George Harrison who died on November 29th aged 58, was overshadowed by John Lennon and Paul McCartney for much of his career as one of the Fab Four but continued to thrive after the group split up.
But his low profile - both within the band and since - masked his often spectacular input into the success of The Beatles.
The four distinct personalities in the band joined as a singular force in the rebellious 1960s, influencing everything from hairstyles to music. Whether dropping acid, proclaiming All You Need is Love or sending up the squares in the film, A Hard Day's Night, The Beatles inspired millions.
George Harrison's guitar work, modelled on Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins among others, was essential. He was behind enough of the group's most beautiful songs - Something, Here Comes The Sun and While My Guitar Gently Weeps - for him to be considered a musical genius in any lesser group.
George Harrison was born in the Wavetree area of Liverpool on February 25th, 1943. He was one of four children of Harold and Louise Harrison. His mother was a housewife and his father a ship's steward and subsequently a bus driver. An average student, he showed a keen interest in music from an early age, receiving his first guitar - a gift from his mother - when he was 13.
He formed his own group, called The Rebels, but not long afterwards a schoolfriend called Paul McCartney, invited him to join the Quarry Men - the group which evolved into The Beatles.
Manager Brian Epstein heard them playing in a dingy Liverpool club called the Cavern, and the course of popular music was changed forever.
They toured extensively in Europe and the US and on November 7th, 1963, played Dublin's Adelphi cinema where their appearance prompted a small riot on O'Connell St.
While John Lennon and McCartney together wrote most of the band's material in the early days, George Harrison worked alone contributing the occasional track to each album.
But it was not until March 1968 that he was allowed to contribute a track to a single, his typically mystical The Inner Light which was the B-side to Lady Madonna. A year and a half later he was rewarded with a double A-side when Something was released with Come Together.
As the band's career took off and they became a major world force, so his interest in Far Eastern spirituality began, something which would leave its mark across both the band's music and his own solo career.
At first the influence was subtle with Norwegian Wood's sitar lead line and then more blatant on Within You Without You from Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
He went on to indulge his gifts outside the group with solo albums Wonderwall Music and Electronic Music as well as producing Hare Krishna Mantra for the Radha Krishna Temple, a top-20 track released on the Beatles' own Apple label.
At the same time he was also creating some of his most valuable songs for the group, Something, and Here Comes The Sun on Abbey Road.
The youngest member of the band, he had long been frustrated by his position playing second fiddle to the band's main writers. He walked out on occasion but returned again to the fold.
Abbey Road which was released in September 1969 was The Beatles' final album. In April the following year Paul McCartney said the band would not record together again. George Harrison was still only 27.
Within a year of the band's demise, he was back in the charts with My Sweet Lord and staging charity concerts for Bangladesh in New York.
His next album Living In The Material World had a more muted response than the LP, All Things Must Pass, which spawned My Sweet Lord.
This was followed by a poorly received US tour and the album Dark Horse, widely seen as George Harrison's creative nadir.
The bleak record also reflected his misery at the collapse of his first marriage to model Patti Boyd.
She left him for his once good friend, the guitarist Eric Clapton, who had played lead guitar on his Beatles track While My Guitar Gently Weeps and performed at the Bangladesh concerts.
The end of the Harrisons's marriage led to a bitter feud between the two musicians, which only healed in the past few years.
He went on to find happiness again with Olivia Arias whom he met while touring the US in 1974.
Career wrangles dogged George Harrison during the late 1970s. He was sued by one company for delivering an album late and challenged in a New York court over a copyright issue.
The court found he had unconsciously plagiarised The Chiffons' song He's So Fine with his single My Sweet Lord.
He branched out into film finance to team up with his comedy heroes the Monty Python team for their movie Life Of Brian.
His Handmade Films company also made many other movies including Time Bandits, The Long Good Friday and Madonnna's Shanghai Surprise.
But the company which was once hailed as the saviour of the British film industry went on make a series of losses and was eventually sold to a Canadian firm.
In 1998 he successfully sued his former business partner and financial manager Denis O'Brien for damages after a series of errors which had lost the firm money.
On the music front, he was back to the charts in 1981 with his homage to murdered Lennon, All Those Years Ago, which also featured McCartney and Ringo Starr. But the next album Gone Troppo in 1982 again had a luke-warm response and became his last for five years.
Instead he devoted increasing amounts of time to motor racing and gardening, although he did work with Wombles supremo Mike Batt on his musical The Hunting Of The Snark and on a Greenpeace benefit LP. After another solo effort Cloud Nine in 1987, which produced hit singles Got My Mind Set On You and When We Was Fab, he teamed up with rock'n'roll luminaries to form the supergroup Traveling Wilburys.
He featured alongside Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and producer and former ELO star Jeff Lynne in the new band, with each assuming a pseudonym.
He revived his partnership with Sir Paul and Starr in the mid 1990s to oversee the Beatles Anthology series of albums and videos. It also saw them collaborating together musically to put flesh on the bones of two detached vocal tracks laid down by Lennon.
There was talk of his being down to his last few million pounds because of film-making losses but the worldwide success of Anthology would certainly have been an adequate cushion.
In 1997 he underwent an operation for a cancerous lump on his neck and underwent weeks of radiation therapy. Afterwards he said: "I got it purely from smoking." Shortly after Christmas 1999, he was almost fatally wounded when a schizophrenic attacker gained entry to his Oxfordshire home and stabbed him in the chest.
His wife Olivia was credited with saving his life after hitting the attacker with a lamp.
While he was still recovering from the attack, his health problems returned and he had to undergo surgery earlier this year to remove a cancerous lump from one of his lungs.
Following the operation, at the Mayo clinic in the US, he said he had made an excellent recovery and urged his fans not to worry. He even managed to be humorous about his own mortality: he recorded a new song Horse to the Water and credited it to "RIP Ltd. 2001."
He was forced to undergo more treatment in the summer in Switzerland and the US as the cancer continued to return. Last month he went to New York where he underwent an experimental cancer treatment in a "last-ditch" attempt to save his life.
He is survived by his wife Olivia and their son Dhani.
George Harrison: born 1943; died, November 2001