The loneliness that many experience during the corona crisis is a feeling that was often shared by Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar.
"I have received so much love, but my loneliness has not disappeared," said the musician in 1977. "Somehow I got it by inheritance, and I'm carrying it all the time in my life."
Perhaps Shankar's lonesome spirit explains, 100 years after his birth, why his music has a special relevance in this time of enforced social isolation.
Child prodigy
Ravi Shankar's meditative sitar sounds might invite you to slow down, yet the man born in Varnasi in North India on April 7, 1920 during British colonial rule lived an often fast-paced life.
As a musician, Shankar toured the world, and his art crossed the boundaries between Indian and European classical music.
His life onstage began at an early age — but as a dancer. He travelled to France at age ten with his older brother's dance group, the Compagnie de Dans et Musique Hindou. Two years later the ensemble toured Europe and North America.
For the youngest of the seven Shankar brothers, this was the perfect opportunity to not only gain dance experience, but to learn different Indian instruments and explore Western culture.
Inspiration for the Beatles
At 18, Shankar decided to devote himself entirely to the sitar. Turning away from dancing, he studied the plucked instrument with up to 20 strings for several years in the city of Maihar in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. His teacher was Allauddhin Khan, the father of renowned composer and sarold player Ali Akbar Khan.
Shankar released his first LP Three Ragas in London in 1956. He also wrote concertos for sitar and orchestra and was soon traveling the world with his music.
The Indian musician was not afraid of Western pop music either. In 1966 Shankar taught the lead guitarist of the Beatles, George Harrison , to play the sitar during a stay in India. Harrison later used the instrument, in addition to Indian tabla drums, on songs like "Norwegian Wood" and "Within You Without You."
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
The third Beatle
After gaining world fame with the Beatles, George Harrison went on to enjoy success as a solo artist. On the list of the "100 best guitarists of all time" by the music magazine "Rolling Stone" Harrison takes 11th place. Throughout his life, he was on a spiritual quest - one which had a decisive influence on his music.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
A pilgrimage site for tourists
George Harrison was born on February 25, 1943, in this house in Wavertree, a suburb of the northern English port city of Liverpool. Today a normal family lives here, but tourists like to come by to take photos. Little George went to the same primary school as the three-year-old John Lennon. He later met Paul McCartney on the school bus.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
A musical boy from Liverpool
A friend of his father taught George the basics of playing guitar. He got his own first instrument at 13; today, it hangs as a souvenir behind glass. Coming of age in the heyday of rock'n'roll, like many boys, George dreamed of a career as a rock musician. In 1958, his friend Paul McCartney brought him into the band The Quarrymen, which had been founded by John Lennon two years earlier.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
A Beatles career
In 1960, The Quarrymen became The Beatles, though with a slightly different cast. That was the start of an incredible world career. George Harrison (photo, top right) played lead guitar. The fact that John Lennon and Paul McCartney called the shots always rankled. Harrison conceded that the two were a great duo - but they had egos to match, and there simply was no room for anyone else.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
Beatlemania in Germany
No matter where they showed up, the Fab Four from Liverpool unleashed a frenzy. Young girls fainted left and right, for instance during a 1966 Germany tour organized by the German teen magazine "Bravo". It was the only time the Beatles ever toured Germany.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
The songwriter
George Harrison wrote quite a few songs, but for the most part, he couldn't get his material past Lennon and McCartney. Classic Beatles songs including "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" ("White Album", 1968), "Something" and "Here Comes The Sun" ("Abbey Road," 1969) were the exception.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
Indian influence
For the first time in 1965, while shooting the movie "Help," Harrison held an instrument in his hands that was widely unknown in Europe: a sitar. Fascinated, he took lessons with Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar (photo). He played the instrument in the song "Norwegian Wood," - and started a trend. In "Paint It Black," The Rolling Stones, too, played a sitar.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
Spiritual quest
