2b. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
“Eric Clapton said, “I knew George was happy, because he listened to it over and over in the control room.””
Welcome back to part b of the story of one of George Harrison’s best-loved songs, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. In part a, I talked about George’s struggles to get the song taken seriously by John and Paul, his strategy of bringing in Eric Clapton to get the others’ attention, the writing of the song at George’s parents’ house, the musical structure of the song, its lyrics, and the first phase of the recording process. We covered the Esher demo for the song, the acoustic studio demo, and the first band version that they recorded. We’re up to the recording of the second full-band version, which I will call version 3, on September 5, 1968.
The first recorded take of version 3 was in fact take 17, but George announced it as take 1, presumably to highlight that it was a fresh start.
They recorded 28 takes of the third version of the song that night, numbered takes 17 to 44. The line-up was George on lead vocal and acoustic guitar, Paul on piano and harmony vocals, John on organ in the middle eights only, Ringo on drums and Eric Clapton on lead guitar. Nobody played bass on the basic takes.
We can be certain about that line-up because the Super Deluxe White Album includes an outtake of take 27 with no overdubs. Some have claimed that Clapton’s lead guitar was an overdub, including Mark Lewisohn, but the evidence of take 27 clearly shows that it wasn’t – he played live with the band.
{extract of take 27}
The book that comes with the White Album Super Deluxe Edition shows a picture of the tape box for takes 16 to 26. It shows that most of the takes of version 3 were breakdowns or false starts. Only takes 20, 21 and 25 were complete. It’s interesting to see that take 20 is quite a bit shorter than the other two complete takes; it’s 4:14 as opposed to 5:00. It must have omitted some sections that were later included.
The Super Deluxe book is a fantastic resource to understand what happened during the sessions, but it does include a couple of obvious errors regarding who played what on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. For one thing, it claims that Paul played piano and organ simultaneously, as does Jerry Hammack in his Beatles Recording Reference Manual. We know Paul played the piano because George repeatedly praised the unusual Morse-code like piano introduction that Paul created. But we know he didn’t play organ because of what we can hear in the separated instrument recordings extracted from ‘The Beatles: Rock Band’ computer game. The isolated keyboard part in that game reveals Paul playing piano two handed throughout, including at the times when the organ is playing. In this extract, you can hear low notes and high notes on the piano at the same time, requiring two hands from Paul.
{extract of piano and organ}
Most of the organ you can hear there is from an overdub by George, but that is the part where someone other than George played organ in the basic takes. That fact that it wasn’t Paul means that it must have been John – he’s the only person in the studio not already accounted for. Also, we know he had played organ on version 2, so why not continue with organ on version 3.
The other error in the fine print of the Super Deluxe version is the claim that John played the main bass part – a claim echoed by Giles Martin in interviews. I’m certain it wasn’t John, and that seems to be the generally accepted view among Beatles scholars these days, but let me lay out the evidence. Clearly, John did not play bass on the initial takes because nobody did, as revealed by take 27, the outtake that was released on the Super Deluxe Edition of the White Album.
{extract from Take 27}
So that means the bass was overdubbed, and it would have been unique as far as we know for John to overdub the main bass part when Paul was available to do it. We know that Paul liked to overdub bass after the main takes of a song. He did that a lot on Sgt Pepper because it allowed him to be more creative with the bass part, and he continued to do it on some of the White Album tracks. John usually played bass only when it was required for a live take and Paul was otherwise occupied, such as on “The Long and Winding Road”, the slow version of “Helter Skelter” that wound up on Anthology 3, and the many rehearsals of “Let It Be” on the Get Back sessions. If you listen to those tracks you can easily hear that John was an extremely limited bass player.
{extract with John playing bass}
But the bass part in “While My Guitar …” is not a simple one. It starts simply enough in the verse, with one note per bar for a while, but it gets steadily trickier. To start with, the bassist plays chords. This is what is happening in those parts of the verses where the bass sounds particularly heavy or distorted, when the bass goes chug-chug-chug, or sometimes chug … chug.
