Robert Barr

“This is a black day, a sad day. He was a very talented lad and he was too young to die,” said Gerry Marsden, leader of the Liverpool band Gerry and the Pacemakers, part of the 1960s rock explosion in the city.

“George was always the quiet Beatle,” Marsden said. “He was always acting as peacemaker between John and Paul.”

Alan Williams, The Beatles’ first manager, said Harrison was an essential part of the band’s chemistry.

“I would say he was the major cog in The Beatles at that time. He kept them together probably because of the calming effect he had,” Williams said.

Harrison commented wryly on The Beatles’ acrimonious breakup in his song, “Sue Me, Sue You Blues” from his post-Beatles solo album, “Living in the Material World.”

But old grudges faded with time, and McCartney and Starr joined in recording “All Those Years Ago,” Harrison’s 1981 tribute to the slain Lennon.

“He was a great guy, full of love for humanity but he didn’t suffer fools gladly. He’s a great man. He’ll be sorely missed by everyone,” said McCartney, 59, who at times appeared emotional as he talked with journalists.

“I remember all the beautiful times we had together and I’d like to remember him like that because I know he would like to be remembered like that,” McCartney said.

He said he had seen Harrison a few weeks before his death.

“When I saw him last time, he was obviously very unwell but he was cracking jokes like he always was and he’ll be sorely missed,” he said.

Some fans and neighbors brought bouquets to the gates of Friar Park, Harrison’s Victorian mansion at Henley-on-Thames, west of London.

Kym Freedman, 17, came with her 16-year-old friend, Natalie West, to leave a bouquet of yellow roses. The card said, “My guitar will gently weep forever. We love you, man.”

“He was a big idol of mine,” Freedman said. “It’s because of his songs. ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ is the best song I ever heard.”

Within the Beatles, Harrison was known as the quiet, mystical one, the author of a few well-crafted songs such as “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” which were overshadowed by the torrent of Lennon-McCartney tunes.

“As he said himself, `How do you compare with the genius of John and Paul?’ But he did very well,” said Sir Bob Geldof, a fellow rock musician, in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Geldof said he regarded Harrison’s ‘All Things Must Pass’ as the best Beatles solo album.

Sir George Martin, producer of The Beatles’ recordings, said Harrison struggled as a songwriter.

“He was the baby of The Beatles, and unlike Paul and John, he had a hard time developing his songwriting talent and making his music alone,” Martin said.

“But he worked hard and with enormous patience, building his music meticulously, and he eventually came to write one of the greatest love songs of all time, ‘Something.”‘

Richard Lester, who directed the Beatle films “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!,” said Harrison took easily to acting.

“He took to his parts with some relish and although we always felt that John Lennon was the flashiest and most interesting actor, George could always be relied on to hit the square in the middle and get the line right,” Lester said.

Harrison organized the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, one of the first rock and roll benefits, and was generous with advice when Geldof was putting together Live Aid, a benefit for African famine in 1985.

“During that, he would fax me and ring me. He kept telling me not to make the mistakes they made with all the lawyers in the Bangladeshi concert,” Geldof said. “So I remember him with a profound sense of gratitude.”

Formula One motor racing driver Eddie Jordan said he would miss Harrison’s “great presence and vibe.” Harrison had a taste for fast cars and professional racing.

Michael Palin of Monty Python’s Flying Circus said Harrison’s spiritual side was balanced by a hardheaded business sense. Harrison stepped in to finance Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” film in 1978, and his Handmade Films company also produced Palin’s “A Private Function.”

“You know, George wasn’t head in the clouds all the time. When it came to business and all that he was feet very much on the ground. So there was a mixture there, and it was a rather pleasant mixture.” Palin said.

Palin said Harrison was more spirited than his nickname, “the quiet Beatle,” indicated.

“He never stopped talking when I was with him,” Palin said. “He wasn’t the silent one that sat in the corner by any means.”

John Chambers of the Liverpool Beatles Appreciation Society described Harrison’s death as “the end of an era” for fans of the band. He said Beatles followers had long hoped that the band might reunite, perhaps with Julian Lennon standing in for his father.

“It really is the end of a dream,” Chambers said. “The only comfort we can take is the legacy of the music, which is as powerful and mysterious today as it ever was.”

