It's always the quiet ones you have to look out for, the ones who spend their time in the shadows as those around them take the praise. George Harrison was the youngest member of The Beatles, the most subdued, and the one least taken in by the media/cultural circus which surrounded the band.
He was even dubbed the quiet one, his saturnine demeanour adrift amidst Paul McCartney's perennial thumbs-up, John Lennon's scathing sarcasm and Ringo Starr's how-did-I-get-here faτade. When he broke away from The Beatles' Apple records in the mid-1970s to start his own record label, he called it Dark Horse - proof, if indeed it was needed, that he ploughed a solitary furrow.
Born on February 25th, 1943, Harrison's contributions to The Beatles were few and far between. Swamped by the prodigious output of the Lennon/McCartney team, it was thought the guitarist had little to offer other than his distinctive instrumental style, which was modelled on one of his mentor's, rockabilly guitarist Carl Perkins.
Yet slowly, Harrison forged a songwriting technique that coerced his colleagues into allowing him contribute to albums. His early offerings on 1963's With The Beatles (Don't Bother Me) and 1965's soundtrack to Help! (I Need You, You Like Me Too Much) were undemanding, but matters picked up considerably on 1965's Rubber Soul (Think For Yourself), and 1966's Revolver (Taxman, Love You To, I Want To Tell You).
Subsequent contributions across various Beatles albums - While My Guitar Gently Weeps on 1968's The Beatles, Something and Here Comes The Sun on 1969's Abbey Road - indicated that his being continuously overshadowed as a songwriter wasn't as clever a move as it might have been thought.
Minor though his contributions were, they were nevertheless thoroughly effective, his songs reflecting a far more spiritual view of the world than those of Lennon/McCartney.
In a aural way, his use of the sitar on Rubber Soul's Norwegian Wood (the first time the instrument had been used on a pop record) and 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band's Within You, Without You, heralded in a contemplative period for him. Introduced to the music of Ravi Shankar, Harrison eventually studied under the man, his experiments opening up the pop world to the undiscovered goldmine that would come to be termed world music. His involvement with Shankar led, perhaps inevitably, to his brief flirtation with the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and then to his involvement with the Hare Krishna movement. By the time The Beatles split at the beginning of the 1970s, Harrison had already released All Things Must Pass, his bona fide debut solo album, and a record that still stands as the best solo Beatles work.
Having forged a bond with Bob Dylan from the mid-1960s - when both were swirling about in the media cyclone - Harrison visited him in Woodstock at the close of that decade. By this time, each Beatle was working in a solitary vacuum, with Harrison's musical leanings veering towards the prevalent roots movement in the US, as defined by Dylan, The Band and The Byrds.
All Things Must Pass, rock music's first triple album, was founded on material stockpiled over the years which had been passed over for Lennon/McCartney songs. Inspired by simplicity, the album has grown in stature through the decades.
It is specifically seen as a statement of his artistic merit, although sadly for Harrison its success was marred by the plagiarism suit against the track My Sweet Lord by the publishers of The Chiffons' 1964 hit She's So Fine. Although cleared of conscious plagiarism, it was a bitter sting in the tale for Harrison, who later claimed that the publicity surrounding the successful suit made him apprehensive about songwriting for years - for fear, he said, "of touching somebody else's note".
Reclusivity of sorts also infiltrated his life, his marriage to model Patti Boyd foundering through her affair with his best friend, Eric Clapton.
Work with movie production through his company Handmade Films (including Life Of Brian, by Monty Python, Time Bandits, Mona Lisa and Shanghai Surprise) diverted him from music, as did his hobbies of motor-racing and gardening, the polar opposites of solitary pursuits. More chart success came in the late 1980s with supergroup-of-sorts The Travelling Wilburys (skiffle for the 1980s, said Harrison, none too prophetically), yet when that band ground down Harrison once again retreated to his rock superstar homes in England and America.
He realised he could never shake off any Beatle associations and in the end finally grew to accept that he would always be connected with the ultimate show business success story of the 20th century. The reunion of the band's former three members in the mid-1990s for the immensely successful Anthology project (three double CDs, television series, book) brought him even more money, while his award of over $11 million in a litigation suit against previous financial advisors was merely icing on the cake.
In the final analysis, George Harrison had the type of innate, inner peace - a remarkable feat considering his background - that millions search for, but which few attain.
He once claimed fame forced him into playing the same old music for years, something which his fans will always be grateful for.
"I'm thankful that The Beatles enabled me to be adventurous," he said. "It saved me from another mundane sort of life."