Harrison gone, but Beatles will never die

When I was younger, I listened the Beatles for the first time. I can't remember how old I was or exactly where I heard them. There's much I don't recall, but I'm sure of one thing. I distinctly remember how I felt the first time I heard George Harrison's guitar. \nI became infatuated with the Beatles for other reasons like their vocal harmonies. But Harrison was at the core of it all. Just thinking about it conjures up those initial feelings of excitement. And with every succeeding song I heard, I was more and more elated. I thought of many of their songs as having two melodies: the one the Beatles were singing, and the other bonus melody Harrison played. Both were great, but to me one repetition of Harrison's melody was a Beatles song condensed -- the foundation that held everything together. As Professor Glenn Gass, who teaches a class on the Beatles, says, Harrison's guitar work is "inseparable from Beatles' songs." \nI say I was infatuated with the Beatles, because I was so young and I was only listening to their early pre-Sgt. Pepper recordings. It would be a while until I was old enough to truly appreciate the Beatles. I grew with each recording and fell in love with the spectrum of their music. \nAs I learned more about the Beatles and listened to more of their music, I gained a great deal of respect for Harrison's role in the band. His style of guitar playing was deceptively simple. His tone was always appropriate. Though the band's music sometimes changed dramatically from album to album, Harrison always played so that the band would be balanced and the song would flow perfectly. Of course, it can be said that each of the Beatles knew how to play their musical role distinctly without drawing attention away from the whole. Gass defines them as "four pieces of a puzzle. You can't take any part of the equation away." When I listen to the Beatles now, hearing Harrison's guitar work is so refreshing compared to many guitarists that, while talented, indulge in long, flashy and sometimes pointless solos.\nHarrison was also a musical perfectionist. Throughout his life, he continuously wanted to better himself as a musician and songwriter. Harrison embarked on a journey into a music and culture completely foreign to him when he became Ravi Shankar's pupil. Harrison was anxious to learn about all different types of music and the cultures from which they came. He was also open-minded enough to do so. Though he was one of the biggest rock stars in the world, he wasn't too proud to become Shankar's student. Stardom never seemed to phase "the quiet Beatle." He came across as humble. Gass says Harrison "stood aside and let John and Paul grab the limelight."\nHarrison was dedicated to music; it appeared the fame was just a biproduct of his love of music. For me that encapsulates the most appealing thing about the Beatles. They were four guys who loved to play and write music -- who allowed the world to share in that joy. Harrison also showed the world that he never took his stardom for granted. Instead he used his fame to help fight famine. Of course, I'm a biased fan, but I've always suspected Harrison was the kind of man who felt it was his duty rather than his choice to use his well-deserved good fortune to help others.\nThe day of Harrison's death was more depressing for me than it otherwise might have been because of today's musical context. The current trend is filtering music through sex, style, marketing and image, resulting in a money-making machine pop star icon. The music is obscured and buried in superficiality. I found myself wondering if it will ever end. I felt a great loss because part of me initially equated Harrison's death with the death of the kind of music I adore. \nThough the knowledge that Harrison will no longer make music will always be difficult, Gass helped me to think of Harrison's death in a different way. He said, "He died a spiritual person." He also reminded me that "the Beatles are really big right now with a whole new generation" and called them "timeless, forever frozen in that youthful context"