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George Harrison‘s older sister Louise Harrison has died at the age of 91.
Harrison died at a Florida nursing home Monday where she was receiving hospice care, friends have since revealed on Facebook, as tributes pour in for the Beatles icon who personally hand-picked members of the tribute band Liverpool Legends.
Louise was known for helping the Beatles break into the American music scene and helping her younger brother with his newfound fame.
But she has said she was cut off from her brother’s $2,000-a-month pension in his will by her sister-in-law and nephew, and has claimed she was never told about her brother’s terminal cancer.
Harrison was predeceased by George and her son Gordon.
Louise Harrison, George Harrison’s older sister, died at a Florida nursing home on Monday at the age of 91
Harrison is pictured here with her more famous younger brother in the United States in 1964
Musician Marty Scott first announced the tragic news on Facebook early Tuesday morning, writing: ‘It’s really hard for me to get words out at the moment, but Lou meant the world to me.
‘Since the day I met her, my life was changed forever.’
He said they first met ‘just a few weeks after George passed, and it started a whirlwind of change in my entire world.
‘She’s been my family now for over 20 years,’ Scott, of the Liverpool Legends tribute band wrote. ‘It’s hard for me to explain our relationship, but at times she was truly my sister, sometimes my grandmother, sometimes my child and sometimes my best friend. We spent so much time together, and traveled so many places.
‘She was a huge part of my life and did so many things for me and Liverpool Legends,’ he continued. ‘She opened so many darn doors for us and never took no for an answer. She was a pistol.
‘She literally packed up and moved to Branson, Missouri for me. There are so many great memories and they will always keep me smiling every time I think of her.’
Scott added that ‘Louise had the biggest heart.’
‘She’d give the shirt off her back if you needed one,’ he said. ‘She made so many people happy in her very unique life. Her story really deserves to be told one day.’
At that point, Scott revealed he had seen Harrison just a ‘few weeks ago, and when we said goodbye, I really felt she was saying goodbye for the last time.
‘Lou was completely ready to be off this planet and onto a better place. She passed yesterday painlessly and peacefully.
‘I love you Louise. All of us love you,’ he concluded. ‘Rest in Peace and your memory will live on with all of us.’
Louise is pictured here in 2015 at a ceremony in which a memorial tree was planted for her late brother near the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles
A collection from Louise obtained by DailyMail.com showed George kissing her
Louise is pictured holding up a mirror for George as he straightens out his hair between sets of a movie
Another longtime friend, Charlie T. Walsh wrote on Tuesday: ‘My heart is so deeply hurting this morning.
‘I had the distinct privilege and honor to have had Louise as my dear friend since the 1980s. She was an incredibly loving person who always put others first.
‘I had so many heart-to-heart talks with her. II helped her all I could throughout those many years,’ he said.
‘Her friendship became perhaps the dearest and closest friend I ever had. We had a true spiritual connection.’
Walsh then went on to reveal: ‘She once asked me to keep the vultures away from her, those that tried to take advantage of her loving spirit. I tried.
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‘I know she is with George and her son Gordon,’ Walsh wrote. ‘Rest in Peace my sweet Louise.’
Charlie T Walsh posted a tribute to Louise Harrison on Facebook following her passing
Louise spent most of her life in the midwestern United States, moving to Illinois with her first husband, Scottish mining engineer Gordon Caldwell back in the 1950s. Together, they would have two children.
She would later move to California and then Missouri.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, George met a young man named Paul McCartney and together they joined a band called The Quarrymen — which would later evolve to become the Beatles.
Louise published an autobiography about working with The Beatles in 2014
As her brother’s band first started making waves in the UK, Harrison helped promote the Beatles in the United States in the early 1960s, writing to various radio and television stations in an effort to help the band break into the American music scene.
Her efforts eventually got the band’s song, From Me to You, playing on a radio station in Illinois in 1963 one of the first known instances of the band hitting US airwaves, DailyMail.com has previously revealed.
Months later, when The Beatles would change music history forever by appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show, Louise said she traveled to New York to see her brother, and meet John Paul and Ringo, and even George’s then-girlfriend Patti Boyd — for whom he would later write the ballad Something.
The siblings remained very close through the 1960s and 1970s.
Starting in the 1980s, her brother started paying he a $2,000-a-month allowance for tax reasons.
‘It was my pension from him,’ she explained to DailyMail.com in 2013. ‘It was his intention make it last my lifetime.
‘He said “Given my financial situation, there is no reason on Earth why my sister should ever be in need,’ Louise said.
Louise remained close with her brother as he became famous in the 1960s and 1970s
She said she traveled to meet her brother, left, and his bandmates when they performed on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964
But by the mid-1990s, their relationship started to sour, when George reportedly distanced himself from his sister because he disapproved of the conversion of her old Illinois home into a Beatles bed-and-breakfast called A Hard Days Night.
Louise said she did not own the establishment, but used her name to promote it because the town had fallen on hard times.
They finally reconnected when George lay dying of lung cancer at a Staten Island hospital in 2001, and his wife, Olivia, her sister, Linda, and nephew Dhani left them for an hour and a half to reconcile before it was too late.
‘George was pretty frail, yet he was also so vibrant,’ Louise recalled in a 2002 interview. ‘His eyes were still bright. He was still George.
‘He must’ve been in pain but he didn’t show it,’ she said. ‘We reminisced about our childhood and his sense of humor was the same as ever.
‘People always teased him about his stick-out-ears; now his oxygen tubes were hanging over them. He laughed and said, “My ears finally came in useful for something.”‘
As their time together came to an end, Louise said her brother apologized, saying ‘”You know, I could have been a lot more to help you; I’m sorry.’
But just one year after George died of cancer, she said she was cut off by his widow, Olivia, and son, Dhani. George was reportedly worth $300million at the time.
From there she supported herself managing the Liverpool Legends, in which she relived the Fab Four’s glory days and told stories about her brother, and of course, John, Paul and Ringo.
In 2014 she also published an autobiography entitled My Kid Brother’s Band aka The Beatles.
