For both good and ill, The passing of another Beatle prompts one to contort a song lyric from the volatile and creative era that Harrison helped shape: Where has all the good, inspired music gone, long time passing. Any honest and discriminating teenager who has had the pleasure of being exposed to music of the sixties will admit that the boy bands and pop stars of today can't hold a candle to the likes of Dylan, the Beatles, and the Stones. George Harrison was as important in shaping the sound, feel, and political tenor of the times as his more celebrated contemporaries. The piercing, trebly jingle-jangle of the electric guitar, the wedding of social activism and rock spectacle, and the searing twang of the sitar—all major time stamps of the era—were all Harrison contributions. Lennon and McCartney were the luminary songwriters that epitomized the era, however, Harrison provided the unconscious backdrop that made the decade so unforgettable.

Of all the one word epitaphs pundits have used to capture George Harrison's personality—quiet, sullen, reluctant, humble—one stands out in particular. Shortly before his own death, Lennon, in his typically audacious and provocative tone, called his band mate "invisible." Though Lennon employed the remark as a derogatory jab, expanding the distinction between McCartney's and his larger-than-life charisma to Harrison's diminutive persona, "invisible" may be just the word to precisely describe Harrison's essence. Amidst all the shellacking of Beatlemania, solo career, lawsuits, and business turmoil, an invisibility, or transparency, to spirit shone forth through George Harrison with remarkable uniformity throughout his life. Prior to and after his interest in Eastern spirituality, there was a forlorn vacancy in his eyes that suggested that nothing in this world was going to satisfy a deeper need inside.

If, as Timothy Leary suggested, the Beatles were the avatars of their generation, descending, like gods from the heavens to usher forth radically new forms of creativity and self expression, Harrison was the yogi of the group, binding the deep, spiritual mystery of life for practical purposes long after the genius of the Beatle collaboration waned. He was a reluctant bridge to the East, often awkwardly stepping into the limelight from the shadows to introduce the West to meditation and Krishna consciousness. Harrison refused to take on a more digestible façade for public consumption, however, he used his celebrity to spread the spiritual gold he had panned from Eastern teachers. He was in every way a pioneering spirit, a pilgrim of new ways of being, and, most remarkably, he did this under the intensity of the public worship that made his life insufferable at times.