George Harrison Said Being a Parent Puts You in Three Periods of Time
George Harrison became a parent when his only son, Dhani, was born in 1978. The former Beatle said being a father puts you in three periods. You are the child, parent, and grandparent all at once.
George Harrison said becoming a parent changed him
In 1974, George met his second wife, Olivia, the same year he split from his first wife, Pattie Boyd. At the time, George told Rolling Stone, he had “no voice and almost no body at times.”
In Martin Scorsese’s documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Olivia said, “When I first met him, he said, ‘I don’t want you to think you’ve discovered something about me I don’t know. I’m not claiming to be this or that or anything. People think they found you out, when I’m not hiding anything.’
“I thought he was really somebody who was saying something that I connected with. He was really a very captivating person… I liked the music, I liked what he was doing. We just seemed like partners from the very beginning.”
George and Olivia married in 1978, shortly after having their only son, Dhani. He told Rolling Stone that becoming a parent changed him.
“Yeah, that’s been a wonderful thing for me,” George said. “Everybody who has a baby thinks their child is wonderful, and it is. I’m enjoying it a lot.”
However, according to former Apple employee and friend Chris O’Dell, George wasn’t exactly changed by the experience. “Having a son was good for him,” O’Dell said (per George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door by Graeme Thomson). “But I don’t know that it changed him that much. I think he stayed pretty much the same.”
George wasn’t the best at expressing his feelings for anyone except maybe God. He found it easier to do it through song. Whatever George felt about parenthood, he loved his son and showed him through music, specifically on his tunes “Soft Touch” and “Unknown Delight.”
During an interview with NPR, Olivia said the latter became a favorite of hers. “He was saying, ‘What should I write about? What should I write a song about?’ I said, ‘Write a song about Dhani.’ And he wrote this beautiful song which was very prescient actually,” Olivia added on Dark Horse Radio in 2018 (per Harrison Archive).
George said being a parent puts you in three periods of time
During an interview for Dutch TV, an interviewer asked George about being a parent.
“Well, it’s made me want to not sort of kill myself too soon,” George said. “Sometimes we go too fast in life and it makes me realize a responsibility. I want to have time to enjoy that relationship and it’s also made me think-I’m sure everybody who’s a parent knows when they have a child you also can be that child and you’re the parent and you can also be your own father at the same time.
“It puts you into three different periods of time; three generations can be experienced in one. It’s a nice experience.”
George’s father, Harold, once punched his son’s teacher after learning the teacher had hit George. Years later, George channeled Harold while defending Dhani during a run-in with the police.
The former Beatle wanted his son to grow up away from fame
Shortly after Dhani was born, George and Olivia decided to keep him as much away from the spotlight as possible. They didn’t want him to become spoiled.
“Everybody wants to know about and find out about your kids, but I think that’s unfair on them,” George told After Nine. The reporter asked George if Dhani would be able to have a normal upbringing. “It’s not normal anyway, having a dad who’s an ex-Beatle, living in a sort of wacky castle. That’s not normal.
“But to him it is normal, and within that framework, he’s a good boy and knows that there’s people who aren’t as fortunate, and he’s sensitive to the other things that are happening in the world. He’s not just like, you know, some pampered little horror, like precocious and that. He’d good; I think he’s OK.”
George didn’t even tell Dhani about The Beatles, let alone that he was a member. Dhani eventually learned about them through Yellow Submarine. Dhani watched his father perform at the Prince’s Trust Concert in 1987. However, he was upset George played his famous Beatles songs instead of Chuck Berry’s hits.
Later, Dhani rebelled against his father by going to school and pursuing a degree in college. However, Dhani couldn’t ignore the pull to follow in his father’s footsteps any longer. He helped George with his final album, Brainwashed, and finished the album for his father when he died in 2001. Dhani isn’t a parent yet. However, George is inside him already.
