I was traveling when this originally aired so I only caught the second part.  Now that it’s on DVD and Netflix, I was able to watch both parts uninterrupted.

Not a whole lot of new ground is broken in this Scorsese documentary about ‘the quiet, spiritual Beatle’, but what you learn (or relearn from a different point of view) is still fascinating.  George was a friend of Paul and he auditioned for John on top of a bus – that’s part of the Beatle mythology.  John (according to Yoko) instantly recognizing the beauty of ‘Something’ and declaring that an ‘A’ single, or hearing Paul essentially give credit for ‘And I Love Her’ to George for coming up with that song’s great riff, those are the kind of things we watch documentaries to learn.  

I knew that George was friendly with Monty Python because of his appearance in the Rutles film, but hearing Eric Idle declare that George basically saved/financed ‘The Life of Brian’ in his post Beatles life was equally interesting.  As the title of the doc implies, the spiritual aspect of George Harrison is covered in great detail here.  You don’t want to give one person, no matter how famous they are, sole credit for introducing Eastern mysticism to the 60s generation, but having said that, the film makes its case for how influential it was both to the Woodstock generation and in many of George’s greatest songs. (Along those lines, kudos to Scorsese for throwing in a little of both the acoustic and studio versions of ‘Something’ in the doc; I’ll sleep with a smile on my face tonight.)

So final verdict, cool doc but one that’s probably best meant for the hardcore George fans or Beatles enthusiasts.

And on that note, I’ll be back next week…