Martin Scorsese's George Harrison Doc Premieres Tonight on HBO: Watch the Chill-Inducing Trailer
by Richard SharpI once saw George Harrison. He was looking at mangos. And avocados.
At the time I was stocking produce at Mana Foods, a small natural foods store in Paia, Maui. It was the best job I could find that would allow me to live as a broke twenty-something in an island paradise and still be able to spend as much time in the ocean as possible. Plus, there was plenty of free "bruised" fruit to be had, which was awful helpful at the time.
George owned a 63-acre site in Nahiku, Maui, and apparently he had stopped in with his wife Olivia on the way through to town on Hana Highway.
He looked frail but at ease, wearing a lightweight, flowing cotton Indian-inspired outfit, and he and his wife slowly made their way through the rather ridiculous selection of ripe island fruits, squeezing and smelling. George and Olivia seemed to be enjoying themselves, or at least the fruit.
I was absolutely dumbstruck and covered in schmutz from hauling in leaky boxes of lettuce, so I didn't say a word. Once they had picked out their fruits, they went outside to a field and ate it on the grass in the sun. I couldn't believe it. It was like some vision of a blissed out George from the late 60's come to very real life in the late 90's, and I couldn't take my eyes off him.
No one else seemed to realize who he was (or maybe they just didn't believe an actual living Beatle would be inside the shop), and no one bothered him. I took a cigarette break outside the store, sitting and watching George Harrison eat fruit, neither disturbing him nor telling a soul what I was watching.
He died a couple years after that of cancer, but that's how I'll always think of George Harrison.
He was a beautiful, peaceful man who ate fruit in fields, bathed in sunlight. He also wrote a ridiculous amount of perfect songs that have shaped the world we lived in. Without George, the Beatles never would have taken their pivotal left-hand turn to India, never found the peaceful core that may have ultimately helped end Vietnam. There would have been no "Here Comes the Sun," no visit to the "Taxman."
A new Martin Scorsese documentary, "George Harrison: Living in the Material World" takes a look at the life of the enigmatic Beatle, from his early childhood to the explosion of the Beatles, through to masterworks like "Here Comes the Sun" and "My Guitar Gently Weeps."
"I will never forget the first time I heard [Harrison's 1970 triple-album solo debut] ‘All Things Must Pass,’ the overwhelming feeling of taking in that all glorious music for the first time," Scorsese said in an HBO release about the film.
"It was like walking into a cathedral. George was making spiritually awake music – we all heard and felt it – and I think that was the reason that he came to occupy a very special place in our lives. So when I was offered the chance to make this picture, I jumped at it," said Scorsese.
"The Last Waltz" by Scorsese stands as one of the single greatest documentaries about rock music ever, and if this chill-inducing trailer for his two-part George Harrison documentary is any indication, it might be every bit as good.
Watch the trailer for "George Harrison: Living in the Material World" below. The documentary airs October 5-6th on HBO.