{extract of chug-chug-chug bass part}
Then, we get to the winding convoluted bass part in the middle eights, which is more demanding than any bass part that we definitely know was played by John.
{extract of bass part from middle eight]
And finally, during the guitar solo, the final verse and the ending, the bass player does various additional improvised notes, which we don’t hear John doing on any other bass part.
{extract of bass part with improvised notes}
So, for all those reasons, I’ve always been confident that it was Paul who played the bass on this track. The identity of the bass player was confirmed by George himself in a 1987 interview with Guitar Player magazine:
“When we laid that track down, I sang it with the acoustic guitar with Paul on piano, and Eric and Ringo – that’s how we laid the track down. Later, Paul overdubbed the bass on it.” (Dowlding 1989).
It’s interesting that he makes no mention of John’s admittedly minor contribution on organ.
One thing there is no dispute about is that Eric Clapton played superb lead guitar throughout the track. You can hear the isolated lead guitar on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD04Ti2xsQw and it sounds fantastic. It’s interesting to hear him playing some arpeggiated chords in some places when he’s not playing lead. Those parts don’t stand out in the final mix but you can hear them if you listen for them.
{excerpt of Clapton playing, including arpeggiated part}
Quoting Paul from the Anthology book: “Eric showed up and he was very nice, very accommodating and humble and a good player. … It was good fun actually. His style fitted very well with the song.”
You can hear what a difference Clapton made to the track by listening the recording with his lead guitar removed, also available on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMhAdzRUQQk Some vocal and instrumental elements that are obscured under the lead guitar become more audible.
{excerpt of track without Clapton}
The track still sounds great, but it’s definitely better with Clapton included.
Quoting George again: So Eric played that and I thought it was really good. Then we listened to it back and he said, ‘Ah, there is a problem, though; it is not Beatley enough.’ So we put it through ADT to wobble it up a bit.”
ADT is Automatic Double Tracking, an effect that had been invented by EMI’s engineer, Ken Townsend, in response to a request by John Lennon to automate the process of double tracking vocals, which was something they commonly did to enrich the sound. According to Wikipedia, during mixing “the guitar part was run through an ADT circuit with "varispeed", with engineer Chris Thomas manipulating the oscillator to achieve the desired "wobbly" effect.” It’s easy to hear the treatment that’s been applied to Eric’s guitar on this track,
{extract of guitar solo from final mix}
particularly if you compare it to Take 27 on Super Deluxe Edition, which doesn’t include the ADT treatment.
{extract of guitar solo from Take 27}
Tape operator Brian Gibson was quoted by Mark Lewisohn recounting some comments of Eric’s he overheard during the session. “I remember Eric telling George that Cream’s approach to recording was to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, spending very little time in the studio itself, whereas the Beatles’ approach seemed to be to record, record, record, and then eventually get the right one. The sessions were their rehearsals.” (Lewisohn 1988).
Despite Eric’s crucial contribution to the song, he was not given an official credit on the album sleeve. Of course, he wasn’t alone there – many outside players were not credited. The few who did get credits included Mal Evans for his simple organ part on “You Won’t See Me”, Anil Bhagwat for his tabla on “Love You To”, and Billy Preston for keyboards on the “Get Back” single and the Let It Be album.
The Beatles kept doing takes until number 44, including a number of false starts (Wild 2019), but they went back and chose take 25 as the best one for further work (Howlett 2018). Eric Clapton said, "I knew George was happy, because he listened to it over and over in the control room." This marked the end of a long night’s work. They had started at 7:00pm and finished at 3:45am.
They reconvened the next day, September 6, without Eric Clapton, to finish the song with a seven-hour session devoted to overdubs onto take 25, including Paul’s fabulous distorted bass part.
You might not realise it, because it isn’t prominent in the mix, but there is another instrument, or arguably two, replicating the winding bass line in the middle eights, one octave higher and two octaves higher. It is quite hard to hear these lines in the final mix, but they are clearly audible in the isolated bass track in ‘The Beatles: Rock Band’ computer game and in the isolated instrument tracks on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOGUa2se66Q). I think they are included at a higher volume on Rock Band than on the actual record.
