On February 25, 1943, George Harrison was born. Known as the "quiet Beatle", George and his bandmates - John Lennon, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr - reinvented music as The Fab Four, and continue to inspire to this day. George was taken from us far too soon on November 29, 2001, aged 58, but left us with unforgettable songs like 'Here Comes The Sun', 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', 'My Sweet Lord', 'Something' and more. On what would have been his 80th birthday let's remember George...

Like the rest of his bandmates, George hailed from working roots class roots in Liverpool and was born to bus conductor Harold and shop assistant Louise, who was a massive music lover and supportive of her talented son from the start. Model Pattie Boyd said in the book ‘Wonderful Tonight’: "All she wanted for her children is that they should be happy, and she recognized that nothing made George quite as happy as making music."

George and his fellow Beatle, Paul McCartney, actually knew each other long before their days in the band. They were the first of the four to meet - on the school bus of all places and would often play guitar together. When they hit the big time as The Beatles, the pair would often share a room on tour and Paul - who was almost a year older - would often refer to George as his "baby brother".

As with every great band, there are often a number of line-up changes. And with The Beatles - who were originally calling themselves the Quarrymen - John Lennon, then 18, protested that 15-year-old George was "too young" to join them. But Paul was so insistent that his schoolfriend had potential, he arranged a second meeting which took place on the top deck of a local bus. George played 'Raunchy' on the guitar and Lennon relented, allowing him to fill in on guitar as needed before bringing him in as a fully-fledged member.

The Beatles were an instant success following the release of their debut single 'Love Me Do' in 1962 and soon they were conquering the globe with their music. But as the rest of the band were revelling in their success, George earned the reputation as the "quiet Beatle"' and would often let John Lennon and Paul McCartney do the talking in interviews. However, his friend Tom Petty later dismissed the notion that George was shy or quiet. Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine for the ‘Remembering George’ special edition, Petty said: "He never shut up. George had a lot to say. Boy, did he have a lot to say. That’s hysterical to me, you know, that he was known as the quiet one. I assume he got that name because the other ones were so much louder."

George met English model Pattie Boyd in 1964 and they quickly fell in love and became inseparable. The pair married in January 1966 with Paul McCartney acting as best man. But their marriage wasn't to last. Pattie grew tired of George's infidelities. Pattie sought revenge by returning to her modeling career – something George had always forbidden – and having her own affair with Ronnie Wood. After their divorce in 1977, George married Olivia Arias the following year and the pair were together until George's 2001 death. Pattie went on to marry George's friend and collaborator Eric Clapton in March 1979, but she split from him in 1987 with the pair divorcing in 1989.

Despite the rocky relationships between Beatles members which resulted in their demise, especially the animosity between George and Paul McCartney, he always remained close to drummer Ringo Starr. Even the revelation of George's affair with Ringo's wife Maureen Starkey in 1973 didn't wreck their friendship. When Ringo found out about the affair, he said: "Better you than someone we don’t know." Shortly after George's death, Ringo, now 81, said: "George was really on my mind then." He admitted that he had remained closest with George out of all his former bandmates, adding: "I miss him in my heart and in music."

Once he had discovered the Hare Krishna movement, George became a plain clothes devotee of the Hare Krishna Movement - a "closet Krishna", as he called himself. Harrison would go on to write the song 'My Sweet Lord' - from his acclaimed 1970 solo LP 'All Things Must Pass' - with the lyrics intended in praise of the Hindu god Krishna. Following the recording of the track, his producer Phil Spector immediately predicted it was "a hit record" and he was proven right. 'My Sweet Lord' spent weeks at number one in both the UK and US, and was the first song by a former Beatle to hit the top spot. He would later explain his devotion to the religion in the introduction for Swami Prabhupada's book ‘Krsna’. He wrote: "From the Hindu point of view each soul is divine. All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call."

On December 13, 1974, George became the first Beatle to meet an American President when he went to the White House to meet Gerald Ford. He got the invitation from Ford’s 22-year-old son, Jack, who had been to see George perform in Salt Lake City on his 'Dark Horse Tour' and offered him the opportunity when he got backstage. George went to the White House with his bandmates, keyboard player Billy Preston, sitarist Ravi Shankar and saxophonist Tommy Scott, as well as his manager Denis O’ Brien, publicity agent Michael Sterling and George’s father, Harry.. Harrison and Ford spoke for almost 20 minutes, and recalling their meeting the guitarist said: "He seemed very relaxed. He was much easier to meet than I would expect. You can imagine the number of things he’s got on his plate. "I didn’t ask him about anything political… I didn’t want to bug him.”

George mortgaged his 120-room Friar Park mansion to finance the 1979 film 'Monty Python's Life of Brian', because he was such a fan of the comedy troupe and was dismayed that EMI had dropped the project. His decision to back the movie himself was described as "the most expensive cinema ticket ever issued” by the musician. From this initial project he and his manager Denis O'Brien founded Handmade Films which was responsible for making classics such as 'Time Bandits', 'The Long Good Friday' and 'Withnail and I. He remained life-long friends with Python member Eric Idle, who described George as “one of the few morally good people that rock ‘n’ roll has produced".

On 30 December 1999, an intruder broke into George's mansion and attacked the star with a kitchen knife. Michael Abram - who was a schizophrenic - stabbed George five times and he suffered a punctured lung. His wife Olivia was able to stop the attack after swiping at the man repeatedly with a fire poker and a lamp. His friend Eric Idle revealed that George still retained his sense of humor, even in the aftermath of the attack. The Monty Python comedian recalled: "When they picked him up, they put him on this stretcher. They’re carrying him downstairs, and there were two people who had just started to work that weekend. “He’s being carried out stabbed with eight stab wounds and he looks over and says, ‘So what do you think of the job so far?'" Shockingly, Abram was found not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity. Abram was sent to a clinic but released in under two years.