The death of George Harrison has touched millions of people around the world. Music writer Ritchie Yorke, who interviewed the Beatle serveral times and worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the War Is Over If You Want It peace campaign, remembers a forthright and fascinating man.
When George Harrison's exquisite ballad "Something" first surfaced on the Beatles' Abbey Road album, many romantics were comfortable in the belief that he'd written it for a lover, most likely his wife, Patti.
Subsequently "Something" was released as Harrison's first and only A-side of a Beatles' single and Apple unveiled a lovey-dovey film clip showing shots of John and Yoko, Paul and Linda, Ringo and Maureen and George and Patti.
That meant an even larger mass of fans assumed the song was George's tribute to the effervescent Patti, who would also be the subject of next husband Eric Clapton's songs "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight".
In reality, Harrison had been thinking not about female charms, but R&B great Ray Charles. He said: "I could hear in my head Ray Charles singing it."
Eventually, the soulful Charles would apply his unique stamp to the tune.
Harrison's outstanding and distinctive career would tend to ebb and flow in that manner. People constantly made assumptions about him based on a rather romanticised public profile - even his mates in the Beatles.
Harrison will always be remembered as the potential worldbeater whose career was stymied by - outrageous as it may seem - being in the wrong band. Sadly, his undeniable talents were simply dwarfed in the vast shadow cast by the composing partnership of Lennon and McCartney.
In any lesser band, a musician who could conjure up top-drawer tunes such as "Something", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" or "Here Comes The sun" would be regarded as the outfit's major songwriter. But in the Beatles, structured around the crossfire of the huge talents of John and Paul, George remained a distant thrid batting option.
Throughout the Beatles' brief and public career, Harrison struggled to aggressively promote his songs to the other disinterested songwriters.
Uninformed observers often carp about Yoko having broken up the Beatles, which as any insider knows is simply wrong. More crucial in the painful dissolution was the limitations of the LP record.
It may have been marketed as the long-playing record when it was introduced in 1958, but for the composing members of the Beatles, records simply did not play for long enough.
If the maximum content advantage of a CD (80 minutes) over an LP (28 minutes per side for a total of 56 minutes) had been available, I believe there is a strong chance the Beatles may have survived more years and, most importantly, scores more songs.
"We need more room on an album - there's just not enough room for all of our new songs," Lennon often used to grumble.
It was a significant point - an album's quota of a dozen tunes would invariably comprise 10 by John and/or Paul and one or two by George.
Nobody was happy with the arrangement.
Yet significantly, it did not seem that double albums provided an answer. When I asked him for a perspective on the "white" double album, The Beatles, in 1969, Harrison was typically forthright and sincere.
"I think it was a mistake doing four (album) sides because first of all, it was too big for people to really get into," he said. "There's a couple of things we could have done without, which might have made it more compact. In a way, "Revolution 9" was all right, even if it wasn't particularly a Beatles type of thing."
"That was the great thing about the White Album - there were all different kinds of music and songs. But it was a bit heavy, though."
"I find it heavy to listen to. In fact, I don't listen to it myself. Occasionally I listen to side one because of "Glass Onion" and "Happiness Is A Warm Gun"."
Few would suggest that Harrison was a superior songwriter to Paul McCartney, but he was assuredly a more interesting interviewee.
As in his songs, Harrison spoke from the heart. Unlike most of today's pop royalty, he was neither flaccid nor obnoxious.
"Songwriting means a lot ot me," he told me late in the Beatles' reign. "The first song I wrote was "Don't Bother Me", which was on our second album. It wasn't very good."
The toughest thing for me is following John and Paul's songs. I used to have a hang-up about telling the rest of the guys that I'd written a song because I felt mentally as if I was trying to compete. The standard of my songs had to be good because their stuff was really good."
"I don't want the Beatles to be recording rubbish for my sake, just because I wrote it. On the other hand, I don't want to record rubbish, just because they wrote it. The group always comes first."
"Sometimes it's a matter of whichever of us pushes the hardest gets the most songs on an album. Usually I just leave it until somebody says they want to do one of my tunes."
He could have been waiting forever. On the surface, Harrison long exuded an image of gentility, bolstered by images of Hare Krishna bells and tambourines, flowing robes and dizzying heights of peace and grooviness.
There did not appear to be a tremor of agression in his body, but privately, John Lennon painted a different picture.
"Wow, you wouldn't believe the way George would stop some of those mad kids when they descended on us in swarms," Lennon said. "He would sock 'em right out of the game."
Born on 25 February, 1943, the fourth child of a working class family, Harrison had no illusions about fame or the Beatles.
He was honest when talking about the band's early years in Hamburg and Liverpool - he admitted that what did it for them was the brilliance of the songs they performed, often rather badly.
They were original US R&B hits that UK radio refused to play, dismissing them as suitable only for coloured audiences - soul filled tracks by artists with names such as the Miracles, the Marvelettes, the Shirelles and Arthur Alexander.
"We weren't influenced by any of the trends in the UK such as the Shadows while we were playing in Hamburg," Harrison said.
"We just kept playing the old rock'n'roll and R&B that wasn't fashionable in England."
"We were regarded as sort of a new thing, but all we really were was the past brought back."
Other Beatle activities were not quite as warmly embraced, in particular touring under the onslaught of world fame.
"It just became bloody well boring," Harrison said after the band stopped touring in 1966.
"The last tour was really a rut number - we just played exactly the same things to different people all over the place."
"I find it incredible now to look at the film of our Shea Stadium gig in New York. We were up there having a good time, but the show was strictly for ourselves. The audience was miles away, into their own scene."
