The story behind “While my guitar gently weeps “

When you usually think about the Beatles you will probably think about yellow submarines, strawberry fields maybe John Lennon maybe Paul McCartney.

But in this e-book we will dive in into the story of George Harrison who was also known as the “quiet Beatle” the younger member of the Beatles.

However  we must not forget that still water run deep.

Harrison’s story

Harrison was born on February 25, 1943, in Liverpool, England. The youngest of Harold and Louise French Harrison’s four children.

Like his future bandmates, Harrison was not born into wealth. Louise was largely a stay-at-home mom (who also taught ballroom dancing), while her husband Harold drove a school bus for the Liverpool Institute, an acclaimed grammar school that Harrison attended and where he first met Paul McCartney.

Meeting the king

Harrison’s earliest musical influences included George Formby, Cab Calloway, Django Reinhardt and Hoagy Carmichael, by the 1950s, Carl Perkins and Lonnie Donegan were significant influences.

In early 1956, he had an epiphany: while riding his bicycle, he heard Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” playing from a nearby house, and the song piqued his interest in rock and roll.

Harrison’s early inspiration

Becoming a beatle… well almost

Impressed with his younger friend’s talents, McCartney, who had recently joined up with another Liverpool teenager, John Lennon, in a skiffle group known as the Quarrymen, invited Harrison to see the band perform.

McCartney had been pushing the 17-year-old Lennon to let the 14-year-old Harrison join the band, but Lennon was reluctant to let the youngster team up with them.

And there starts the journey of the group of Liverpool’s lads to change music, art and inspire millions all around the world…

In 1960, promoter Allan Williams arranged for the band, now calling themselves the Beatles, to play at  clubs in Hamburg, Germany.

And let us say these places weren’t the most appropriate places for soon to be teenage idols and pop stars.

luckily for the Beatles Harrison was deported for being too young to work in nightclubs.

When Brian Epstein became their manager in December 1961, he polished up their image and later secured them a recording contract, The group’s first single, “Love Me Do”, peaked and by early 1963 “Please Please Me“, was released and  Beatlemania had arrived!

When east meets west

let’s jump to 1968 the Beatles have already achieved every milestone that any musician or artist could ever dreamed about.

They already had best selling albums, movies, full theaters and arena in every place they just decide to do a show.

By 1968 they have already changed the way the world understands music and culture.

But something was still missing so they took the next step and went on a journey to practice transcendental meditation in Rishikesh, India.

One of George’s biggest influences was Indian classical music

and it reflects in his use of the sitar on “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”.

This new innovative approach will start a bridge to the eastern and oriental culture, as suited to the Beatles again they made a breakthrough by using instrumentals and music influences from parts of the world that were never heard widely in the west.

Soon other rock groups, including the Rolling Stones, began incorporating the sitar into their work as well.

George’s sitar

Over time, Harrison’s interest in Indian music extended into a yearning to learn more about Eastern spiritual practices. In 1968, he led the Beatles on a journey to northern India to study transcendental meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Their time in India marked one of the band’s most prolific periods, yielding numerous songs, including a majority of those on their next album,  The Beatles commonly known as “the White Album”.

The guitar weeps in the white album

on 22 November 1968 it was released The Beatles, also known as the White Album, is the ninth studio album of the Beatles.

Its plain white sleeve contains no graphics or text other than the band’s name embossed, which was intended as a direct contrast to the vivid cover artwork of the band’s previous LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Most of the songs on the album were written during March and April 1968 at a Transcendental Meditation course in Rishikesh, India. There, the only western instrument available to the band was the acoustic guitar.

The exercise

The Beatles were just back from their India trip where they were studying Transcendental Meditation and soon after Harrison came across the Chinese book “I Ching” or “the Book of Changes” while he was visiting his parents.

To quote Harrison,  “I picked up a book at random, opened it, saw ‘gently weeps’, then laid the book down again and started the song.”

Harrison expertly showed off his growing skillset with one of the band’s most beloved compositions. As well as Harrison channelling the Eastern philosophies he had wrapped himself.

And the experiment in randomness was alive!

Hrrison in India

Beatles and friends

As it well known the Beatles had evolved significantly throughout the years from a teenage pop band to serious and innovative musicians.

“While my guitar gently weeps” is one of those testimonies to that.

And it is impossible to talk about the recording of this song without mentioning a few individuals.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was one of the few Beatles compositions from early 1968 that changed markedly from demo form to the official recording. Harrison’s demos suggest the influence of folk music, yet the Beatles’ version is in the heavy rock style typical of much of the band’s late 1960s work.

The folk music influence was a clear indication to the the Beatle’s and especially Harrison’s influence by Bob Dylan

and the American folk.

Harrison’s and Dylan’s close friendship grew stronger with the years and included rare sessions of Dylan’s songs and even Harrison’s solo Album opening song was actually dedicated to Dylan’s mourning of his fathers death.

This relationship is deeply reflected in the song as a lyrical tradition established by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and

Bo Diddley, whereby emotions and actions are attributed to a musical instrument (Guitars usually do not weep).

Harrison is the sole composer of the song, however, it’s hard not to agree that one man stole the show on the recording, and he wasn’t even a Beatle.

