Dhani Harrison

Dhani Harrison [d̪ʱ əni] (born 1 August 1978) is a British multi-instrumentalist musician, composer and singer-songwriter who is the only child of George and Olivia Harrison. Harrison debuted as a professional musician assisting in recording his father's final album, Brainwashed, and completing it with the assistance of Jeff Lynne after his father's death in November 2001.^[1] Harrison went on to win Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the track, "Marwa Blues", at the 2004 Grammy Awards. Harrison formed his own band, thenewno2, in 2002 and has performed at some of the world’s most prestigious festivals including Coachella where Spin Magazine dubbed their performance as one of the "best debut performance of the festival." The band also played Lollapalooza three times with Harrison joining the festival’s founder Perry Farrell on a cover of Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” at 2010’s event.^[2] In 2017 Harrison announced he would be playing his first-ever solo shows at the Panorama Festival in NYC.^[3]

In 2013 Harrison was the face of GAP’s fall global campaign, entitled “Back To Blue.”^[4] In the same year Harrison launched his career as a composer, contributing to the score of the Warner Bros. movie Beautiful Creatures. Harrison has gone on to score the music for the TV show Good Girls Revolt, AMC’s The Divide, Seattle Road,^[5] Learning to Drive,^[6] and, most recently, for the Paul Giamatti-produced show Outsiders.^[7]

Harrison’s music collaborations span a diverse range of genres that have seen him tour with Eric Clapton, appear on the Wu-Tang Clan track “The Heart Gently Weeps”, a reworking of The Beatles song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, and joining Pearl Jam live on stage several times over the years.^[8] One of Harrison’s notable collaborations was in 2004 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he appeared alongside Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Prince on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”,^[9] which was performed to mark the posthumous induction of his father.

Harrison’s dedication to his late father’s musical legacy resulted in a week long run of shows on Conan dedicated to George Harrison,^[10] which culminated in a sold out George Fest event at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, which was later released as an album and documentary.

Harrison is named after the 6th and 7th notes of the Indian music scale, dha and ni. Dhani is also a raga in north Indian classical music. His first name is usually pronounced in English as "Danny."

Early life

Harrison grew up with his parents in Henley-on-Thames, in Friar Park, the estate on which his father had lived since 1970. His mother, Olivia Harrison, is of Mexican descent. One of Harrison's earliest memories, from the age of six, is receiving a drumming lesson from his father's friend and bandmate, "Uncle" Ringo Starr. He recalled that before the lesson, he had been an avid drummer. However, when Starr began to play, the loud noise frightened him so much that he ran out of the room screaming and never used his drum kit again.^[11]

Harrison attended Dolphin School near Twyford, a Montessori method school, followed by Badgemore Primary School, Henley-On-Thames. He later attended Shiplake College, also near Henley, where he enrolled in the Combined Cadet Force,^[12] and showed a keen interest in rowing which continued into his later years.^[13]

Harrison is an alumnus of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States, where he studied industrial design and physics, obtaining a bachelor's degree.^[14] Harrison pursued a career as a car designer at McLaren Automotive^[15] before deciding to follow in his father's footsteps as a professional musician.^[16]

Musical career

After his father's death in 2001, Harrison, in collaboration with Jeff Lynne, completed his father's final album, Brainwashed, which was released in 2002^[17] and went on to win a Grammy at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards in 2004. Harrison participated in the Concert for George on the first anniversary of his father's death. The concert was organized by Eric Clapton and featured some of his father's friends and collaborators, including former Beatles bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr as well as Clapton, Billy Preston, Ravi Shankar, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Jim Keltner, and Joe Brown. Harrison played backup acoustic guitar for most of the concert. Before the finale, McCartney relayed to the audience, "Olivia said that with Dhani up on stage, it looks like George stayed young and we all got old", referencing the physical similarities between father and son.^[18]

In 2004 Harrison appeared onstage with Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne, Prince and others for a performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" during his father's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In March 2006, Harrison made a guest appearance on Liam Lynch's Podcast Video Variety Show, Lynchland.^[19] They performed a duet that will appear on a Lynch album. He collaborated with Jakob Dylan on the John Lennon song "Gimme Some Truth" for the Lennon tribute album Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur, which was released on 12 June 2007.^[20] Dhani is credited on two unreleased Traveling Wilburys tracks under the pseudonym Ayrton Wilbury, a tribute to Ayrton Senna.^[21]

In April 2006, it was announced that Harrison's band, thenewno2, had begun recording. The band released a music video, "Choose What You're Watching", on its website. thenewno2 features Harrison on lead guitar, synthesiser and vocals and Oli Hecks on drums and synths. He was involved in a re-working of the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" entitled "The Heart Gently Weeps", which was the first single on the Wu-Tang Clan's album, 8 Diagrams, released in December 2007.

Thenewno2's debut album, You Are Here, was released online on 11 August 2008 and in stores on 31 March 2009.^[22] The song "Yomp" was featured as a downloadable song for the Rock Band series, and "Crazy Tuesday" was featured as one of the 20 free songs that were downloadable with the purchase of Rock Band 2.

In August 2010, Dhani Harrison, Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur joined together to form Fistful of Mercy.^[23]

In 2014 Harrison participated in The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to The Beatles.

Harrison produced "George Fest," a live album and concert DVD package documenting The George Fest tribute concert in honor of his father. The tribute was held at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on 28 September 2014. The album and documentary were released on 26 February 2016.^[24]

Film composing

In between working on albums, Harrison along with Paul Hicks (musician) began their film composing partnership scoring the 2013 film Beautiful Creatures.^[25] In 2014, they scored the film Learning to Drive^[26] and the television series The Divide.^[27] In 2016, they composed music for the Amazon Video television series Good Girls Revolt ^[28] and continue scoring the WGN TV series Outsiders (TV series).^[29]

Personal life

Harrison and his wife Solveig 'Sola' Karadottir announced their separation on November 18, 2016, citing irreconcilable differences.^[30]

Video games

Harrison collaborated in the development of The Beatles: Rock Band, a music video game released on 9 September 2009 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii gaming platforms. He was instrumental in the creation of the game and urged McCartney and Starr to participate. When asked about the game production Dhani stated, "I took the project to Apple and sort of convinced everybody to have a presentation. My job description is... being enthusiastic. We've been working on it for the past two years. This is the first one that is going to be totally, historically accurate. It's been a real headache, but it's been the most enjoyable work I've done in my life."^[31]

To promote the game's release, he appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien on 8 September 2009 and at the end of the show they played "Birthday" with Dhani on drums, Conan O'Brien on bass, and Aaron Bleyaert and Mark Pender on guitar.

Harrison told the Chicago Tribune in an interview that he is "working on Rock Band 3 and making the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game".^[32]

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Dhani Harrison

• Thenewno2 Official Band Site
• Dhani Harrison on IMDb
• HOT Records