{extract from Rock Band of bass from middle eight with 12-sring guitar playing the same notes}
They are deeply buried in the original stereo mix, but you can just hear them once you know they are there, especially the higher one. To me they are less audible in the mono mix, and I can’t hear them at all in the 2018 stereo remix, but they may still be there.
The details of what instruments are being played here are debated. The Gear, There and Everywhere crew on YouTube concluded that the instrument playing one octave higher than Paul’s bass was The Beatles’ Fender Bass VI, which both George and John used on various songs, and that the other instrument was probably John’s Guild 12-string electric guitar. The engineer on the session, Ken Scott also said in his autobiography that the four-string bass is doubled by a six-string bass. However, he says later in the same book that he has zero memory of the actual recording session, so I take his statement about the Bass VI with a pinch of salt.
My problem with the Bass VI theory is that, when I listen to the isolated instruments, it doesn’t sound like there is a second bass there, and there is no indication on the tape box of a second bass. It sounds to me like the higher octaves are both being played on a 12-string guitar.
Thanks to Marcus Phelan for pointing this out to me. Marcus has an impressive history of pulling Beatles songs to pieces to understand all the parts, and, happily, he’s a member of the Editorial Board for this podcast.
Further overdubs included someone playing tambourine and somebody playing percussion that sounds like castanets.
{extract of castanets from second verse}
George overdubbed some additional high-pitched organ in the middle eights, the final verse and the guitar solo that ends the song. The organ we can hear in the final mix is a combination of George and John’s organ parts. We know that John’s part is still included because it was recorded on the same track as Paul’s piano, so it couldn’t be mixed out. George’s organ part is on a separate track.
Finally they recorded George’s lead vocal, with Paul providing harmonies.
{extract of George singing and Paul harmonising – end of middle eight, start of second verse}
In an interview with Musician magazine in 1987, while discussing this song George revealed his reservations about his own singing.
“In the Beatles days I never liked my singing. I couldn’t sing very good. I was always very paranoid, very nervous, and that inhibited my singing.” (Dowlding 1989).
In his book And the Band Begins to Play, Steve Lambley (2019) observes that, “George can sound less than confident when singing solo, and does so here to some degree. … he is joined by Paul and … he adds strength and depth to George’s voice … but to such an extent that it is not in any way intrusive” (p.359). I very much doubt that Paul was thinking in terms of compensating for George’s limitations, just doing the best job he could to support the song.
After The Beatles broke up, George was often pretty uncomplimentary about Paul, but I think it’s worth pointing out that Paul’s contributions to this, one of George’s signature songs, were critical to the recording. The piano intro, the huge bass part and the harmony vocals are all superb. They may not be as prominent as Clapton’s guitar, but taken together, I think Paul’s contributions to the final song were just as important.
So that was it for recording the main version that we all know and love. It was mixed in stereo and mono, in separate sessions, a month later and that was that.
However, there was one more official recording session for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” 38 years later, in what would have ended up being the last ever Beatles recording session, if not for “Now and Then”. The makers of the Love show by Cirque du Sole requested that they be allowed to use the beautiful quiet studio demo of “While My Guitar …” as part of their show in 2006. George’s widow Olivia suggested that the simple demo might be too simple, given the nature of the show, so George Martin agreed to provide a string arrangement to accompany the demo. What he did, in what was his last ever job for The Beatles, is absolutely extraordinary.
{extract of orchestral overdub}
It transforms the demo into something of breathtaking beauty.
{extract of Love version with orchestra}
The final recording session involved George Martin conducting a 15-piece string orchestra with the demo playing in their headphones. There was no actual Beatle present, but there are several reasons why it would be reasonable to consider it a Beatles session. Firstly, it was for a Beatles-sanctioned album. Secondly, it’s an overdub to an actual Beatles track to make a new official Beatles release. Thirdly, George Martin was there, and although he wasn’t formally a Beatle, he made huge and multiple contributions to their records, including by playing on many of them. And fourthly, Olivia Harrison was present in the control room, and Paul has said that Olivia and Yoko are now de facto Beatles. There is a video on YouTube of part of the recording session, making it one of the very few Beatles sessions to be videoed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDLBBn9n6yw
Instruments
I’ve talked at a general level about which instruments were played, but let’s get more specific, at least briefly. George’s acoustic guitar on the final version was a sunburst Super Jumbo Gibson J-200, which he subsequently gave to Bob Dylan (Babiuk 2015). You can see a photo of that very guitar on the front cover of Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album.
