George Harrison, the so-called “quiet Beatle,” had plenty to say following the demise of the popular English combo, and he said it through a series of genre-hopping solo albums and an idiosyncratic 1980 memoir. In February, to commemorate what would have been the guitarist’s 74th birthday, both the albums and the book are being given deluxe reissues. February 25 sees the release of George Harrison—The Vinyl Collection, a sweeping box set containing 12 of Harrison’s studio albums, plus 1992’s Live In Japan, the last LP the musician issued during his lifetime. The collection begins with Wonderwall Music and Electronic Sound, two experimental albums Harrison made during the waning days of The Beatles in the late 1960s, and continues through 2002’s posthumous Brainwashed. Arguably the centerpiece is 1970’s All Things Must Past, the landmark, Phil Spector-produced triple album that marked Harrison’s arrival as a solo artist. The vinyl reissues will also be available separately, though All Things will be a limited edition.
The lavish collection also includes picture discs for two of Harrison’s nostalgia-fueled hit singles from 1987: “Got My Mind Set On You” and ”When We Were Fab,” the latter being his typically sardonic look back at his Beatle days. (“Back when income tax was all we had.”)
Meanwhile, an “extended edition” Harrison’s autobiographical 1980 book I, Me, Mine is being published on February 21. This version will contain “59 additional handwritten lyrics and unpublished photographs not found in the original printing.” The book, first published as a hand-bound limited edition, was mainly famous for what it did not contain. The book came out not long before the death of John Lennon, and apparently Harrison and Lennon had not made peace with one another by then. So the book contained very few references to Lennon or his influence on Harrison.