George also encouraged Dhani to join the local Scout Group, which was something that George had done when he was a small boy in Liverpool.
Also, like his father, Dhani has developed a keen interest in music.
He remembers fondly how as a child he used to clatter around on a mini pearl drum kit. Dhani also remembers how Ringo Starr offered to show him how to play something one day on this drum kit and how Ringo made such a clatter that Dhani ended up running off screaming from the room! Dhani did not bother much with the drum kit after this and cannot remember what happened to it.
It was at the tender age of five that Dhani began having proper piano lessons. Dhani has admitted that at that time he struggled to read music and that he played by ear, and that music teachers don't really like that, because they want you to read the notes. Dhani remembers having an altercation with his teacher where he decided that he was never going to play the piano again because his teacher was mean.
It wasn't until Dhani was nine-years-old that he suddenly decided that being as there were so many guitars around the house, that he ought to be learning how to play one. Natuarally his dad showed him all the chords, not showing him how to play any songs but showing him how to play all the chords that Dhani could cram into his head. When Dhani had learned all those his dad made him practice between them which he admits to finding easy. Dhani has also stated that his dad was adamant that he should learn the correct way to play the Twelve Bar Blues!
Dhani has revealed that his dad did not show him his slide technique. He admits that he must have watched his dad play slide a million times and yet still he could not tell you how he got those sounds!
Nowdays, Dhani is fairly deft at playing a wide variey of musical instruments. Drums, Piano, Wurlitzer Organ, Synthesizer, Acoustic and Electric Guitar and Ukelele, amongst others.
Another major interest of Dhani's is Formula One Motor Racing. He often accompanied his father to various Grand Prix's around the world. He names his all time favourite Formula One Driver as three times World Champion Ayrton Senna whom he actually had the pleasure of meeting twice before Senna's untimely death in 1994.
As well as attending Formula One Races, Dhani has also been known to pay visits to Motor Cycle Grand Prix events and Festivals of Speed.
Motor Cycles and Cars have always fascinated Dhani and so it goes without saying that he was very keen to learn how to drive. Needless to say, as soon as English law allowed and at the age of 17, Dhani took his driving test and passed.
Eager to prove himself as his own person Dhani, as a day pupil, continued to study hard at Shiplake college and achieved good grades. He competed at various sports and was in the teams and the art department.
Dhani later moved on to Brown University in Rhode Island, America, where he read Industrial Design and Physics. Determined at that time not to become a musician
like his father, Dhani decided that he wanted to be an aerodynamicist.
Whilst staying back home at Friar Park in England during the Christmas and New year holidays in 1999; a paranoid schizophrenic broke into the Harrison's home and brutally attacked Dhani's parents. George was stabbed numerous times and Dhani has since confessed that at that point in time he thought that his father was going to die.
Incredibly, George survived the attack but the family were clearly shaken. Dhani then decided to take a year out from Brown University so as to be in England to support his parents during the trial.
After graduating at University, Dhani applied for, and got what he thought was his dream job which was working for the car manufacturer McLaren on the F1 and SLR. However, it didn't last long as despite designing his whole education around the hopes of landing that job, he decided that it wasn't as much fun as he thought it would be. Dhani soon tired of commuting an hour and a half to work and sitting beneath an air conditioning duct!
When the Harrison family bought another property and moved to Switzerland in 2001 because of George's serious illness, Dhani made use of the mini recording studio that had been installed there and began to record some of his own music.
