Happy Birthday George Harrison: Ranking His Solo Albums

George Harrison was born on Feb. 25, 1943 and would be 72 today, were he still alive. He died on Nov. 29, 2001 at age 58 from lung cancer.

While Harrison is still best known for his work with The Beatles, he did have a long solo career, beginning in 1968, before the group broke up. His first album was a soundtrack to a 1968 psychedelic movie called Wonderwall. He followed that up in 1969 with Electronic Sound, a self-indulgent, boring avant garde album that amounts to 43 minutes of moog synthesizer experiments.

In total, Harrison recorded 12 solo albums, one of which was released posthumously. Since his death, his widow, Olivia Harrison, and his son, Dhani Harrison, have done a remarkable job of protecting his legacy by refusing to flood the market with collections of outtakes. The only outtakes collection released so far is Early Takes: Volume 1, which came out in conjunction with Martin Scorsese’s Living in the Material World documentary.

Since today does mark his birthday, I’m ranking his pop solo albums (not counting Wonderwall and Electronic Sound). I’ve also done Top 10 Songs in the past.

Let’s get started: