GEORGE HARRISON

An intimate selection of rare photos of George Harrison (1943-2001) at the launch of his post-Beatles career.

Harrison’s reputation as the “quiet Beatle” is exemplified by the iconic photo of him on the cover of his 1970 album, All Things Must Pass. He’s pensive, shod in Wellington boots as if he’d rather be gardening, and surrounded by lawn gnomes that almost seem to mock him. Feinstein, who shot that photo, was Harrison’s photographer of choice in the early 1970s, and this collection of his work, much of it previously unseen, nicely complicates Harrison’s legacy. He’s impishly smirking and smiling during the All Things shoot at his verdant manse in the English countryside, by turns meditative and playful during the Madison Square Garden shows recorded for The Concert for Bangladesh, and outright silly during a parody of the Last Supper shot for 1973’s Living in the Material World. (In one photo, he’s wearing a miter and sunglasses while popping open a bottle of champagne, enjoying a bit of the high life the shoot was meant to satirize.) It would have been nice to see more of this side of Harrison during his lifetime, though the images take nothing away from the personality that prevails here: contemplative and possessed of an inner calm that was innate, or born of his interest in transcendental meditation, or both. Unfortunately, insights from Harrison and Feinstein (who died in 2011) are absent; for a bespoke photo book, it’s surprisingly stingy about captioning in general. Harrison’s friend Donovan and gallerist Murray provide some background in their introductory essays, but both are brief and more hagiographic than archival. Harrison’s quietude, it seems, was contagious.

A vibrant and worthy tribute to Harrison, though more context would be welcome.