Harrison increasingly showed an interest in Indian culture. In 1966, The Beatles traveled to India to study meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. While the other members of the band quickly lost interest, Harrison took it a step further and converted to Hinduism. He was a member of the Hare Krishna movement for the rest of his life.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
Just married
On January 21, 1966, Harrison married Pattie Boyd, a photo model he met while shooting "Yeah Yeah Yeah." The above photo shows the young couple on Barbados. Back then, no one would have guessed that only six years later, Pattie would run away with George's best friend, Eric Clapton.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
The beginning of the end
Unhappy with his role in the band, Harrison recorded a solo album in 1968: "Wonderwall Music." The Beatles split up two years later, and Harrison released "All Things Must Pass," a song that rose to the top of the charts in England and the US. He must have had 80 songs tucked away in a drawer that he never got to record with the Beatles, record producer Phil Spector said.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
Concert for Bangladesh
Many of Harrison's songs are about spirituality and the transience of life. In 1971, he organized a concert for Bangladesh to raise money for the victims of a devastating flood. It was a groundbreaking charity concert, featuring the likes of Bob Dylan (photo, right), Ringo Starr, Ravi Shankar and Eric Clapton.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
Life at Friar Park
Friar Park, a mansion in Oxfordshire, was home for George Harrison, his second wife, Olivia, and their son, Dhani. In December 1999, a demented man entered the premises and attacked the musician with a knife. Harrison survived, severly injured.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
At auction
He had a few hits in the 80s and 90s, but then, Harrison's life took a different turn. Records, films, TV performances — he lost interest and decided to let it all go, he said, adding these things are only meaningful to people who don't know where they are headed. Pictured above are letters and tapes that were auctioned in 2017.
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A Beatle at 75: George Harrison
Posthumous honor
George Harrison died on November 29, 2001 of lung cancer. He was 58 years old. Eight years after his death, Hollywood gave him a star on the Walk of Fame. His former Beatles band colleague, Paul McCartney, his wife Olivia and son Dhani turned out for the ceremony.
Author: Suzanne Cords (ct/db)
A close friendship developed between the two musicians.
Flower power icon
With Shankar's success, the Indian influence on Western pop music and jazz grew as hybrid genres like raga rock developed — indeed, legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane named his son Ravi after the sitar maestro in 1965.
In August 1969, Shankar played alongside rock and blues superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin at the legendary Woodstock Festival — and was henceforth a darling of the hippie generation.
Shankar also teamed up with George Harrison in 1971 to organize a charity concert. Held in New York's Madison Square Garden, the "Concert for Bangladesh" raised money for refugees displaced by the war between Pakistan and Bangladesh. The recording of the event won the 1972 Grammy for Album of the Year.
Shankar continued to expand his musical horizons and collaborations, working with American avant-garde composer John Cage, the French flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, and the celebrated violinist Yehudi Menuhin .
Ravi Shankar and George Harrison announce their joint benefit concert at a press conference in New York
Famous daughters
Shankar's complicated private life was a source of much speculation. In 1941 he married the daughter of his sitar teacher Allauddin Khan, Annapurna Kahn, who was only 14 when their son Shubhendra — who would also play sitar — was born a year later.
The couple divorced in 1962 and several affairs followed. One of them was with Sarah Jones, a New York concert producer who gave birth to Shankar's first daughter, Norah Jones — who went on to have a Grammy-award winning career as a jazz pianist and singer-songwriter.
When Shankar married Sukanya Rajan in 1989, the couple already had an eight-year-old daughter, Anoushka. His second daughter learned to play the sitar from her guru father, whom she often accompanied on tour. Her father's best friend, George Harrison, was also a big influence in her musicality, and in 2003 Anoushka was nominated for a Grammy with her album Live at Carnegie Hall.
Ravi Shankar's daughter Anoushka made her concert debut in New Delhi at age 13
Music godfather
As a globetrotting celebrity, Shankar may have often felt lonely. But with his music he connected people of different cultures across the planet.
The Indian musician won four Grammys, and George Harrison once called him the "godfather of world music."
A committed vegetarian, Ravi Shankar lived out his final years with his wife Sukanya in Southern California. He died in San Diego on December 11, 2012 at the age of 92, but his musical legacy lives on.