George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door

by Graeme Thomson

As a Beatle, Harrison underwent a bewilderingly compressed early adulthood,

buffeted by unprecedented levels of fame and success. After Beatlemania left

him unsettled and unfulfilled, his became a quest for deeper meaning which

travelled far beyond the parameters of his former band and indeed music itself.

This elegant, in-depth biography tracks him assiduously through his many

changes and conflicts, from schoolboy guitarist to global superstar, God seeker

to independent film-maker, Formula One enthusiast to UNICEF Fundraiser, and

marks the perennial struggle of a man attempting to walk a spiritual path lined

with temptation.

Drawing on scores of interviews with close friends and collaborators, rigorous

research and critical insight, George Behind The Locked Door is an

intimate character study, illustrating the eternal yin and yang of Harrison’s

nature; the definitive account of a compelling, contradictory life.

Graeme Thomson has written widely on music regularly contributing to The

Guardian, Uncut, the Herald and The Arts Desk and is the author of several

books. His book Under the The Life & Music of Kate Bush was described by

The Irish Times as “the best music biography in perhaps the past decade” and by

Mojo as “superb”.

463 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 2, 2025

Reviews

[Colby · Rating 4 out of 5]

After some searching around the Web I determined this was the book to read about George Harrison's life. I found Mr. Thomson's writing mostly concise, economical but engaging. I have not read any other work by the author so I did some searching to see if he was a music critic, and that is not the primary description of him when you poke around the Internet. That brings me to my only real gripe about this work, and that is the frequent forays into criticism of Harrison's musical body of work. I won't disagree that much of the work Harrison produced in the years between "All Things Must Pass" and "Cloud Nine" is not terribly strong, but to this reader Mr. Thomson's tone when it comes to the subject of music quality is a bit harsh. It spoils the narrative in places where, in my opinion, the writer's job is to get out of the way and let the accounts of others tell the story. All that said, it was refreshing, oddly, to learn that George Harrison certainly wasn't a saint, and in that regard he's not unlike most all of the other rock musicians of, before, and after his generation. As an additional note, I could have done with a bit more narrative about his life from the mid-eighties onwards, but that is a biased comment given my age and initial exposure to the artist. All in all, this is a work that's pretty fair to its subject, with the exception of the intrusive and sometimes unwelcome Christgau-ing.