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Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC Brokers in London, said Thursday that Britain could come out of the summit more isolated within the EU and less relevant on the world stage.

“The next two days really could be a turning point for Britain’s future membership of the EU,” Wheeldon said. “There may be no way for Britain to go but back.”

All 27 European Union heads of government are at a summit in Brussels designed to save the euro. France and Germany are pressing to rewrite EU treaties so that at least the eurozone — and maybe even the entire EU — has more closely linked fiscal policies.

Britain is a member of the EU but not of the 17-country eurozone; it uses the pound. But Cameron has argued that solving the euro crisis is a national priority for Britain, because of the economic damage failure would bring. Some Conservatives back that stance.

“The disorderly collapse of the euro would do enormous damage to the British economy,” Treasury chief George Osborne warned Thursday.

Some Conservatives, however, believe the urgency represents a rare opportunity to extract concessions from European partners and reclaim powers they believe Britain should never have given up. They are adamant that Britain cede no more powers to EU headquarters and are calling for a referendum on any new deal with the EU.

Lawmaker Bernard Jenkin urged the prime minister on Thursday to grab a “win-win-win” opportunity to call a nationwide vote.

“He’d have the Conservatives behind him, the British people want a referendum, the British people want a different relationship with Europe, and he would have a much stronger hand to negotiate,” Jenkin said.

Others in the party, and in the country as a whole, simply want out of the European Union. They rankle that Britain won World War II but seems to be losing the peace to Germany, the dominant power in the European Union.

Cameron’s less combative approach drew support Thursday from the previous Conservative Party leader, Michael Howard.

“I would like to see a rebalancing of powers between Britain and Brussels, and I hope that at some point we can return to that agenda,” Howard told BBC radio. “What is pressing at the moment is the need to help the eurozone overcome its crisis, because the world economy is in a very fragile state and a disorderly break up of the eurozone could bring about an economic catastrophe on a global scale.”

Cameron told the House of Commons on Wednesday that a referendum would be needed only if a new European Union treaty took more powers away from London, but that would probably not be the case if the outcome is a deal among only the 17 nations that use the euro.

Conservative legislator David Davis disagreed that a potentially divisive referendum could be avoided. A eurozone deal, he argued, would have “huge implications for Britain, whether or not we are actually directly involved.”

It is a ticklish position for the prime minister, leader of a coalition government that includes the Liberal Democrats, whose leaders generally favor closer ties to Europe and don’t rule out eventually adopting the euro.

“The prime minister’s stand on the single currency is in the national interest,” wrote Peter Oborne, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, “but not necessarily his own.”

Cameron said Britain’s financial services sector is “a world-class industry not just for Britain but actually for Europe.”

“But it is absolutely vital that we safeguard it. We do see it under continued regulatory attack from Brussels,” he said. ” I think there is an opportunity, particularly if there is a treaty at 27, to ensure some safeguards, not just for that industry, but actually to give us greater power and control in terms of regulation here.”

Britain’s banks are particularly concerned that some EU countries are advocating a tax on every financial transaction, the so-called “Robin Hood tax.” Cameron’s government has been emphatic in rejecting this concept.

“(This) is in the interest of the entire country and something I will be fighting for on Friday,” he said.

The 27-nation European Union and the 17-nation eurozone have been struggling with how to tame the continent’s sprawling debt crisis and keep the eurozone from breaking up.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have demanded changes to European Union treaties to tighten controls over spending and borrowing for all who use the embattled euro. But Britain has threatened to put the brakes on treaty changes, fearing they would force a greater transfer of power from London to Brussels and curb British influence in the EU.

If an agreement on protecting the euro involves only the 17 countries that use the currency, Cameron suggested there was less leverage for Britain to seek concessions.

Some members of Cameron’s Conservative want a more aggressive negotiating stance.

Conservative legislator John Baron urged Cameron to go for “a fundamental renegotiation of our relationship with the EU based on free trade and competitiveness, which other countries enjoy, and not political union and deadweight regulation?”

“This EU summit is a defining moment, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Will you seize the moment?” Baron asked.

Cameron said even if the EU goes for a 17-nation settlement “we have some leverage” and that “we should make the most of it.”

