Of the four Beatles, George Harrison seemed the best equipped to take fame in his stride. Even in the early days of the band he appeared detached from stardom, standing downstage from the Lennon-McCartney axis, from Ringo Starr's larrikin antics and outside the Beatles hysteria, laughing it off with his boyish grin as if the band's success was some kind of bizarre joke.
Much later, in the 1990s, when he and the two other surviving Beatles published a written anthology of their career, it was Harrison who brought to it an air of commonsense and a wry humour unaffected by being one of the most famous musicians on the planet. A deep spirituality he held close for most of his adult life might have played its part in his realistic view of the unrealistic world in which he thrived.
"In the big picture it doesn't really matter if we never made a record," he wrote. "At death you're going to be needing some spiritual guidance and some kind of innner knowledge that extends beyond the boundaries of the physical world."
The story of George Harrison is so much more than his Beatles career. His skills as a guitar player and songwriter were often overshadowed in the 1960s by the fame and unrivalled catalogue of the group's songwriting stalwarts, but he eventually forced them to take notice and after the Beatles' break-up went on to solo success.
Harrison made his mark in different fields, working with other artists, producing records, racing sports cars and indulging his interest in film by forming his own production company, Handmade Films. Recently he had been working on a new album that was due for release later this year and interest in his solo work had revived with the 30th anniversary issue of his landmark triple album All Things Must Pass. He had private passions, too, such as gardening. The lavish manicured grounds of Friar Park, the Harrison family's mansion at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, were testimony to his love of horticulture. The property suited his wish to avoid the limelight, surrounded by a security system worth millions.
Sadly, that was not enough to stop insane intruder Michael Abram from entering the house in 1999 and stabbing Harrison 10 times before his wife Olivia managed to knock their assailant unconscious with a table lamp. Harrison made a full recovery but the attack - like the assassination of his friend and colleague John Lennon 20 years earlier - was another ugly reminder of what fame can bring. He said: "I never asked to be famous."
Harrison was born into a working class family in Liverpool, a tough port city in the English north-west. He was the youngest of four, a statistic later replicated in the Beatles. His father was a bus driver and his mother a housewife.
He went to Dovedale Road Infant School, Dovedale Junior School and then the Liverpool Institute, but by his own admission was no great scholar. Aged 13, he met fellow student Paul McCartney, nine months his senoir, on a bus. The two became friends and began their mutual appreciation of rock'n'roll through records by artists such as Fats Domino and later Bill Haley and Buddy Holly.
Harrison, like many others, was inspired to take up guitar by the skiffle craze in the mid-1950s, in particular after hearing skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan's version of "Rock Island Line". He and his older brother Peter, formed a skiffle band, a rock and roll precursor, although they were too young to get proper engagements.
Meanwhile, McCartney and Lennon had formed the Quarrymen. Harrison hung around until he was aked to join and in the next few years they becmae Johnny and the Moondogs, the Silver Beetles and finally the Beatles.
The band cut its teeth in the seedy all night clubs of Hamburg, a German city that, like Liverpool, served as a breeding ground for burgeoning rock'n'roll talent. The Beatles' tenure on the city's notorious Reeperbahn was once cut short when it was discovered that Harrison, then 16, was too young to be performing there and was deported.
When the Beatles signed a recording deal with Parlophone in 1962, Harrison's role as lead guitarist was clearly defined, even if, on the first two albums, his playing was not. Lennon's rhythm guitar was more prominent. He had been frustrated by Lennon and McCartney's songwriting dominance, but gradually asserted himself in his own right, penning songs such as "If I Needed Someone" and "Taxman".
Harrison, Lennon, McCartney and stand-in drummer Jimmy Nicol arrived in Australia for their only tour in June 1964 to unprecedented hysteria, with hundreds of thousands of fans turning out for a glimpse of the group holed up in their hotel rooms. "It seems wrong to come so many miles and still see nothing," Harrison noted.
As the Beatles' agenda changed from wholesome pop to rock innovation, Harrison's role became more pronounced. It was he who introduced the band to Indian influences, such as the sitar, as well as leading them on meditation journeys to the Himalayas.
Harrison was deeply involved in the group's experimentation with LSD, which began in 1965 and proved influential in the writings of Lennon in particular. Harrison described the 'trip' experience as an awakening. "It was a blessing because it saved me from many years of indifference," he said later.
In 1966 he married Patti Boyd, a model he had met while filming A Hard Day's Night two year's earlier. Five years later the marriage ended when Boyd left him for his best friend, Eric Clapton. It was probably due to Harrison's inner harmony that the two guitarists remained friends. Soon after that episode he married Olivia, a record company secretary, and they had a son, Dhani.
By 1968, Harrison was increasingly frustrated with Lennon and McCartney over whose songs were being recorded, although towards the end of the band Harrison wrote some of his best Beatles songs, such as "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Something", the latter released as a single and bringing him his greatest commercial songwriting success. It became a perennial favourite with other artists as well as the public.
His solo career got off to a flying start - more so than the others - in 1970 with the All Things Must Pass triple set, which was produced by Phil Spector and featured Clapton and Starr among others. It spawned the No. 1 single "My Sweet Lord", a song that would spend the next 25 years in and out of court. Harrison's song was deemed in 1976 to "subconsciously borrow from the Chiffon's 1962 hit "He's So Fine" and Harrison eventually, after legal wrangling, paid substantial damages.
In 1971, Harrison took part in the New York concerts to raise money for Bangladesh, which resulted in a live triple album. Two years later the album Living In The Material World brought another hit, "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)", but from there his recording career brought diminishing returns.
The formation of Handmade Films in 1978 allowed Harrison to channel his energies elsewhere, and initially at least, it was a lucrative diversion. The company produced a string of quality movies such as Withnail And I, Monty Python's Life Of Brian, Time Bandits and A Private Function. But it all went sour when the Madonna/Sean Penn vehicle Shanghai Surprise, costing $20 million, bombed.
Record producer Jeff Lynne was partly responsible for reviving Harrison's musical fortunes, producing his 1987 album Cloud Nine, which spawned another hit, "I Got My Mine Set On You". A Year later Lynne formed the Traveling Wilbury's with Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Pettty and Roy Orbison. What started in Dylan's garage turned out to be two albums and a global sensation.
In 1992, Harrison made a rare return to the stage in Britain to support a minor political force known as the Natural Law Party.
Aside from a live solo album, the remainder of Harrison's '90s output was a reworking and retelling of what had transpired three decades earlier. Harrison, McCartney and Starr spent considerable time and effort in telling the story of their lives before and during the Beatles. The Anthology series on CD offered an insight into the creation of the group's best work, while on video and in print Harrison shone as the group's documentarian.
"I got experience from it all," he said of the Beatles era. "All the knowledge you gain by being famous and dealing with all the situations, all the people, and the battering we recieved from fans and the presss and all that. It was an immeasurable amount of experince."
Harrison was a regular post-Beatles visitor to Australia, particularly in his later yeras. He indulged his love of Formula One racing by attending the Australian Grand Prix every year, including last year. He owned a property on Hamilton Island in Queensland, sometimes spending months at a time at the lavish holiday home.
Harrison was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997, but was treated successfully. He received radiotherapy treatment at a Swiss clinic for a brain tumour in July and entered a New York clinic early in November for further treatment.
He is survived by his wife Olivia and son Dhani, who were at his side when he died at a friend's home in Los Angeles.