As it was mentioned the folk base was replaced by a heavy rock production and in unprecedented way Eric Clapton Harrison’s close friend joined as lead guitarist.

Clapton’s part in the “White album” and in the song was almost incomprehensible. Maybe a quote by Harrison can explain this extraordinary event:

“He said, ‘Oh, no. I can’t do that. Nobody ever plays on The Beatles’ records.’ I said, ‘Look, it’s my song, and I want you to play on it.’ So Eric came in, and the other guys were as good as gold – because he was there…”

George had been friends with Eric Clapton since The Yardbirds supported The Beatles in 1964.

And this remarkable friendship that includes a love triangle with Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd and what brought the world “Layla”

deserves an e-book of its own.

However Clapton’s appearance was more a sign for what is yet to come then a just friendly invite.

Why does it weep?

Now after understanding the the background lets dive deep into the lyrics.

The song is a lament for how a universal love for humankind is latent in all individuals yet remains unrealised.

During the bridges, Harrison adopts a repetitive rhyming scheme in the style of Bob Dylan to convey how humankind has become distracted from its ability to manifest this love.

He sings of people that have been “inverted” and “perverted” from their natural perspective.

Some experts argue that the lyrics express hope that “unrealized potential” described in the lyrics is to be “fulfilled”, but the continued minor triads “seem to express a strong dismay that love is not to be unfolded”

Harrison’s biographer Joshua Greene says that its message reflects the pessimism encouraged by world events throughout 1968, such as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in the United States, and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The making of

The recording sessions of the “White Album” that included this song, which began in late May 1968 wasn’t that successful as mentioned the band didn’t really cooperate.

After Harrison asked Clapton to join Harrison convinced him, and Clapton’s lead guitar part, played on Harrison’s Gibson Les Paul electric guitar “Lucy” (a recent gift from Clapton), was overdubbed that evening. Recalling the session Clapton says that, while Lennon and McCartney were “fairly non-committal”, he thought the track “sounded fantastic”, adding: “I knew George was happy, because he listened to it over and over in the control room.”

Clapton really wanted to blend in, he requested that Harrison give the lead guitar track a more “Beatley” sound when mixing the song. During final mixing for the White Album, on 14 October, the guitar part was run through an ADT circuit with “vari-speed”, with engineer Chris Thomas manipulating the oscillator to achieve the desired “wobbly” effect.

and that’s how he became a Beatle in disguise.

The guitar track that recorded Eric Clapton on Guitar While My Guitar Gently Weeps isolated track.

The aftermath

The group reeled off no fewer than 28 new takes of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, of which the 25th was deemed the best.

However, Harrison was still far from happy.

The recording sessions were characterized by a lack of cooperation among the four band members.

As I said it was no coincidence that Harrison invited Eric Clapton to join the recordings.

This lack of camaraderie was reflected in the band’s initial apathy towards the composition they just weren’t engaged in a song that Harrison wrote.

As we all know the rest is history and in some way this song remarks the beginning of the end for the band.

The “White Album” version of the song

So was it an optimistic call for free love reflected from the “hippie” experience in India? Or is it a pessimistic protest song influenced by Harrison’s relationship with Bob Dylan?

One thing is sure about this song and about George “still waters run deep”.

The “quiet Beatle” came back from India with ideas while his friends came back with postcards and although he wasn’t recognized as a serious songwriter and composer by the world and his bandmates the Beatles “younger brother” as proved his place in rock music history.

The song featuring amazing video clip by “Cirque du Soleil” group.

Legacy

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” became a constant guest in  US rock radio during the early 1970s, on a par with songs such as “Layla” by Clapton’s short-lived band Derek and the Dominos, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.

Lets talk numbers:

Rolling Stone ranked “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”:

136th on its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

seventh on the “100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time”

10th on its list of “The Beatles 100 Greatest Songs”.

Clapton’s performance was ranked 42nd in Guitar World‘s 2008 list of the “100 Greatest Guitar Solos”.

 Time Out London ranked it as  20th on their list of the best Beatles songs.

Canadian guitarist Jeff Healey covered “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on his 1990 album Hell to Pay. Harrison participated in the recording, contributing on acoustic guitar and backing vocals.

In 2004, when Harrison was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was played in tribute by a large band that included Tom Petty, Lynne, Steve Winwood, Mann, Dhani Harrison and Steve Ferrone. The performance concluded with a highly acclaimed extended guitar solo by Prince, who was also being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Santana did a cover for his twentieth album Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time, in 2010, featuring singer India Arie and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

And the song’s effect is beyond covers it has influenced British and world wide muisicians for generations.

for example Oasis fans with some good hearing will have noticed that the bridge of the band’s 1995 hit “She’s Electric” is a near carbon-copy of the refrain from “While My Guitar”.

Recommended to watch until the end (its a shame lose prince’s guitar solo)

References and extra reading

lyrics and Hebrew meaning  https://www.songaah.com/he/lyrics/while-my-guitar-gently-weeps-1.html

retrospective of the recordings from a sound engineer

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/beatles-while-my-guitar-gently-weeps

info about the song and the story:

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories

https://en.wikipedia.org/