George Harrison was a very music-oriented man. The new iPad app, "George Harrison: The Guitar Collection," which will be released Thursday by Bandwidth Publishing in the Apple App Store, pays tribute to that. In fact, it would have been something as a dedicated musician he would have appreciated.
Overseen by his son Dhani, who acted as the project's creative director, it's a virtual tour of the Beatle's guitar collection. It begins with an enchanting home video of Harrison, visible from the neck down, playing the ukelele and singing a portion of "A Shine On Your Shoes" ("There's a melody in your heart"). After the song finishes, he gleefully comments, "Didn't know I could whistle."
- See photos of "George Harrison: The Guitar Collection" app in the slideshow at left.
- Win a free copy of the "George Harrison: The Guitar Collection" app
Opening the app takes you to a picture of a young George with "Marwa Blues" playing in the background. The main focus is a virtual tour of seven of his guitars -- the 1957 Gretsch GG128 Duo Jet, the 1962 Gibson J-160-E, the 1963 Rickenbacker 360/12, the 1961 Fender "Rocky" Stratocaster, the 1960s Ramirez Classical, the 1968 Fender Rosewood Telecaster and the 1974 Zemaitis Lotus 12-string.
The section on each guitar allows you to rotate the guitar 360 degrees to view it from all sides when you turn the iPad sideways.
Once you get into the app and click on each guitar's section, you can learn its origin and how Harrison came to own it, the history of his use of the instrument with the Beatles, a playlist with excerpts of Beatle records that each was used on and audio clips of George Harrison talking about the guitars. You can also switch to a detailed view of the guitars with a numbered tour of the features of each one.
That's not all. There's a video vault with 20 clips featuring the home movie of George Harrison strumming the ukelele, and interviews and performances with Conan O'Brien (a great musician when he's not making people laugh and who appears unusually serious and justifiably awed), Ben Harper, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Josh Homme of Them Crooked Vultures and the late Gary Moore talking about and demonstrating the guitars. In addition, there's an image gallery with pictures of George Harrison with the guitars.
The app's price is $9.99, but there's a lot of information here for Beatle fans and guitarists who want a deeper appreciation of his brilliant guitar work .
For now it's only available for iPad, but Jim Merlis, who was involved with the app, told us Bandwidth is looking to make it available in more places than just on tablets.
TV alert: Dhani Harrison will be appearing on "Conan" on TBS Thursday night.
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