There is some conflicting information about which guitar Eric Clapton played. Most commonly, it is claimed that Clapton played a re-painted 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop guitar named Lucy that he had recently given to George (e.g., Beatles Bible web site; Dave Rybaczewski). This was a guitar with a long history. It had previously been owned by someone from the Loving Spoonful (either John Sebastian or Steve Boone, depending on who you believe), then Rick Derringer when he was in The McCoys, and then Eric Clapton (Babiuk 2015).
George himself said, “We used to hang out such a lot in that period, and Eric gave me a fantastic Les Paul guitar, which is the one he plays on that date.”
Lucy had a dramatic subsequent history as well. It was stolen from George’s house in Beverly Hills in the early 1970s. The thief sold it to a music store which then sold it on to a Mexican guitarist, who took it back to Mexico. It was eventually traced, and after some negotiations, including George speaking personally to the guy, he gave it back to George in exchange for two other Les Pauls (Babiuk 2015).
So that’s all interesting, but it has also been claimed that Clapton played his own 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard (Hammack 2023). In the Corrigendum to his Beatles Recording Reference Manual, Jerry Hammack says, “Photographic analysis indicates that Eric Clapton played his 1960 Les Paul Standard for his work on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.” I haven’t seen that photographic evidence, but I think it’s notable that George himself said the guitar was Lucy.
The other uncertainty about instruments is which bass or basses were played. We’ve already covered the debate about whether a Bass VI was played by George or John in the middle eights, doubling up Paul’s bass line an octave higher. I don’t believe it was. I think the instrument in question was a 12-string guitar, probably John’s Guild, which was presented to him during the 1966 US tour (Babiuk 2015).
The next issue is which bass Paul played. It has been proposed by Jerry Hammack (2023) that it was his Rickenbacker bass. That would be very surprising, since according to Hammack’s own account, he had not used that bass in the studio since the session for “Hey Bulldog” back in February 1968 (Hammack 2023). He used his Fender Jazz throughout the White Album sessions, so switching back to his Rickenbacker for one song seems unlikely. Others, including the Gear, There and Everywhere crew, say it was his Fender Jazz bass, and I agree.
Versions and mixes
The first version to be released, of course, was studio version 3, the main rock version, on the White Album, on 22 November 1968. It’s quite a densely packed recording so some of the elements I’ve talked about may be a bit hard to hear in the mix. Not that that matters – it’s the overall effect of the combination of instruments and voices that matters. And that effect is powerful.
{extract of start of second verse from White Album}
I especially love the part where the bass in the first verse switches from playing single notes to playing distorted chords and going chug, chug. It gives the song an extra dose of power. Clapton’s guitar is excellent, of course, and the wobbly effect applied to it really works well, to my ears. There are no major differences between the mono and stereo versions. One minor difference is that we can hear George singing “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” late in the fade-out of the stereo version, but not in the mono version.
The mono version was also released as the B side of a single with “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da” in 1969, but the single only came out in certain countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, West Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland, but notably not the UK or the US. Those were clearly the two markets the Beatles focused on most. Maybe they were just sticking with their usual policy of not releasing singles from albums, or maybe dislike of the A side by some of the Beatles played a role. But in the other international markets, which perhaps weren’t so closely supervised by The Beatles and George Martin, “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da” c/w “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was a big hit, making number 1 in most countries. I wasn’t going into record stores in 1969 as an eight-year-old, but I remember seeing the single still for sale in Australian record stores in the 1970s. It’s been claimed that the single was a double A side in Australia, and it’s true that the national chart listed both songs (https://web.archive.org/web/20210623144910/https://gosetcharts.com/1969/19690319.html), but the Australian label for “While My Guitar …” shows the cut apple used for B sides (https://www.beatlesaustralia.com/singles_index.html). I guess that its inclusion in the chart listing at least shows that it was getting plenty of airplay.
