George Harrison was my idol in high school. If you had asked me any of those years who was the greatest, I would have replied, "George Harrison." Dylan was up there too, but I felt more like Harrison -- shy; dark; sarcastic; underappreciated; charitable; religious; and in the shadows, though playing a big part in the music of a big stage.

George Harrison alone turned me on to the East. I still recall the book in the school library about raga music and the sitar in India: I started with the photos of George in distinctly Hindu clothes seated as a student before and below Ravi Shankar, read the interview, then read the rest of the book, and never looked away again from world music and a quest for the spirit that went West to East and then circled the whole Earth.

No matter what music I played on my guitar, no matter how good or bad now in retrospect, no matter how blindingly the fingers of the players to which I listened moved or how tone-deaf their ears, I always knew there was another way that was understated, succinct, and scintillating.

No matter how gone my head at any point, that sound and the man himself kept me around and showed me where the sun was that I would always grow under.