George Harrison’s Only Son Dhani Is 48 Now And Looks Just Like His Dad

“His dad could play 26 instruments. Now he’s developing dad’s estate.” That was the whole clue on our guess-the-parent card back in February, and thousands of you clicked through to find out who it was. The answer is Dhani Harrison, the only child of George Harrison, the quiet Beatle who gave us “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun.” Dhani was born on August 1, 1978, in Windsor, England, which makes him 48 today, and this month carries extra weight for his family because November 29 marks 25 years since George died.

The little boy who grew up at Friar Park, the family’s gothic estate in Henley-on-Thames, has spent his adult life making his own music while quietly looking after his father’s. And there is one thing almost everyone who meets him says sooner or later, which even Paul McCartney couldn’t resist saying out loud.

Could George Harrison Really Play 26 Instruments?

That number gets passed around a lot. Trivia lists from IMDb to Liverpool tourist guides put George’s count at 26, while others say 25, and none of them point back to anything George himself said, so we’d file it under happy legend. What nobody disputes is the range. He was the lead guitarist of the biggest band on earth, and he brought the sitar into pop on “Norwegian Wood,” a song with a surprisingly grown-up backstory of its own. In later years he was rarely without a ukulele.

His son’s very name came out of that musical world. “Dha” and “ni” are notes of the Indian scale, the way Western singers say “do, re, mi,” according to both Wikipedia and Gold Radio. Dhani arrived a month before his parents made it official, too, since George married Olivia Trinidad Arias at the Henley register office on September 2, 1978. They had met in 1974, when she worked at A&M Records and was assigned to his new Dark Horse label.

The funny part is that Dhani had no idea his father was famous. In Martin Scorsese’s 2011 documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World, he remembered coming home from school “after being chased by kids singing ‘Yellow Submarine,'” and not understanding why. “I came home and I freaked out on my dad: ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were in The Beatles?'” he said, as Far Out and People both later recounted. George’s answer was pure George: “Oh, sorry. Probably should have told you that.”

George adored the boy. “He’s lovely,” he told People in 1987. “He’s good fun, good company.” He even wrote a song about him, 1982’s “Unknown Delight.” But the music Dhani would end up making with his father came much later, and under the hardest circumstances a son can face.

How Did Dhani End Up Finishing His Father’s Last Album?

Dhani didn’t set out to follow his dad. He studied industrial design and physics at Brown University in Rhode Island and went to work designing cars at McLaren. “I did everything I could to not be a musician,” he told Billboard, as People reported. “It’s in the DNA, I guess.”

When George fell ill with cancer, Dhani was in the home studio with him, helping on the songs that became Brainwashed. George died on November 29, 2001, at 58, with the album unfinished. Dhani and George’s old friend Jeff Lynne completed it from George’s notes and recordings, and it came out in 2002. One of its tracks, “Marwa Blues,” won the Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance in 2004.

A year to the day after George died, Eric Clapton and Olivia gathered his friends at London’s Royal Albert Hall for the Concert for George. Dhani stood among his father’s oldest friends, Ringo Starr and Tom Petty among them, and played acoustic guitar for most of the night. Near the end, McCartney passed along something Olivia had told him backstage. “Olivia said that with Dhani up on stage, it looks like George stayed young and we all got old,” he told the crowd, according to Gold Radio and Radio London’s account of the show.

Two years later, when George went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist in March 2004, Dhani and Olivia accepted for him. Then Dhani picked up a guitar and played “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” alongside Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood and Prince, whose closing solo is still passed around online today. The question was whether Dhani could ever be anything more than the young man who looked like George.

What Has Dhani Harrison Built On His Own?

He answered it by working, and a lot. In 2006 he formed the band thenewno2, and in 2010 he teamed up with Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur as Fistful of Mercy. He knew exactly how it looked from outside. “You can get a foot in the door by being George Harrison’s son, but you can’t stay there,” he told the Daily Mail.

He also became an in-demand film and television composer, often alongside his collaborator Paul Hicks, with credits including Beautiful Creatures in 2013 and the series Good Girls Revolt. His first solo album, In Parallel, came in 2017, followed by Innerstanding in 2023. In between, he helped make The Beatles: Rock Band, the 2009 video game that sent a whole new generation of kids home singing his father’s songs.

His private life has stayed mostly private, much like his dad’s. In 2012 he married Icelandic model Sólveig “Sóla” Káradóttir in a dress designed by Stella McCartney, with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr among the guests, according to People. The couple separated in 2016 and had no children. He has since been with the singer Mereki Beach.

This year brought something new. In July he and Nigel Godrich, the producer best known for his work with Radiohead, announced a band called Dragonflies, and their debut album came out in September on Dark Horse Records. “Dragonflies are a symbol of spiritual enlightenment,” Dhani told Spin. “When Nigel suggested the name I was like, yeah, sold, done.” That label name, Dark Horse, is where the second half of our February clue comes in.

What Is Dhani Harrison Doing With His Father’s Estate Now?

Dark Horse was the label George founded in 1974, the same one that brought Olivia into his life. In January 2020 Dhani relaunched it with his manager David Zonshine through a partnership with BMG, as Music Week and Wikipedia both report. In 2023 George’s own solo recordings moved under the Dark Horse roof, so the son now looks after the father’s catalog from the label the father built.

He and Olivia, now 78, have been the keepers of George’s legacy together for 25 years. Olivia produced the Concert for George film and Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back, which won her an Emmy. When Jackson asked Dhani for notes on Get Back, he didn’t give any. “I was asked to give notes, and I ended up not giving any because he’s Peter Jackson!” he told Esquire. Jackson repaid the trust in 2023 while making the video for “Now and Then,” the final Beatles song. He described his idea for the ending to Dhani, who was visiting New Zealand. “His eyes immediately filled with tears,” Jackson wrote on the Beatles’ official site, “so that is the way we went.”

The work has brought its own honors. In 2022 Dhani won his first Grammy of his own for helping remaster All Things Must Pass for its 50th anniversary, the triple album George released in 1970, eight years before his son was born.

As for that face, Dhani has heard about it his whole life, and he once explained how it really feels to see his father every time he looks in the mirror. “It’s exactly the best and worst thing about every day,” he told the Daily Mail, “comforting and sad all at the same time.”