The next version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to be officially released was the first studio demo, which came out on Anthology 3 in 1996. George’s performance is absolutely wonderful.
{extract of start of second verse from Anthology 3}
Paul’s organ or harmonium is also included towards the end of the song, but it is quiet in the mix and you might miss it. The original recording had a stop ending,
{extract of original ending}
but Geoff Emerick, the Beatles engineer, edited the track to create a looped ending of George alternating between two chords, G minor and F, and this was faded out.
{extract of Emerick ending}
The Anthology 3 version was originally created for Sessions, a proposed album of unreleased Beatles studio recordings that was prepared in the mid 1980s but never released. Apparently, its release was blocked by The Beatles themselves, although each of its 13 planned tracks eventually appeared on one of the Anthology sets.
Moving on from Anthology, in 2006 we got the orchestrated version of the studio demo on Love. This is one of the absolute highlights of Love – this alone is sufficient to make the whole of Love worthwhile, in my view.
It replicates the looped G minor/F ending, as created by Geoff Emerick for Sessions.(22:11)
{extract of ending from Love}
A part of Clapton’s solo was used in the mash-up remix of “Lady Madonna” on the Love album, released in 2011. In my view, it doesn’t fit “Lady Madonna” quite as well as most of the other cross-fertilisations on Love.
The Super Deluxe White Album contains five more versions of the song. The 2018 remix by Giles Martin is excellent, especially at the bass end. It is consistent with the sound of the original version, but it gives the song more clarity and even more weight and power.
{extract from 2018 remix – second verse}
Next there is the original demo version of the song, recorded at George’s house in Esher in May 1968. It is nice to hear this, although it lacks the gentle beauty of the studio demo version. It is a fair bit faster than the song ended up being, which gives it quite a different feel. There are two acoustic guitars playing, and George’s vocal is double tracked. Paul’s keyboard part is not included.
{extract of start of second verse from Esher Demo}
Next there is an outtake from the session where George and Paul recorded the studio demo. This was found unexpectedly when they were putting together the Super Deluxe collection. It is described in the book as a practice run through, for Paul to get familiar with the chords, but it’s clear that he already knows them pretty well. It’s not a serious take, with George stopping to talk to the engineers at one point, and clearing his throat at another, but it is still a lovely performance. The organ is mixed much louder than in the Anthology 3 version, which makes it easier to hear what Paul was playing.
{extract of start of second verse from acoustic studio run through}
Then there is one of the original takes of studio version 3, take 27. It is two takes later than the one that underpins the official version. It starts with George putting in an order for a sandwich and a coffee, and then goes straight into the take. Of course there are no overdubs here: no bass, no additional organ, no percussion, and only rough vocals from George and Paul. Eric Clapton’s guitar lacks the ADT and it sounds a bit bland without it.
It is interesting to hear that Paul’s staccato piano introduction is somewhat different from what it was on take 25. Apparently, Paul was improvising this, and maybe it was different on each take.
{extract of intro to take 27}
The version on the White Album is so familiar and so perfect that it’s a bit of a mind blower to think that it was a one off. Mind you, Eric Clapton’s lead guitar lines were all one-off improvisations too, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
This version breaks down after about three minutes. Someone plays a wrong chord – possibly Clapton – and Paul calls things to a halt saying “hold it Harry”. George is fine with it stopping, as his vocal had gone a bit off track with too much high-pitched warbling. He says, “It’s OK, I sang, er, tried to do a Smokey, and I just aren’t Smokey”. Clearly, he means Smokey Robinson. Not that his vocal glitch would have mattered, as the final lead vocal was overdubbed later anyway.
Finally, there is the surround version on the Blu-Ray. This sounds very similar to the 2018 stereo mix, but the listener is more surrounded, obviously.
