On Dec. 30, 1999, George Harrison nearly became the second Beatle to be murdered.
The group’s lead guitarist and his wife Olivia had just gone to bed when an intruder broke into the couple’s Friar Park mansion. At first, Olivia thought the sound of breaking glass was a falling chandelier. But when she realized a stranger was in their home, she immediately woke Harrison, who went to investigate as she called the police.
Harrison was following the smell of cigarette smoke when, in the hallway, he saw a man holding a stone sword from a smashed statue in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other.
Harrison attempted to grab the knife during a struggle. Both men fell, and the assailant, on top of him, began stabbing him repeatedly. Harrison later said he thought to himself, “I’m being murdered in my own house.”
The attack is chronicled in a new book by Philip Norman, “George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle,” which places a spotlight on the beloved singer/songwriter’s life and career.
“It was very much another case of Mark David Chapman and John Lennon, which led to John’s assassination in 1980,” the bestselling biographer told Fox News Digital. “It’s fan worship that curdles in hatred because, in some way, the fan thinks the object of his love and attention has betrayed his ideals in some way. … The Beatles were seen as more than just a musical group. They were like a philosophy, a way of life and ethos. When the real Beatles don’t measure up to that, that creates this desire for vengeance.
“George did nearly become the second Beatle to be assassinated by someone who had a grudge against him.”
According to the book, Harrison was stabbed 40 times, with one narrowly missing his heart. He suffered a punctured lung.
It was Olivia who saved her husband. Facing his attacker, she picked up the nearest weapon on hand, a brass poker, and “laid into George’s attacker with it.” When that had no effect, she then “grabbed a standard lamp, inverted it and bludgeoned their assailant with its heavy base.” She sustained a head wound.
Within 12 minutes, officers were at the house. Harrison’s son Dhani also rushed to his father’s side.
“George was lying just inside the half-open bedroom door, bleeding profusely from multiple stab wounds, a mixture of blood and air bubbling from the gashes in his chest, his very lips and teeth bloody,” Norman wrote. “There was blood on the walls and all over the floor, mixed with scarlet fragments from the lamp-base Olivia had used as a club. … With no paramedics there yet, Dhani tried to stanch his wounds with paper tissues and a towel, but it was a hopeless task.”
Harrison, becoming paler, murmured to his son, “I’m going out.” Dhani supported his father’s head and held his hand, urging him to “stay with me.”
According to Norman, Harrison died nearly four times before paramedics arrived. He was “pulled back from the brink by the sound of his son’s voice.”
Harrison survived, but it was “a devastating psychological, as well as physical attack,” Norman shared.
“This attack occurred in his home, one that he loved so much,” said Norman. “It was so different from the tiny house he grew up in Liverpool. The gardens were his pride and joy. He thought he might be remembered as a gardener more than a musician. And he was always so private.”
Harrison’s assailant was Michael Abram,who was a 34-year-old Liverpool resident and paranoid schizophrenic, Six weeks before the attack, he was denied treatment by the psychiatric unit at Whiston Hospital after doctors concluded “he wasn’t suffering from any mental illness.”
