How George Harrison’s Son, Dhani, Rebelled as a Teenager

George Harrison‘s son, Dhani, had to be creative when rebelling against his famous father. The usual techniques didn’t work in the Harrison household. Dhani couldn’t rebel in the same way other teenagers did because George was an unconventional parent.

George Harrison’s son, Dhani, didn’t grow up knowing his father was a Beatle

You’d think Dhani would’ve grown up knowing his father was a Beatle. However, George never pushed that knowledge on his son.

Instead, Dhani became obsessed with Chuck Berry’s music through The Beach Boys and after watching 1985’s Teen Wolf. The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.” plays in the film, and Dhani loved the tune. However, George couldn’t let his son like the song without schooling him on who really wrote it.

George told Rolling Stone, “I said, ‘That’s really good, but you want to hear where that came from,’ and I played him ‘Sweet Little Sixteen.’ I made him a Chuck Berry tape, and he takes it to school with his Walkman.”

By the time he was nine years old, Dhani’s love for Berry was bigger than his love for George’s music. However, that was because George hardly showed him The Beatles.

“When I did that Prince’s Trust concert last June — that was the first time he ever saw me hold a guitar onstage in front of people,” George told Rolling Stone. “He’s got to know a bit about the Beatles, but I’ve never pushed that on him, or tried to say, ‘Look who I used to be.'”

How George’s son, Dhani, had to rebel as a teenager

As a parent, George never told Dhani about The Beatles and never pushed music on him, either. He wanted his son to grow up out of the spotlight and treated Dhani like an adult. However, that doesn’t mean George was an ordinary parent. Dhani couldn’t rebel by skipping school because George couldn’t have cared less. Going to class and doing your homework wasn’t important.

As a teenager, the only way George’s son, Dhani, could rebel in his family was to join the Combined Cadet Force at his school. In Martin Scorsese’s documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Dhani said that George hated when he walked around the house in his uniform.

Dhani explained, “He used to say to me every day, ‘You don’t have to go to school today, do you just wanna go on a yacht in the South Pacific and run away forever?’

“People would probably say, ‘You’re an idiot for not doing that,’ and maybe, in a way, I am. But to rebel in my family, it was to go to school; I went to like a semi-military school. We did CCF one day a week, and he, that used to piss him off, me walking around in an Air Force uniform.”

Dhani further rebelled by going to college for a degree in industrial design and physics. However, Dhani eventually realized it was pointless to rebel.

The former Beatle came to his son’s aid

Dhani eventually realized it was futile to rebel against George because his father was always on his side. George had to come to his son’s aid during a run-in with the police.

In Scorsese’s documentary, Dhani said, “I was 15 and then had some little run-in with some policemen and he told the policemen to f*** off. That’s when I realized that he was actually cool, on my side and not just a scary dad, you know? And he was very very close to me after that.

“We kind of would run off down the garden and hide, don’t tell you mom kind of stuff, you know?”

Eventually, Dhani also realized it was futile to fight, following in his father’s footsteps and going into music. George’s son struggled to rebel like an ordinary teenager, but it wasn’t worth it in the end. Dhani and George always had a great relationship.