Feb. 25: George Harrison was born on this date in 1943 ...

... he was 58 when he passed away from lung cancer on November 29, 2001. He was also treated for a brain tumor.

George, like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, was born in Liverpool, UK.  After his career as the Beatles' lead guitarist, he has continued success in his solo career.  

Back to his Beatles days: Harrison left school at 16 and worked as an apprentice electrician at local department store Blacklers. John Lennon did not want George in the group initially he said because he was too young, but McCartney was insistent, and Lennon finally relented.

In 1960, when The Beatles were offered a gig in Hamburg, the musical apprenticeship that Harrison received, including guitar lessons from Tony Sheridan, laid the foundations of The Beatles' sound, and of Harrison's quiet, professional role within the group. The first trip to Hamburg was shortened when Harrison was deported for being underage.

After seeing them perform at The Cavern Club in November 1961, record store owner Brian Epstein became The Beatles' manager. One of the first things he did was change their image from leather-jacketed rock-and-rollers to a more polished look, and secured them a recording contract with EMI.

Their first single, "Love Me Do," with Harrison playing a Gibson J-160E, reached number 17 in the UK chart in October 1962, and by the time their debut album, Please Please Me, was released in early 1963, The Beatles had become famous.

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(Watch the Beatles perform "With LoveFrom Me to You" & "This Boy.")

George contributed to the songwriting of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, firstly by adding ideas and guitar parts, and later with his distinctive style of music inspired by Eastern spirituality. His later compositions with The Beatles include "Here Comes the Sun,""Something" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

After the Beatles stopped touring George started writing more songs than could be fitted onto the albums so by the time of the split he had built up a collection songs, some used on his triple album, All Things Must Pass. The album, released in 1970, contains the two-time number one hit, "My Sweet Lord."

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Harrison went on to release several successful solo albums, and in the late 1980s collaborated with Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, in a group called Traveling Wilburys. The group released two albums.

Traveling Wilburys 

Harrison is also credited for creating music benefits, notably the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh. Harrison played beside Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr, and Leon Russell to a crowd of 40,000 in Madison Square Garden, New York.

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Harrison is listed at number 21 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."His last album, Brainwashed, was released posthumously and featured the single "Any Road."

Harrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist on 15 March 2004 by his Traveling Wilburys friends Lynne and Petty. He was inducted into the Madison Square Garden Walk of Fame on 1 August 2006 for the "Concert for Bangladesh."

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