George Harrison, singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Beatles, has died after losing his battle against cancer.
Harrison died at 1:30pm on Thursday (8:30am yesterday Australian eastern daylight saving time) at a friend's Los Angeles home. Long time friend Gavin De Becker said: "He died with one thought in mind - love one another."
Mr De Becker said Harrison's wife, Olivia and son Dhani, 23, were with him when he died. Harrison, 58, revealed in July that he had received treatment in Switzerland for a tumour. In May, he had surgery for lung cancer.
Sir Paul McCartney said he was "devasted and very, very sad" to learn of Harrison's death. "We knew he'd been ill for a long tim," he said.
"He was a lovely guy and a very brave man and had a wonderful sense of humour. He is really just my baby brother."
Yoko Ono, the widow of John Lennon, who was murdered in 1980, also paid tribute to Harrison. "His life was magical and we all felt we had shared a little bit of it by knowing him."
"My deep love and concern goes to Olivia and Dhani. The three of them were the closest, most loving family you can imagine."
In 1998, when Harrison disclosed that he had been treated for throat cancer, he said: "It reminds you that anything can happen."
In addition to his struggle with cancer, Harrison's life was threatened when he was stabbed by an intruder at his home in Oxfordshire in 1999.
The musician had recently bought a home worth £7 million ($19 million) near his Swiss clinic, about 30 kilometres from Bellinzona, Lugano.
Philip Norman, who wrote the Beatles' story Shout, said: "Another Beatle gone, it's an awful thought - the group were an entity in people's lives."
The former Beatle, who met his fellow band members Lennon, McCartney and Ringo Starr when they grew up in Liverpool, was just 27 when the band split in 1970.
The band achieved 27 number one records in Britain and the US during their career. Their most recent album, compiling all their number one hits, called simply 1, topped both British and American charts during 2000.
Harrison had mixed feelings about the Beatles' success. "There was never anything, in any of the Beatle experiences really, that good: even the best thrill soon got tiring," he wrote in his 1979 book I, Me, Mine.
"Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed, because we didn't have any. We were like monkeys in a zoo."
But in a 1992 interview with The Daily Telegraph, Harrison confided: "We had the time of our lives: We laughed for years."
In his post-Beatle career, Harrison produced a critically acclaimed solo album All Things Must Pass. He was also a successful film producer. In the 1980s he joined with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison to form the Traveling Wilburys.
Sir Bob Geldof said he was shocked and stunned to hear of Harrison's death. "As he said himself, 'How do you compare with the genius of John and Paul?' But he did, very well."