5 Musicians Who Praised George Harrison

George Harrison’s prolific career brought him into contact with a number of the biggest musicians in the world. He inspired some guitarists and collaborated with many big names. Here are five musicians who spoke about their admiration for the former Beatle.

Tom Petty

Tom Petty worked with Harrison in The Traveling Wilburys, and they became close friends. Petty admired the other musician’s talent and he greatly valued his friendship.

“I think I needed a friend really badly,” Petty said, per the book Petty: The Biography by Warren Zanes. “My friendship with the band was a different kind of friendship. And it was frayed. I’d become very lonely. George came along, and we got so close; it was like we had known each other in some other life or something. We were pals within minutes of meeting each other.”

Petty said that Harrison was a healing presence in his life.

“I remember him saying to me a couple days after we’d known each other — he’s hugging me, holding me, and saying, ‘Tommy, you’re in my life now whether you like it or not,'” Petty recalled. “It was like I’d been sent the very person I needed. He healed a lot of wounds.”

Dave Grohl

The Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl has gotten to know former members of The Beatles, but he said he liked Harrison best musically.

“I would like to play my favorite song by George Harrison, called ‘Something,'” Grohl said on the BBC’s Radio 2 Beatles special. “I think that of all The Beatles, of course, each of them is so entirely different. Melodically, their songwriting, lyrically, but George Harrison, there was almost something about him that I almost preferred the most. I loved every single one of them for different reasons, but I connected to George Harrison’s sense of melody more than anyone.”

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson and Harrison never collaborated, but they had the chance to meet on the radio show Roundtable in 1979. Two decades later, Jackson expressed his sadness when Harrison died, calling the former Beatle an inspiration.

“The world has lost a great spirit in George Harrison, a great musician, songwriter, and friend,” Jackson said in a statement, per Billboard. “He was an inspiration to me, and I will miss him a great deal.”

Keith Richards

Keith Richards once insulted Harrison’s guitar playing, but he recognized similarities between the two of them.

“George and I kind of formed — without talking too much about it, although we did have a laugh here and there — a bond, in that we felt we were kind of fulfilling the same role within our respective bands,” Richards wrote for Rolling Stone after Harrison’s death. “It was a nod and a wink to say, ‘Well, they’d be nowhere without us.'”

He also softened his opinion of Harrison’s musicality.

“George was an artist who was, because he didn’t write that many songs but the ones he did write were very meaningful, very well worked out, and well thought about, an incredibly meticulous man with respect to his work and to what he wanted to do,” Richards wrote. “The record speaks for itself — ‘[While My] Guitar Gently Weeps,’ ‘Something,’ ‘My Sweet Lord.’ When he did put something out, he worked on it a long time and got it right the way he wanted it, which is a very difficult thing to do, especially when you’re part of something else.”

Elton John 

While Harrison once insulted Elton John’s music, the other musician still admired him. They eventually collaborated on Harrison’s album Cloud Nine, and John said that it was an honor to work with the former Beatle.

“George was always very, very kind to me,” Elton John wrote for Rolling Stone. “I still remember staying up until eight o’clock in the morning recording and then asking him to play ‘Here Comes The Sun.’ And he did, and it was magical … I feel very privileged to have known him, to have played on his records.”