Live performances
The song became a standard inclusion in George’s post-Beatles live shows. Setlist.fm lists 61 live performances of it by George, including television performances. Many of them were on his 45-date US tour in 1974.
There are three officially released live versions by George, and Eric Clapton is present to reproduce his guitar solo in each, although George also plays lead on them, unlike the original. First there was the Concert for Bangladesh, the star-studded charity concert that George organised in 1971. The version of “While My Guitar …” is reasonably faithful to the original, apart from lacking the piano in the introduction, and it even includes Ringo on drums and Billy Preston on organ, so it is the closest thing to a Beatles live performance of the song that ever happened. The band is a bit ragged, reflecting their limited time for rehearsals, and the overall tuning of the band sounds a bit out, but it’s an entertaining recording.
{extract from Bangla Desh version}
Soon after 1971, George changed the way he sang the first line of the middle eight: “I don’t know how …”. In later concert performances it has quite a different rhythm and a different melody, and the change is not an improvement, in my view. You can hear the different version on Live in Japan, which was recorded in December 1991, during George’s second and final tour, consisting of just 12 shows in Japan. This is a slicker, better-rehearsed version of the song, including Eric Clapton and his regular backing band. The Live In Japan album has been criticised for sounding a bit workman-like, but it sounds good to me, especially given that it was a brief one-off tour. But I do find the change to the melody in the middle eight of “While My Guitar …” a bit uncomfortable. Here’s how he originally sang the line.
{extract of “I don’t know how” from White Album version}
And here is what it changed to.
{extract of “I don’t know how” from Live in Japan version}
Clapton is also present in George’s performance at another big charity event, the Prince’s Trust concert at Wembley Stadium on 5 June 1987. This version also has a star-studded cast of players on it, including Ringo, Elton John, Phil Collins and Jeff Lynne, as you can see on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzSrShbqlz8 It’s another solid version, this time with the first line of the middle eight changed a bit less from the original version.
But my favourite live version of the song is the one from the Concert for George. I wouldn’t blame you for questioning this choice, because obviously George is not there to sing it – Eric Clapton provides the lead vocals as well as the guitar solo.
{excerpt of Clapton singing and lead guitar from Concert for George}
But it’s a really strong, emotionally charged version of the song, and allowing for George’s absence, it is remarkably close to the original line up, with Eric Clapton, Ringo, Paul on piano and harmony vocal, and George’s son Dhani on acoustic guitar (looking exactly like a young George). It totally breaks me up every time I watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrTMc2i6Lzc Guitarist Marc Mann plays Eric’s original guitar licks in between the vocal lines perfectly, allowing Eric to focus on his vocals and the main solos.
On all the live versions I’ve mentioned so far, Eric Clapton played lead guitar, but George actually played it live more often without Clapton in attendance, because that was the situation on his U.S. tour in 1974. I’ve heard audience recordings of two shows from that tour, with George playing all the lead parts on “While My Guitar …”. The arrangement sounds like mid-70s George Harrison and not much like late-60s Beatles. In other words, there are lots of horns. He also changed the lyrics to “While my guitar tries to smile” in some cases, which is pretty jarring. These 1974 live recordings are interesting but to my ears, they lack the magic of The Beatles’ versions.
{extract from a 1974 live version}
Some reviewers were quite positive about the 1974 tour, but others were critical, particularly a reviewer at Rolling Stone magazine. George wrote and recorded a sequel to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” called “This Guitar Can’t Keep From Crying”, which was a robust response to the Rolling Stone review.
{extract from “This Guitar Can’t Keep From Crying”}
It has in common with the original song a somewhat preachy tone to the lyrics, and that it features another guest lead guitarist, this time Jesse Ed Davis. It is one of the better songs on George’s 1975 album Extra Texture (Read All About It). There is also a nice re-recorded version of the song available in George’s box set Apple Years 1968-75. Ironically, the re-recording is not from those years at all, but from 1992, with overdubs by Ringo and George’s son Dhani that were done after George’s death.
