When it comes to the so-called Quiet Beatle, author Seth Rogovoy’s "Within You Without You: Listening to George Harrison" accomplishes a rare feat. In a sea of ineffectual biographies devoted to the Beatles’ guitarist, Rogovoy makes a case for Harrison’s most important contribution: the music itself.
A self-described amateur guitarist, Rogovoy draws upon his musical skills to deliver a powerful new reading of Harrison’s role in fueling one Lennon-McCartney classic after another. Rogovoy offers a careful delineation of the mottos, riffs, and licks via which Harrison left a distinctive imprint upon the Beatles’ sound, from early hits such as “Please Please Me” and “She Loves You” through "Abbey Road" and the group’s twilight years.
As Rogovoy astutely writes, Harrison “was one of four, and if sometimes it was hard to get a word in edgewise when your bandmates were the wickedly outrageous John Lennon, the voluble Paul McCartney, and the affable Ringo Starr, Harrison made every word count. His wit was as quick and biting as Lennon's. He did not suffer fools gladly—by the evidence of his songs, he despised them.”
Rogovoy’s forensic analysis of Harrison’s musical contributions is well-balanced with his discussion of the guitarist’s uneasy relationship with the Beatles’ unique and overwhelming fame, as well as the spirituality that he experienced through his nearly lifelong study of Eastern religion and philosophy. Indeed, Rogovoy allows, “Harrison's ambivalence about the Beatles and fame could well be his defining characteristic, if it were not for the essential role he played in helping to create the Beatles sound and inspiring his bandmates to follow along on his musical and spiritual journeys.”
In one of his finest moments in "Within You Without You," Rogovoy painstakingly dismantles long-held beliefs that Harrison’s decision to quit the Beatles, if only briefly, in January 1969 had anything whatsoever to do with an infamous conversation with McCartney earlier that month. Through an exclusive interview with "Let It Be" director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Rogovoy illuminates the reality behind that interchange. “For them, it wasn't a rift or a fight,” says Lindsay-Hogg, “it was two people talking about something to do with the music, as they had for the last fifteen years.”
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Instead, Rogovoy rightly underscores Harrison’s troubled marriage that month, as well as a fateful visit by Northern Songs’ polarizing publisher Dick James on the morning of Harrison’s work-stoppage. As the publisher held court at Twickenham Studios, “James bragged to McCartney about the staggering revenue that would begin to flow from the publishing royalties for these songs, doing so right in front of Ringo Starr, who, like Harrison, owned a ridiculously small share of the publishing company, something to the tune of a half percent (as opposed to Lennon and McCartney's twenty percent apiece). Starr was a good sport about it, but his face betrays a confusion of emotions and embarrassment.”
As with his analyses of Harrison’s indelible musical contributions to the Act You’ve Known for All These Years, Rogovoy’s eye towards soberly capturing the history of the Beatles with a welcome dose of critical objectivity makes "Within You Without You" required reading when it comes to the guitarist. It’s that good.
