George Harrison: added the magic touch to many of The Beatles’ songs.
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As ‘the quiet Beatle’, George Harrison was always that group’s secret weapon. Lennon and McCartney wrote most of the Fabs’ hits and sang their way into your heart, but it was sullen George who gave the songs their transcendent guitar moments. Witness the supple elegance of his solo in Till There Was You, his Carl Perkins–channeling double-stops on All My Loving, or the plangent chiming of his Rickenbacker 12-string on everything from A Hard Day’s Night to If I Needed Someone. He plied his magic even without a guitar. What would 1965’s Norwegian Wood be without Harrison’s lysergic sitar lines buzzing sinuously beneath Lennon’s tale of adultery, auguring the coming psychedelic era and driving up demand for sitar players on pop recording sessions.