How Dhani Harrison and Nigel Godrich turned a hang into a band

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Set us as preferred Four days before they’re set to play the first-ever concert by their new band, Dhani Harrison and Nigel Godrich sit down to enjoy a post-rehearsal libation in the parking lot of a North Hollywood practice space.“Is there an opener?” asks Godrich, who holds a bottle of fancy root beer.Harrison, who’s clutching a Sapporo, grabs his friend’s drink and neatly pops the top off using his own bottle.“I went to Brown,” he says with a little smile.

“That’s what they teach you in the Ivy League.”Harrison, 48, is the son of the late Beatles legend George Harrison; long before college, he got a priceless musical education from his father, whose final solo album — 2002’s Grammy-winning “Brainwashed” — Dhani helped complete after George’s death in 2001.Godrich, 55, made his name working in the studio with Radiohead on game-changing records like “OK Computer” and “Kid A”; he’s also produced for Beck, Paul McCartney and Roger Waters and played with Thom Yorke and Flea in Atoms for Peace.Now the two have teamed up in Dragonflies, a spacey and atmospheric art-rock duo with a self-titled debut album due Friday from Dark Horse Records, the label George Harrison founded in 1974 and Dhani Harrison relaunched in 2020.

This weekend, Harrison and Godrich will celebrate the LP’s release with two shows at Hollywood Forever’s Masonic Lodge, where they’ll be joined by guitarist Nick Valensi (of the Strokes) and drummer Joey Waronker (who’s played with Beck, R.E.M.and Oasis).Asked how exactly the group came together, Godrich and Harrison look at each other across a picnic table and shrug.

“The real reason we did it was as a vehicle to hang out,” Godrich says of the two, who’ve been pals since both were living in Los Angeles in the early 2000s and who both found themselves back ho...