I can't claim direct knowledge of the topics addressed by many reviewers here, but I can say that I have read just about every significant book published about The Beatles in general, and Harrison in particular. I totally understand the issues people express about this film: long without being either balanced or comprehensive; curiously silent on some key events (perhaps Olivia Harrison's wishes are a factor here?); missing some key points of view (though getting Dylan, for example, to talk about anything in a useful way is notoriously difficult). But I feel I must address a couple of points raised.

1. Re: Concert for Bangladesh. The amount raised by the concert itself was about a quarter of a million dollars. Sales of the iterations of the album and the movie raised about 12 million, to be administered by UNICEF. The money DID go to refugee relief, BUT was delayed by 11 years because of the failure of organizers to apply for tax-exempt status. So... bad planning, but not a scam or a failure.

2. Re: Harrison's relative contribution to the Beatles. On the one hand, the evidence is quite clear that Ringo was far more crucial to the Beatles sound in the studio than Harrison - the band simply did not function well with any other drummer (rumors of McCartney sitting in are based on photos, not the meticulous records kept by Abbey Road; when Ringo quit for 6 weeks in 1968, numerous replacements including Ginger Baker were tried, and no one was able to provide the subtle and generous and dare I say feminine approach that the Beatles suddenly discovered was a key ingredient in their process, causing them to beg for his return). Harrison was great at coming up with carefully planned, often double-tracked parts, which added beauty and flavor at a higher level than McCartney or Lennon could offer (the 15 seconds or so of Harrison on Getting Better, e.g., truly makes the recording). But he was an indifferent electric rhythm guitar player in my opinion. His songs were only occasionally as good as L&M's, however there is no denying the fact, attested to by Martin, Parsons, and others, that Harrison got short shrift in studio time to realize his ideas.

It is essential to keep in mind that L&M were given INCREDIBLE amounts of time for the era, virtually unlimited takes after 1965, to get the basic tracks right, and then to try dozens of approaches to the sweetening and vocals. Harrison was never given this opportunity until the last two real albums produced (White Album and Abbey Road),and suddenly his work shows a massive uptick in quality, both of writing and execution (Savoy Truffle, Piggies, Something, Long Long Long, Here Comes the Sun, While My Guitar Gently Weeps - all of these outclass his earlier work by miles). It can't be a coincidence that once the Beatles essentially stopped being a team and became each others' session players, Harrison flourished. Also worth noting that he produced the first truly satisfying album as a solo artist, All Things Must Pass - overly long, but a big hit and a good listen, using in part songs he had been carrying around for a few years.

With regard to the contradictions between his lifestyle and his purported spiritual values - in what way is this unusual or even notable? Seems like standard operating procedure for entertainment celebrities to either need a frame of self-justification, or to have trouble avoiding the temptations of riches, or both.

I obviously appreciate Harrison's work, but I'm not an uncritical fan - his "middle period" of solo work is pretty awful, just a few songs are keepers; and even Cloud Nine is really a few good songs surrounded by oddly paced, indifferently written material. His last album, Brainwashed, is weird but really interesting, and at a higher level lyrically than anything he had done since All Things Must Pass.

He was who he was: not a genius on the level of L&M, but an ingredient in their recorded output that would be sorely missed were we somehow able to remove it. And there is an argument that his presence and his influence enriched the Beatles philosophically, lyrically and musically. They were very competitive: if George was spiritual, well by jove they were going to be spiritual too. A thin veneer of spirituality perhaps, on lives that were primarily about fame and money and art, but again an ingredient that, if not present, would have made the Beatles a very different band.

When all is said and done, the viewer comes away from this documentary knowing more about George Harrison than one did before, but I couldn't help thinking that there was just too much of a stream of consciousness approach to getting it all down on film. I can't tell you how many times the narrative got muddled with clips of Harrison presented in no semblance of chronological order. You would see him alternately with a beard, clean shaven, mustache with no beard, lean in appearance and then heavier with age, all within a short time span as he reflected on his role with The Beatles and discussing other areas of his life.

But even for long time Beatles fans, there are probably enough nuggets of new information to make the nearly four hour effort worth your while. Most of the first disc in the two disc set talks about the Beatles years, but with somewhat of a superficial gloss to a handful of topics that in some cases seemed to apply more to Paul and John. What particularly interested me was how George entered the post-Beatles phase, delving into Indian philosophy and spirituality. I was happy to see the transition to The Traveling Wilburys period. To this day, I think it's some of the finest music one can listen to from an incredibly talented assemblage of performers.

When I think back upon my own life and recall the history of The Beatles as they first emerged on the music scene, I feel kind of bad for those who missed that experience simply by being born too late. It's easy enough for seasoned citizens like myself to pick out contemporaries in the documentary like Donovan, Twiggy, Petula Clark, Billy Preston and Leon Russell, but because their appearances are so fleeting without being identified, they become just nameless faces in the crowd for casual viewers. For some reason it makes me a little sad.

One thing I had long forgotten about was the attack on Harrison's home in England by a deranged 'fan'. Harrison's wife Olivia opines on that event in frightful detail. Other folks who have things to say about Harrison throughout include Paul and Ringo, Eric Clapton, other Harrison family members, and a whole host of performers who shared the stage with the former Beatle. I found it particularly ironic, only due to my timing in watching the film, to hear Tom Petty speak about the phone call he got from George the day after Roy Orbison died. Harrison's only words were "Aren't you glad it's not you?" With Petty's own death a mere month or so ago as I write this, it won't be long in the grand scheme of things for all these musical icons to eventually move on to a better place. Quite sadly, those that have passed on are already terribly missed.

It's a little hard to watch this if you've lived through the period when the Beatles were churning out one astonishingly well-done album after another because, after all, two of the four are dead now, and the remaining two are old. I expect it's difficult for younger fans of pop music to understand what a revolution the Beatles were part of. Only a few years after Lennon's death, I heard a youngster in a shop exclaim, "Oh, look, Paul McCartney was in a band BEFORE "Wings." Directed by Martin Scorsese, it's a four-hour long documentary with nothing more than talking heads (including McCartney and Star) and newsreel footage and video clips of the group itself. It's aimed at adults mainly, so there is no narration telling us in chronological detail of the rise and ultimate disintegration of the bad. Pete Best's name is mention, but only in passing, and only once, so you either know who he was or you skip it. The names of albums hardly crop up.

The central figure, of course, is George Harrison, the third in line, in almost all respects. He was quiet rather than outrageous, and not a goofy clown like Ringo. He was hired because he was a good man on the guitar, the best of the three, and could write songs too. ("Because", for instance.) Someone slipped him LSD as a joke and it appears to have turned Harrison eastward. He became spiritual in the broadest since, learned to play a modest sitar under Pandit Ravi Shankar, and introduced a strain of mysticism into some of the albums ("Within You and Without You").

It's not a gossipy fan-magazine story. You'll never find out here who was responsible for the jaw-dropping combing of the Beatles' long hair from backwards to forward. Instead, you'll get a feel for what it was like to perform for peanuts in the Kaiser Keller in Hamburg on the roughest street in town.

I didn't think I'd be able to watch it because I try not to think about the Beatles too much these days. It reminds me of happier times, when there was splendor in their costumes and fun in their irreverent wisecracks. It's painful to put any effort into researching time lost. But I was caught up in this. The interviewees include just about everyone who has anything of importance to say, and what they say isn't just interesting but deserves to be part of the historical record, the chronicle of a moment in the evolution of vernacular culture that we're going to have to wait a while before we see again.