George Harrison's Dark Horse Label Rides Again
As Olivia Harrison remembers, her future husband, George, drove himself to work on the first day on his new job. It was October 1974, and George Harrison had flown to Los Angeles to visit the offices of the record label he’d just launched. The only problem was that no one had organized a welcoming party for him, but Olivia — then Olivia Arias, newly hired to work on the project — dashed out to the parking lot to greet him. “I thought somebody should,” she says. “He drove onto the lot by himself in this little car, and I thought, ‘Jeez, this is a big day in his life,’ and I went outside and said, ‘Welcome!’ He said, ‘What’s going on?’ He was very excited, but it was just me.”
In many ways, the story befits Harrison: Among his fellow Beatles, he was always the most low-key and publicity averse — the so-called quiet Beatle who also had a sly sense of humor. But his life after the band’s breakup was far from quiet; the early-to-mid-Seventies were some of the most creative and bustling years of his career. He went solo as soon as the group disbanded in 1970, organized the all-star Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden, and had hit singles of his own. Then, in 1974, he decided to start his own label, Dark Horse Records.
Source: David Browne/rollingstone.com
