever made) on the 1964 Beatles album A Hard Day's Night, inspiring Roger McGuinn to give up folk music and start a group who became synonymous with the instrument -- The Byrds.\nAlthough competing against what many have described as the greatest songwriting team of the 20th century in his bandmates McCartney and Lennon, Harrison began to write material that could stand side by side with them on Beatles albums. Beginning with "Don't Bother Me" from 1963's With the Beatles, he rapidly improved his craft and wrote such Beatles classics as "Taxman," "Within You Without You," "The Inner Light," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Old Brown Shoe" and "Here Comes The Sun." In 1969, he wrote the song "Something," which became his first No. 1 hit. Frank Sinatra once called the song "the most beautiful love song of the last quarter century."\nLife after the Beatles started off well for Harrison. In 1970, he released his solo masterpiece, All Things Must Pass, a sprawling triple-album of songs the Beatles had rejected. In 1971, he staged the first all-star concert benefit, The Concert for Bangladesh. He gathered friends including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Starr and Ravi Shankar and raised millions of dollars for the famine-ravaged nation.\nAfter coming out swinging, he began to live a sparse public life. He started his own record label and movie production company in the 1970s, but mostly remained a reclusive figure. Harrison wrote in his 1979 autobiography "I Me Mine," "I'm really quite simple, I don't want to be in the business full time because I'm a gardener -- I plant flowers and watch them grow. I stay at home and watch the river flow."\nHarrison was a long time follower of the Hindu religion since his first initiations into it while with the Beatles in the 1960s. \n"For every human, there is a quest to find the answer to 'Why am I here,' 'Who am I,' 'Where did I come from,' 'Where am I going,'" Harrison said in 1997, "For me, that became the most important thing in my life. Everything else is secondary"