I may have been serious about the Beatles musically, but I was also a girl, which meant that I was bound to choose a favorite member. As is typical of most people, at first I found Paul the most appealing; he was the cutest and the most camera friendly. But after more research, more listening and watching, I knew George was the one for me.

George Harrison was known as "the quiet Beatle," although his fans prefer to remember him as the Dark Horse, and I suspect he has passed with less fanfare than any of his bandmates have or will. So what does it mean when a Beatles fan chooses George, certainly not the best-looking, the most controversial, the most vocal, the silliest or even, perhaps, the most talented of the group, as her favorite?

Choosing the quiet one speaks volumes.

Being a fan of George means noticing the details instead of the big picture. While Paul was up front with his cuteness, John with his cheekiness and Ringo with his silliness, George blended in a bit more. George fans and George fans alone notice the small things, like how he falls painfully flat on his face in the opening shot of A Hard Day's Night and yet gets up, laughing, and how in the same movie he knocks over an amp while John croons "If I Fell." A George fan notes with pride the progress made from one of his first, least notable songs, 1963's "Don't Bother Me," to the beauty of "Something," released nine years later. A George fan even can tell the slight difference in George's Liverpudlian accent, as he rolls his Rs in a way unlike the other three.

Observing George means noticing personal growth. One could argue that with the popularity of the Beatles, John, Paul and even Ringo grew into rock stars, whereas George grew into a person. The baby of the group, George had the least influence on the other three. As time passed, however, George wrote more songs, voiced more opinions (as is painfully obvious in a sequence in the end-of-the-Beatles-movie Let it Be) and found his own path. As the Beatles began to wane, Paul worked on the monster Apple Corp., John invented something called "Bag-ism" and Ringo starred in a movie called The Magic Christian, but George was the one who set the group upon the path of personal and religious enlightenment and was the only member to stay on that path after it had stopped being en vogue.

Appreciating George means knowing what hard work is all about. John and Paul pumped out No. 1 hits like they had an endless supply in their heads, occasionally throwing Ringo a song or two to work on, like "Yellow Submarine" or "A Little Help from My Friends." George, however, had to find his own way to be appreciated (and was the only player who had to audition to be in the group, playing for John before he was accepted). Even with the success of George's late-Beatles-era songs, Lennon and McCartney still did not give him leeway for his all his efforts, which led in part to the mammoth size of All Things Must Pass.

Arguably the best musician of the Beatles, George worked long and hard to master the guitar. As a child, he took apart his guitars to see what made them work and even attempted, unsuccessfully, to make one on his own. And that wasn't enough for George; he introduced pop music to the sitar, not an easy instrument to master.

Knowing George means appreciating the regular guy. He worked for his role in the Beatles, and he had to work hard in other aspects as well. When in 1968 John and Paul decided that the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a fraud, George continued to put his faith in meditation and in God, even through the personal embarrassment John and Paul's defection caused. After the Beatles broke up, when George's wife, Patti Boyd, left him for his good friend Eric Clapton, it didn't create the kind of media zoo it would today; George even remained friends with Clapton. Last year, George and his wife Olivia had to physically defend themselves against an intruder in their home.

In the book part of the "Beatles Anthology" project, readers finally got to read about the Beatles experience from the members' own words. Paul seems constantly to defend himself, Ringo seems to be glad he was along for the ride and John, admittedly posthumously, still seems to carry a bit of that "bigger than Jesus" mentality. Only George's perspective seems realistic, grateful, modest and even a little embarrassed. "The moral of the story is that if you accept the high points you're going to have to go through the lows," he said of his experience with the group.

Was George the Beatles' dark horse? Perhaps, but only in the popular sense. There is no doubting that he died having developed and blossomed a hobby into a career into a personality: He never needed to be in the spotlight after his time with the Beatles to remind us who he was. Those of us who loved him knew, and those of us who picked George as our favorite had, perhaps, the richest sense of who the Beatles actually were.

E-mail Claire Zulkey at clairezulkey@hotmail.com.