So the boys settled into being personally comfortable, off the road and away from the madness.
Supposedly indicative of George's eccentricity, but more representative of his vision, was his 1970 decision to purchase a genuine, gorgeous Victorian folly situated within an hour of London - Friar Park manor house on the outskirts of Henley-on-Thames.
The stately pile had been substantially renovated and expanded in the early 20th century by millionaire bon vivant Sir Frank Crisp. It took a team of gardeners a full two decades to execute Crisp's grandiose garden visions - and up until his death, Harrison employed 11 full time gardeners and two consultants to maintain the superb horticultural legacy.
Friar Park even boasted a series of extraordinary fantasy theme water filled caves under the main dwelling. But Harrison's outlook on the park changed dramatically after a mentally disturbed intruder broke in and stabbed him 10 times in December 1999.
The mansion was not Harrison's only home.
In the 1980s, he and second wife Olivia Arias bought a house and property on Hamiltion Island. Prior to mounting health problems, the couple would fly in largely unannounced and stay low key for several weeks, often three or four times a year.
"When We Were Fab", the 1987 Harrison hit, was written there and originally entitled "Aussie Fab".
In fact, Harrison's songwriting style and modus operandi was traditionally connected with the windy intercession of whim.
Witness the description of the creation of one of his finest Beatle efforts, the White Album's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".
"I wrote it at my mother's house in the north of England," he said. "I just had my guitar and I wanted to write a song. Sometimes when I haven't got a particular idea, I believe in that I Ching (The Book Of Changes) thing that whatever happens is meant to be."
""Gently Weeps" was a study in that philosophy. I just opened a book lying on a table and read the words 'gently weeps'. Then I put it down and wrote the song."
What a magnificent, intuitive tune it was. But not all of its early listeners heard it that way. Harrison recalled: "John and Paul were so used to just cranking out their own tunes that it was very difficult at times to get them serious and record one of mine."
"At the ("Gently Weeps") session, they weren't taking it seriously and I don't think they were even all playing on it. I went home thinking, 'Well, what a shame', because I knew the song was good."
That anecdote tells it all. Name any band that wouldn't take a superb song as "Gently Weeps" absolutely seriously. But Harrison himself did not expect discourse on music to be cast in granite.
""Here Comes The Sun" was written on a very nice sunny day in Eric Clapton's garden," he told me. "We'd been through real hell in business and it was all very heavy."
"Being in Eric's garden was like playing hooky from school. I found some sort of release and the song just came."
In the aftermath of the Beatles' dissolution in March 1970, Harrison was the first to hit No. 1 as a solo Beatle in the Christmas week that year - with "My Sweet Lord".
"I was inspired to write "My Sweet Lord" by the Edwin Hawkins Singers' version of "Oh Happy Day"," George wrote in his autobiography I Me Mine.
He may have been thinking of "Oh Happy Day" when he composed "My Sweey Lord", but the publishers of the Chiffons' 1963 hit "He's So Fine" (written by the late Ronnie Mack) insisted their song had provided the inspiration.
They took legal action claiming plagarism and in 1976 Harrison was found guilty of copyright infringement. He would be further aggravated when former Beatle manager Allen Klein purchased the publishing rights to "He's So Fine" in order to continue a damages suit against him.
"My Sweet Lord" was the only solo Beatles No. 1 record to become a double sided hit when the sublime ballad "Isn't It A Pity", a highlight of Harrison's All Things Must Pass album took of.
In the summer of 1971, Harrison's infatuation with the Indian subcontinent manifested itself in two benefit concerts at Madison Square Gardens - and also featuring Ringo Starr, Ravi Shankar, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Leon Russell - to raise funds for Bangladeshi refugees.
Apart from the concerts and a documentary film, there was a Grammy winning three record concert set, Concert For Bangladesh.
"I was remarkable, the way in which I first got into Indian music," Harrison told me. "I listened to a Ravi Shankar album and even though it's technically the most amazing music, I couldn't really understand it. Yet I also felt (simultaneously) deep within myself that I did know it."
"Most probably he's not aware of it, but Ravi Shankar is the man who had influenced my life the most. Later I realised that Indian music was only a stepping stone to the spiritual thing."
"Through Hinduism, I got to understand the thing about Christ and Christianity and so I have immense respect for Indian music and history and philosphy."
Harrison's next album, the wryly titled Living In The Material World, yeilded his second solo No. 1 hit, "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)".
Writing about the song in I Me Mine, Harrison noted: "Sometimes you open your mouth and you don't know what you are going to say and whatever comes out is the starting point."
"If it happens - and you are lucky - it can usually be turned into a song. This song is a prayer and personal statement between me, the Lord and whoever likes it."
His third No. 1 hit came in 1987 with "Got My Mind Set On You" from the Cloud Nine album.
The album was produced by Jeff Lynne, from Electric Light Orchestra, and led to the teaming of Dylan, Roy Orbison and Harrison with Tom Petty and Lynne as the Traveling Wilburys. The resulting album went double platinum.
His last recording was said to be the song "Horse To Water", co-written with son Dhani, which was taped at his Swiss villa in October.
The title of the song had an odd connection with some thoughts Harrison expressed in research for the Beatles Anthology project.
"I always felt really close to the people and to where I grew up and the people who had become Beatles fans all around the world," he said.
"That is, I suppose, why I wrote some songs that were trying to say: 'Hey, you can experience this, it's available to everyone.'"
"But then you realise you can take the horse to the water, but you can't make him drink."
"You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it. People only get it when they're ready to get it. Sometimes people took my songs the wrong way, as if I was trying to preach to them. But I wasn't."