Another Conservative lawmaker, Andrew Turner, called for treaty changes on immigration, employment and fishing rights.

“Clearly, the more changes eurozone countries want to do in a treaty of 27, the more changes they want to make, the greater the ability we have to ask for sensible things that make sense for Britain,” Cameron said.

Opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband sought to exploit Conservative tensions over Europe by reminding Cameron of recent promises that he would seek to repatriate some powers from Brussels to London. Miliband asked which ones Cameron would be seeking to regain on Friday, but Cameron avoided identifying any particular issues.

“We will have the key aim of helping to resolve the eurozone crisis,” the prime minister said.

He said eurozone countries must be more closely involved, and if that means they change the treaties that govern all 27 EU nations, “we will insist on some safeguards for Britain.”

“Obviously, the more that countries in the eurozone ask for, the more we will ask for in return,” Cameron added. “But we will judge that on the basis of what matters most to Britain.”

Some 300 people are expected to attend the ceremony, including Hughes’ widow Carol and daughter Frieda. Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney will deliver an address.

Hughes died of cancer in 1998, months after publishing “Birthday Letters,” a powerful collection reflecting on his troubled first marriage to the poet Sylvia Plath. Plath killed herself in 1963, after the couple had separated. A letter Hughes wrote to her in 1956 was chosen as one of the readings for the ceremony.

Hughes was born Aug. 17, 1930, in the mill town of Mytholmroyd in Yorkshire, northern England.

“Hawk in the Rain,” his first volume of poetry published in 1957, immediately established him as one of the most interesting of Britain’s young poets. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984.

“Birthday Letters” brought Hughes sympathy and a torrent of praise after long years of keeping silent about his marriage to Plath.

Hughes described the collection as “a gathering of the occasions — written with no plan over about 25 years — in which I tried to open a direct, private, inner contact with my first wife, not thinking to make a poem, thinking mainly to evoke her presence to myself and to feel her there listening.”

Hughes joins 111 writers memorialized in Poets’ Corner in the area where Geoffrey Chaucer was buried in 1400 — not because he wrote “The Canterbury Tales,” but because he was Clerk of the Works at the nearby Palace of Westminster, now almost entirely rebuilt.

A magnificent tomb for Chaucer was installed around 1550, and the poet Edmund Spenser, author of “The Fairie Queene,” was buried nearby in 1599, establishing a tradition.

Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield and Alfred Lord Tennyson are among the writers buried in the Abbey.

Many more are honored with tablets and other memorials, often placed there long after death. Shakespeare was buried in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616, and no memorial was placed in Poets’ Corner until 1740. Lord Byron died in 1824 but, because of his scandalous lifestyle, wasn’t honored until 1969.

“It is our members’ view that it can no longer be business as usual for this remuneration round,” the association’s director general, Otto Thoresen, said in a letter to all U.K.-listed banks. “They expect to see significantly lower bonus pools and individual awards, given the current market circumstances.”

The Center for Economics and Business Research has estimated that bonus payments by financial institutions in London will be down by 38 percent this year to 4.2 billion pounds ($6.6 billion), the lowest since 2003. The Financial Times, however, reported that the proportion of revenue spent on pay and bonuses has risen since last year.

The seven- and eight-figure bonuses pocketed by some bankers are a sensitive political issue, especially since taxpayers rescued Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group during the credit crisis and continue to hold significant stakes in both banks.

Following a report that RBS was setting aside more than half a billion pounds ($785 million) for bonuses, Prime Minister David Cameron said that amount was unacceptable.

“The British government are a seriously large shareholder in RBS, and we will be making our views known,” Cameron said.

The Bank of England warned last week that “the outlook for financial stability has deteriorated materially since June,” and the bank’s governor, Mervyn King, urged banks to hold down bonuses and dividends to beef up their balance sheets to protect from any shocks.

Thoresen said banks should reduce the amount paid to individuals instead of cutting the total payout by laying off employees. He dismissed the banks’ argument that lavish pay is needed to retain key staff.

“Very few banks are recruiting and most are reducing employee numbers. Given this lack of competition for staff, our members believe that the retention risk is now reduced,” he said.