Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison

Writing about music isn't easy--as the saying goes, it's like dancing about architecture. Also difficult: getting a handle on George Harrison (1943-2001), the enigmatic Beatle. Seth Rogovoy (Bob Dylan) meets both challenges in Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison, a persuasive and provocation-rich corrective.

Rogovoy argues that the Beatles' lead guitarist, who was commonly viewed as second rank to primary songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney, has been short-shrifted. When Harrison wasn't, say, making a landmark sitar contribution to the band's "Norwegian Wood," he reliably lent Beatles songs an elevating touch; Rogovoy points to Harrison's signature unresolved guitar chords and calls him "a master craftsman of the opening hook." About Harrison's own compositions--for the Beatles and as a solo artist--Rogovoy makes pronouncements both convincing ("Piggies" amounts to "a musical version of Orwell's Animal Farm") and likely to stir the pot ("Bangla Desh" is "one of Harrison's all-time best songs").

While Rogovoy hasn't set out to write a biography, Within You Without You contains multitudes on the polydimensional character of Harrison, an introverted spiritualist who collected racing cars and wrote cranky lyrics about his finances. Rogovoy can be repetitive, and even Harrison defenders may think the author oversteps when he says the Beatle left behind "a body of work as great as any other single recording artist and singer-songwriter of the rock era" except for maybe Bob Dylan. But occasional vexation will pay readers dividends if it sends them scrambling to Harrison's music in search of answers. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

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