The songs George Harrison and Eric Clapton helped write for each other
George Harrison and Eric Clapton were kindred musical spirits in the late 1960s. Although Harrison had been part of Beatlemania for the first half of the decade, he always appreciated that Clapton was a free agent in the English music scene, having moved from The Yardbirds to Cream, and dominating the psychedelic rock landscape in the process. Though The Beatles can be an insular unit, Clapton was an assistant on some of Harrison’s greatest tracks with the band.
During the maligned sessions for The White Album, none of The Beatles wanted anything to do with each other. The band had been veering off into different creative directions, and Harrison was starting to earn favour with the Lennon/McCartney songwriting machine. One of Harrison’s contributions to the album was ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, which he wrote while he was on a meditation retreat in India with the Maharishi.
Although Harrison believed in the song, he noticed that none of his bandmates was giving it a fair shot. In The Beatles Anthology, he said: “I don’t even think they were all playing on it. So I went home and was like ‘well that’s a shame’ because I knew this song was pretty good”. Since the guitarist knew he wouldn’t get anywhere with the four of them together in a room, Harrison asked Clapton to sit in with the ‘Fabs’ on the session, adding that he could play one of the Les Paul guitars Clapton had gifted to him a few months before.
As soon as Clapton entered the room (under the pseudonym Eddie Clayton), the song fell into place, from Paul McCartney contributing a beautiful piano intro to John Lennon holding down the low end on six-string bass. While Clapton’s help smoothed things over at the time, Harrison knew he should return the favour.
When Cream made their first stabs at pop hits, Harrison penned their next hit ‘Badge’ for Clapton to use, which became one of their biggest hits. Although Clapton laid his stamp on the tune, Harrison’s lyrics had some help from Ringo Starr, who added the line about swans in the park.
In 1977, Harrison revealed to Crawdaddy: “I helped Eric write ‘Badge,’ you know”. Speaking of the songwriting predicament that Cream found themselves in, Harrison explained: “Each of them had to come up with a song for that Goodbye album, and Eric didn’t have his written.” This account of the songwriting operation for Goodbye explains a lot, as at some points the album feels a little incomplete. Iif you pay attention to the lyrical content of ‘Badge’, you’ll be left a tad confused. “Thinkin’ ’bout the times you drove in my car/Thinkin’ that I might have drove you too far” and, “I told you not to wander ’round in the dark/I told you ’bout the swans, that they live in the park” are just some of the weird, childish lines. But if this is the duo’s low point, they certainly reached new heights with another piece.
As the musical back and forth continued, The Beatles entered the darkest point in their career. They were still at each other’s throats and shelved their back-to-basics project Get Back to make one final album with Abbey Road. Amid all the tension, The Beatles dealt with business fallouts, which Harrison loathed having to attend.
After one too many meetings with accountants, Harrison criticised his appointments at Apple Corps and went to Clapton’s house, where he started to play acoustic guitars. As Clapton recalls in the documentary, Living in the Material World, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ fell out of Harrison. He said: “It was a beautiful spring morning. And George was just walking around the garden and just started singing. Started to sing ‘Here Comes the Sun’”.
Harrison’s ode to the sun rising turned into one of The Beatles’ enduring classics, stemming from blissfully walking around the garden and not having a care in the world. Even though Clapton and Harrison’s relationship became strained during the affair with Pattie Boyd, Harrison would still frequently jam with his friend. He also included Clapton on the title track of 1987’s Cloud Nine, and four years later, they went out on tour together in Japan. Relationships might come and go in rock and roll, but nothing can break a bond that starts with music.