By the way, the guitarist Jess Ed Davis had a lot of other of Beatles links as well. He played at the Concert for Bangla Desh with George and Ringo, and he appeared on John’s albums Walls and Bridges and Rock ‘N’ Roll and Ringo’s Goodnight Vienna and Ringo’s Rotogravure.
George’s final live performance of “While My Guitar …” was in his final concert on April 6, 1992 at Royal Albert Hall in London (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M9zUQT1QYE). There is a poor-quality audience video of this on YouTube and it features a remarkable performance from the lead guitarist, Gary Moore, a former member of Thin Lizzy. It seems that the song is particularly inspiring to lead guitarists.
TV, radio and movie performances
Several of the live versions I just mentioned were included in movies or TV broadcasts: Bangla Desh, the Prince’s Trust, and the Concert for George. In addition, there is an official video for the Love version of the song, showing a female dancer from Cirque du Soleil dancing with animated light projections. A nice touch is that it includes drawings of guitars that are reminiscent of drawings that George did in his schoolbooks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDJs9dumZI
Cover versions
The released cover version with the strongest Beatles links is the one in Concert for George. Given the amazing line up of players on it, it almost isn’t a cover version. The main thing it lacks is George himself.
George does appear on another cover, by the Canadian blues guitarist Jeff Healey with his Jeff Healey Band. George Harrison and Jeff Lynne both provide backing vocals and acoustic guitars on the track, which was included on a 1991 album called Hell to Pay, and released as a single. It went top 30 in Canada and top 10 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr9ZOmwtA4shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j3-EXejYao)
There was a fine version performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 for George’s posthumous induction, featuring Dhani Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood and Prince. Prince isn’t the first person you’d think of to participate in a George Harrison tribute, but he does an absolutely amazing guitar solo at the end of the song. A writer for the New York Times said he “burned the stage to the ground”. It’s even been called “the greatest guitar solo in rock history”. (https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-story-behind-the-greatest-guitar) It’s three minutes of jaw-dropping lead guitar virtuosity, made to look completely effortless, and capped off by Prince throwing his guitar high in the air, to be caught off screen by his guitar technician. The video has been watched over 139 million times, so it clearly has a reputation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y
Laurence Juber from Wings must love the song because he has released two different solo acoustic guitar versions. It appears on his first album of Beatles covers, LJ Plays The Beatles. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-FY3Z9X4U4) Juber’s Beatles covers are all tastefully done and beautifully played, and this is no exception. His second attempt on is on the fifth album in his Beatles series, A Day in My Life. This one is somewhat faster than his earlier version, but just as enjoyable and impressive. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcxqIJm3pg)
There are many fine covers out there with no direct Beatles link. A few examples. Perhaps my favourite is an incredible instrumental version by virtuoso ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro. It is fitting that he covered this song, given George’s love for the ukulele. It was on his 2006 album Gently Weeps and there are a number of videos of him playing it live on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8m97D0AVcY
Santana released a slick classic rock version in 2010, with Yo-yo Ma on cello, although Yo-yo seems underutilised in the song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-5M1_DKvb0 It was released as a single and made the top 30 of the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.
The most unusual version I’ve heard is by guitarist Marc Ribot, on his 1990 album Rootless Cosmopolitans. If you’ve heard Ribot’s playing with Tom Waits, the style is very much like that – spiky and a bit discordant but really interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7htCgu-Rxo
Regina Spektor does a gorgeous version for the soundtrack of a movie called Kubo and the Two Strings. It combines Japanese instruments with a classical orchestra and her incredible voice. It’s really cleverly done. I hadn’t heard it before, but it’s one that I’ll be playing again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoujdXqptnc
There was a performance by Gary Clark Jr, Joe Walsh and Dave Grohl on The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles, first broadcast on February 9, 2014, the 50th anniversary of The Beatles first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. This was notable for having Paul and Ringo in the audience, and for Dave Grohl’s aggressive drumming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpKqX7UyP8E
There is a huge list of other acts that have performed it live. The better known ones include Peter Frampton, Todd Rundgren, Donovan, Garry Wright, Rick Wakeman, Mike + the Mechanics, and Jeff Beck. Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney performed it together when Paul headlined the “Party at the Palace” for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in June 2002. As in the Concert for George, Eric sang lead vocal with Paul on harmonies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1QBqFvUkig
Other observations
As we approach the finish line here, I’ll make a couple of other observations. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was the first song to be published by George’s publishing company, Harrisongs Ltd. He had previously published his songs through Northern Songs, and so lost control of those earlier songs, just as Lennon and McCartney did, when Northern Songs was sold in 1969.
