NYLON - June 2008 - (Page 118) MANIFEST DESTINY myspace.com / thenewno2 Here comes the son. Dhani Harrison didn’t set out to be a musician—but his genes had other ideas. By Crystal Meers. Photographed by Nabil “My whole career has been backwards,” says Dhani Harrison, son of a certain famous Beatle. “The first gig I ever played was in front of 50,000 people at the Tokyo Dome with my dad when he was touring with Eric Clapton in 1991. Now I’m playing Hotel Café in front of four people, and that’s the way I like it.” With infectious, boundless energy, Harrison is making every minute count. He’s collaborated with the Wu-Tang Clan (he played guitar on their recent album, 8 Diagrams), produced tracks for up-and-coming artists such as Thoruun from Icelandic band the Fields, consulted for Harmonix on Rock Band 2, and regularly hosts Nice One Radio on Sirius (think Morning Becomes Eclectic meets 2 Many DJs). And then there’s thenewno2, his bluesy rock ’n’ roll project with Oli Hecks, for which he’s just about to independently release a debut album, You Are Here. “Everyone’s been so bummed out on the music industry,” says Harrison, who grew up watching his father, George, deal with the ins and outs of the business. “I’ve had a year or two of entertaining labels and I found that the more people were involved the less got done, so the course of action shifted to finding a new model working with interesting technology music delivery systems.” For an innovative thinker like Harrison, this meant looking for like-minded partners in the video game and entertainment industries, and launching the record entirely online in order to get the music out as far and wide as possible. “People have the bands to do great things. Everything record companies could do for people before, now bands can do them for themselves. People are making albums on their laptops and they are sounding great. You don’t need a release date anymore; you just need really good music and a bunch of nice people to get on the Internet and do stuff.” But this wasn’t always his plan. “I tried really, really hard to not be a musician,” he says, “but I just couldn’t help it. When your family is a bunch of mellow hippies who are very autodidactic, guitar-playing, meditating yogis who are into gardening and do all the things you think are the finer things in life, you tend to feel stupid. They were all so cool—much cooler than everybody else’s parents—so the only thing that I could do that my parents hadn’t done was excel academically.” As a form of rebellion, Harrison hit the books, wound up studying physics and industrial design at Brown, and even did a stint as a designer for a Formula One racing team, before coming back to music. “My dad would say, ‘Don’t take the weekend off, Dhani, take the rest of your life off.’ And I would say, ‘No Dad, I can’t. I have to go to school; I’ve got to work really hard.’ It turned me into an overachiever and it made me all uptight. Now I’m really good at shit but I just can’t chill out.” Case in point: Forget making the most of the hours in a day, Harrison has figured out how to add more to his year. “I worked out that if I spent New Year’s in Australia and then came home and didn’t go back there the rest of the year, I would actually live 16 hours longer than anyone else on earth who didn’t do the same thing and it’s a leap year, so I get an extra day in as well. It’s time travel, man.” : http://myspace.com/thenewno2
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