50+ videos Play all Mix - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction: While My Guitar Gently Weeps Performance YouTube Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne and others - 'While My Guitar Gently.
Of all the songs on, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ underwent some of the most radical changes over the course of recording. Left unheard until its 1996 release on Anthology 3, the song began life in tender form, singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment, backed only by on harmonium. A touching version of the song, it was nonetheless not what George was after, and would be drastically remade – not once, but twice – before he was satisfied. The lyrics would also go through a number of changes before the final version, with entire verses being lost along the way.
“Everything has some purpose”The song began as an experiment with a theory from the I Ching while George was visiting his parents. “‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ was just a simple study based on the theory that everything has some purpose for being there at that given moment,” George explained. “I was thinking that anything I see when I open a book, I’m going to write a song about.
So I opened this book and I saw ‘gently weeps’. I shut the book and then I started the tune.”.
After abandoning the delicate acoustic approach taped in July 1968, George enlisted the rest of for a full-band version in August. Once the group had created a decent backing, George spent hours trying to craft a backwards guitar solo for the song, before ditching this version too.George had been friends with since The Yardbirds supported The Beatles in 1964, and, seemingly on a whim, invited his friend to play on the next attempt to nail the song.Speaking to Guitar Player in 1987, George recalled Clapton’s initial reluctance: “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. Also, it left me free to just play the rhythm and do the vocal. So Eric played that, and I thought it was really good. Then we listened to it back, and he said, ‘Ah, there’s a problem, though; it’s not Beatley enough’ – so we put it through the ADT, to wobble it a bit.”. Chris Thomas, who at that time was ’s assistant, recalled how this was achieved: “I was given the grand job of waggling the oscillator on the ‘Gently Weeps’ mixes We did a flanging thing, really wobbling the oscillator in the mix, I did that for hours.” “A beautiful moment”These early September 1968 recording sessions for ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ were significant for a number of reasons, not least because this was the first time had returned to the studio since leaving the group, albeit temporarily, during work on a couple of weeks earlier. For his return, George had Ringo’s Ludwig Hollywood drum kit decorated with flowers, a gesture that meant a lot to the drummer. “It was a beautiful moment,” he later wrote.
During the summer of 1968, the group had on occasion decamped from the familiar surroundings of EMI’s Abbey Road studios in St John’s Wood to Trident in Soho, a facility that offered eight-track recording while Abbey Road modified their own pair of eight-track 3M machines. Back at Abbey Road, on 5 and 6 September, using the extra tracks allowed The Beatles (plus Eric), under the guidance of Chris Thomas deputising for an absent George Martin, to finally realise Harrison’s vision for the song. Paul contributes an inspired piano part, which opens with a distinctive introduction ahead of the first burst of guitar from Clapton, but continues to underpin the whole piece beautifully. George’s effortless lead vocal takes its inspiration from, ably assisted by Paul, before Clapton’s virtuoso lead guitar soars above a powerful and heavy rock backing. The lengthy coda rises again and again as a frenzy of sound delivers a knockout punch a million miles away from the acoustic song ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ began life as.The super deluxe edition of The Beatles’ “White Album” is out now.
We first shared the video in and revisited it again in of that year. In fact, it proved so popular with our readers that we shared it once more in March 2016, as well as after Prince’s death. His solo generates pure excitement, but the crowning touch comes at the end of the song, when Prince takes off his guitar—a Tele-style H.S. Anderson Mad Cat—and throws it up in the airand it appears never to come down.In the days after Prince died, the New York Times ran an article about the performance in which Petty and others who performed with Prince that night shared their memories. According to the paper, the show’s producer, Joel Gallen, asked Prince to play the song’s solos, since he was there to be inducted anyway.
But during rehearsals, Marc Mann, who plays guitar with Lynne, took over, knocking out a note-perfect recreation of Eric Clapton’s original mid-song solo.