There is some irony in Clapton playing on a Beatles track because he had previously quit The Yardbirds when he thought they were getting too commercial (Quantick 2002). And here he was, playing with the most commercially successful act in the history of popular music. I guess the attractions of such an extreme level of success can override other misgivings.
Eric Clapton’s appearance on the track was obviously a reflection of the close friendship between George and Eric that lasted through thick and thin until George’s death in 2001. Other obvious connections between them in 1968/69 include that George wrote “Here Comes the Sun” sitting in Eric’s garden, Eric and George co-wrote the song “Badge” for Cream, and they collaborated on the recording of some other tracks. Eric played on George’s Wonderwall album, and he also played on “Sour Milk Sea”, a song written by George and demoed with the White Album songs, but then given to Jackie Lomax. George was the producer when Jackie Lomax recorded it, and he lined up a remarkable group of people to play on it. As well as Clapton on lead guitar, there was Ringo on drums, Paul on bass, George on guitar and Nicky Hopkins on piano – all of them either Beatles or prominent guests on a Beatles track. I don’t know why John wasn’t included, but his absence adds to the list of George songs where he was missing.
The biggest threat to the endurance of George and Eric’s friendship was Eric’s relentless pursuit of George’s wife Pattie, which she resisted for a while but eventually succumbed to. Mind you, she had plenty of reasons for moving on, including her loneliness when George was in one of his intense meditation phases, his drug use when he wasn’t, and his multiple infidelities, culminating in his affair with Ringo’s wife Maureen (Boyd 2007). Eric writing his best song, “Layla”, for Pattie and giving her a personal performance of it was a factor as well. One has to feel sorry for Pattie, though, because it was very much a case of “out of the frying pan, into the fire”, with Clapton’s heroin addiction having a major impact on their marriage.
Finally, a report on The Beatles’ facial hair at the time they recorded this song. Various forms of facial hair came and went on each of the Beatles between 1967 and 1970. The videos for “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” show that the day before they started version 3 of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, there was very little facial fair to be seen. Just Ringo’s moustache. The other three were all clean shaven. But that wouldn’t last.
Conclusion
There are several distinctive things about “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. Most obviously, it’s the only Beatles track that includes a guest playing lead guitar. It was the first EMI recording for which they used an eight-track recorder, which became their normal recorder from then on. The use of distorted bass was unusual, and the use of distorted bass chords was particularly unusual. And importantly, at least music-wise, it’s one of George’s great Beatles songs, comparable with “Something”, “Here Comes the Sun”, and many of the better Lennon and McCartney songs.
In conclusion, we are blessed with two fabulous but very different studio versions of the “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”: the original rock version on the White Album, and the studio demo with George Martin’s string orchestration on Love. They could hardly be more different but I find it hard to choose between them.
That’s it for this episode. Let me know what you think in the comments on everysoundthereis.net, where you can also find the transcript.
In particular, I’ve got a couple of questions about the format of these podcast episodes that I’d love to get your thoughts on. I’d really appreciate it if you could go to everysoundthereis.net, find episode 2a, and respond to the two questions I ask there in the comments section. Thanks very much.
Join me next time on Every Sound There Is for an in-depth exploration of another Beatles song.
Theme music by Marcus Phelan with Stefan Koch. Music in the section announcements by Stefan Koch, David Pannell, Marcus Phelan; and from the Gimme Some Truth podcast, Obadiah Jones and his mixing engineer Liam Narrie. Voice-overs by Michael Burton.
References
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David Pannell
4 August 2026