Dhani Harrison felt ‘responsibility’ to release dad George’s music

George Harrison’s son felt a  »tremendous responsibility » to release his late father’s work.

The Beatles legend was working on a career retrospective when he passed away in 2001, so 36-year-old Dhani Harrison took over the project and felt the pressure to get as much of his dad’s music heard as possible.

George’s widow, Olivia Harrison, said:  »He wanted his music out. George was just embarking on that retrospective of his musical life – he never called it a career, he said that was the wrong word for him – but time ran out and he died.

 »Dhani wanted to do it and felt a tremendous responsibility to do it. There’s still a huge archive of material that still needs working on. You can’t just let tapes degrade and never be heard again. »

In the sleeve notes for new compilation ‘The Apple Years 1968-75’ Dhani admits he learned a lot about his father while putting it together, a revelation which surprised his mother, though she herself was always astonished by how  »intimate » George’s lyrics were.

She told The Times newspaper:  »I thought George shared a lot with Dhani, much more. Maybe it was a prescient thought of, ‘I’m not going to hold anything back’. He really did give him a lot of instruction on everything in life so I don’t know what Dhani’s thinking about there.

He did express a lot in his music that he didn’t express in life. He wouldn’t want to talk about things but he would write a song that had more personal revelations in it than I would ever want to say. I would think, ‘How could you say that? It’s so intimate’ but that was his way of expressing himself. Thank goodness he did. »