The White Album 50 Project: "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

George Harrison came into his own as a songwriter on the Beatles' White Album,  and - probably not so coincidentally - his four songs on this album were the first of his songs published by his own song publishing company, Harrisongs, which he'd founded in 1964.  (He had been a contracted writer to the Lennon-McCartney song publishing company Northern Songs until March 1968.)  But even with more room on a double album, he had to be patient before John Lennon and Paul McCartney would let him present a song for consideration.  "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was the first Harrison composition the group recorded for the White Album. 

George had been inspired to write this song after reading the I Ching, or "The Book of Changes," which argues that everything is relative to everything else and there is no such thing as coincidence.  He chose to write a song based on this idea of relativism by writing around the first words he saw in print, and what he did is actually the oldest trick for any writer - look for something to prompt you to write.  He took a book from a bookcase while at his parents' house, opened it, saw the words "gently weeps" on a page, and he began to write.  (The title of the book he selected has long since been forgotten.)

The song he came up with is one of the best songs on the White Album.  "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is a lament to the failure of humankind and its descent into barbarism. George can only show sorrow for a world diverted from its spiritual base, unable to manifest the power to love, and corrupted by hatred and violence. 

George first recorded "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in July 1968 at EMI Studios during the White Album sessions, taping a first take in which he accompanied himself on acoustic guitar with an organ from Paul McCartney added at the end. It's a beautiful rendition, available on the Beatles' Anthology 3 collection and featuring a third verse George eventually dropped: "I look from the wings at the play you are staging / While my guitar gently weeps / As I'm sitting here, doing nothing but aging / Still my guitar gently weeps."  But as lovely as this first take of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is, it only served as a demo.  George had a different arrangement for it in mind - a heavier, tougher blues-based style. And no guitarist was better suited to playing lead on such a track than Eric Clapton.

Then in the power trio Cream, Clapton had been friends with George since his days in the Yardbirds, and his mastery of blues-style playing made him a logical choice for the job to give "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" the feel George wanted for the song.  Clapton was reluctant to play on the song when George suggested the idea - because only faceless session musicians, not big-name guest stars, played on Beatles records.

"So what?" George replied.  "It's my song!"

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" begins, curiously enough, with a piano, but the guitars take over soon enough to usher in George's sorrowful vocal, with Clapton's leads taking center stage.  Clapton's guitar doesn't weep, it howls like a banshee, and it's anything but gentle.  His solo in the middle eight brings out the world-weariness of George's music brilliantly.  The fade-out that follows the final verse is taken over by Clapton, with some punitive riffs and more incessant wailing.  Clapton has since said that "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" conveyed George's "spiritual isolation" within the Beatles, as neither John nor Paul took much of an interest in what he came up with, not even in this case; Old Slowhand himself was the best person to help George get that spiritual isolation across.  (Clapton later asked that his solo be electronically altered to give it more of a Beatles sound and make it sound less "typically Clapton."  It was put through an oscillator to achieve the desired effect.)

While the LP credits on the White Album's lyric sheet acknowledge many people, including producer George Martin, engineers Chris Thomas and Ken Scott, tape operator John Smith, portrait photographer John Kelly, art director Richard Hamilton, Beatles assistant Mal Evans, and even Kevin (Kevin?) and everyone who helped assemble "Revolution 9," Eric Clapton is not one of them.  This could have been because, although both George and John wanted more boldface-name rockers - "heavies," as John called them - to make guest appearances on Beatles records, Paul was adamantly opposed to the idea.  More likely, though, it was because Cream recorded for Polydor Records, while the Beatles recorded for EMI (which was now distributing their Apple label).  Back in 1968, record companies frowned on any of its artists going off to work with artists who recorded for another record company.  By the end of the seventies, record companies would routinely lend out their talent to work with artists recording for the competition (hence, credits like "Peter Frampton appears courtesy of A&M Records," for example).  But in 1968, the only way for a rock star to appear on the record of a fellow rock star contracted to a different record company was to appear uncredited or under a pseudonym.  (When George Harrison, in fact, returned Clapton's favor by playing rhythm guitar on the Cream song "Badge," which Clapton and Harrison wrote together, he was credited as "L'Angelo Misterioso.")  If Cream had been an EMI act, Clapton would likely have gotten a credit for his White Album appearance.

Ironically, Cream disbanded within a week after the White Album's release.  It wasn't long, though, before people came to learn who played lead guitar on this song.

Despite the popularity of George's two Abbey Road songs, "Something" (which became the Beatles' third-bestselling single in America) and "Here Comes the Sun," "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" remains his signature Beatles song.  It was famously performed for his posthumous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 as a solo artist, with Prince, also an inductee that year, joining Tom Petty and two members of his band the Heartbreakers, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, and George's son Dhani and taking over from everyone with a blistering solo that people still talk about today.

George Harrison himself (below, in 1968) had an obvious affinity for his own song, having performed it live on many occasions - some of which included Clapton, of course - and he even produced a sequel song in 1975, titled "This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)".  Indeed, the song made him a major player among rock and roll songwriters; his guitar may have wept, but George had the last laugh on anyone who thought he was inferior to Lennon and McCartney.   

George Martin later admitted to having been "beastly" to Harrison and having given him little support, but even he came to realize his talent.  It seems wholly appropriate that Martin's last Beatles production, in 2006, was an overdub of a string section on the original Take 1 of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" for the soundtrack of the Beatles-based stage show Love by the Cirque de Soleil, a performance group George Harrison loved and whose plans for a Beatles show he championed.  It was as wonderful a tribute from Martin as Harrison could ever possibly receive.