Scorsese reveals Beatle Harrison as ‘red-blooded’

For some reason the late George Harrison has gone down in history as the "quiet" Beatle, seemingly dwarfed by the larger-than-life reputations of his band mates and their equally famous girlfriends, wives and families. But all this looks certain to be redressed in a new documentary by Martin Scorsese.
 
According to Olivia, Harrison's second wife, the Beatles' lead guitarist was a serial philanderer. "He did like women and women did like him," she says. "If he just said a couple of words to you it would have a profound effect. So it was hard to deal with someone who was so well loved."
 
Olivia, who helped Scorsese produce George Harrison: Living in the Material World, also talks about the knife-wielding man who, in "a florid, psychotic state", broke into their home and seriously attacked them both in 1999, just two years after Harrison had been diagnosed with throat cancer.
 
Intercut with rarely seen footage of Harrison both before and after the Beatles broke up, the film follows his life from the teenage years on streets of Liverpool to his eventual death from cancer in a Swiss hospital in 2001. Although it will not be released in cinemas, the BBC will be airing it later this year.
 
Phil Spector, Harrison's producer for his first solo work, recalls the Beatle's excessive attention to detail in terms of his music. "Perfectionism is not the word," Spector said. "It went beyond that."
 
Fellow guitarist Eric Clapton explains that after becoming "more and more obsessed" with George's first wife, Pattie Boyd, he eventually confessed all to Harrison. He was "very cavalier" about it, explains Clapton. "To be honest there was a lot of swapping and fooling around." Boyd and Clapton got together immediately after she split with Harrison, and they later married in 1979.
 
For a man previously known for his enduring love of meditation and Indian mysticism, Scorsese draws a picture of a very different man. "I don't want to say much, because he was a pal," fellow Beatle Paul McCartney says in the documentary, "but he liked the things that men like. He was red-blooded." ·