Was George Harrison the most underrated guitarist of the 1960s?
The 1960s was one of the most exciting times in music. It seemed that everything was happening at once as different genres were born, music began to travel more effectively overseas, and bands were given better ideas about how to make, record, and publish their music. In the wake of all this innovation, you had bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin, and amongst these bands, you had the championing of the guitar.
It’s impossible now to talk about rock music, whether that’s early or late iterations of the genre, without people bringing up two things: The Beatles and good guitar players. The two go hand in hand as starting points towards a brand-new movement. George Harrison is frequently recognised as a great guitar player; however, he is rarely given the mass of credit that he actually deserves.
The guitar’s impact throughout the ‘60s is unquestionable. The public became absolutely enthralled with the idea of riffs and solos, as a lot of rock music took the established format of blues and R&B but applied distortion and various other effects to make it sound as though the instrument was speaking in its very own language.
The lead guitarist became a pivotal part of bands, and people started having debates about who they thought was the greatest out there. Some of the most common musicians who were named included Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton, who all brought their own unique stamp to the instrument. These three can also be credited with embodying the specific qualities that people look for in a good guitarist, which indirectly led to George Harrison often being overlooked.
What made these guitarists stand out were a few different things. The first is that they were assessed as individuals. People who watched some of these lead guitarists did so with the sole intention of watching a lead guitarist. Jeff Beck can be credited for this somewhat, as before he played guitar for The Yardbirds, the guitarist was very much seen as a contributing part towards a band. Beck changed that, using emotive guitar playing and a dominating stage presence to bring the guitarist out of the shadows of a backing band and into the spotlight.
“This is what cinched it for me,” said Alice Cooper when he was talking about how good a guitarist Beck was. “Jeff Beck, they’re playing the song, he holds his guitar like this [upright, in one hand], and it’s feeding back. He’s talking to somebody, he’s like 19 years old, and while he’s talking, he’s dropping the guitar and doing triplets. Perfect triplets. And then, he catches it right on the last note, where it’s feeding back, and we went, ‘What? That’s impossible!’”
While Beck wouldn’t deny that he was an excellent guitar player, he wouldn’t describe himself as the best, as that’s an honour he leaves for Hendrix. Hendrix embodied another factor that people look for in guitarists: once Beck had separated the guitarist and made them a sole entity, Hendrix took this new form of existence and amplified it. He is many things, but one of the most notable is the founding father of stage presence.
Hendrix was one of the first artists to have his fame stem from word of mouth. When he came to London and began performing, it didn’t take long for people to start talking about the new guitarist who was changing the way people played. It wasn’t just his talent but the way he played behind the back of his head, with his teeth, and set fire to his instruments that caught people’s attention. It was another layer of musicianship that was impossible to turn away from.
“He came on, and I went, ‘Oh, my God’,” Beck gushed, recalling the first time that he saw Hendrix on stage. “He had the military outfit on and hair that stuck out all over the place. They kicked off with [Bob Dylan’s] ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, and I thought, ‘Well, I used to be a guitarist’.”
Finally, Clapton highlighted the third thing that excited rock fans, which was his unwillingness to accept genre as a strict set of rules that needed to be abided by. Many other guitarists followed in his footsteps once he started allowing different strands of music to overlap, but his approach to writing meant that many people could no longer view a one-note guitarist as anything more than mediocre.
“Eric Clapton is the most important and influential guitar player that has ever lived, is still living or ever will live,” Steve Van Zandt noted when discussing Clapton. “Do yourself a favour, and don’t debate me on this. Before Clapton, rock guitar was the Chuck Berry method, modernised by Keith Richards, and the rockabilly sound – Scotty Moore, Carl Perkins, Cliff Gallup – popularised by George Harrison.”
Van Zandt continued talking about Clapton, saying how he brought all of these ideas together and gave us what is now considered the modern guitarist. “Clapton absorbed that, then introduced the essence of black electric blues: the power and vocabulary of Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin and the three Kings—B.B., Albert and Freddie,” he said. “To create an attack that defined the fundamentals of rock and roll lead guitar.”
These are the three things that people took most notice of when picking their favourite guitarists: individuality, presence and limitlessness. Harrison was making music and considered a popular musician before any of these standards fully came into play, as The Beatles became famous on the cusp of rock becoming the biggest genre in the world. As such, given he was such an established artist and one who didn’t necessarily embody any of these three factors, he is often overlooked when we talk about the best musicians from the ‘60s, but this is the result of luck, timing and the nature of The Beatles as opposed to Harrison’s actual talent.
The Beatles were never judged as individuals. Yes, they are now, and at the time, each member was assigned a role, whether that was sensible, cheeky, romantic, etc, but when people spoke about The Beatles, they spoke about The Beatles, the impact they had as a four, as opposed to the influence that each member individually had on the music they made.
People knew that Harrison was the guitarist but didn’t listen to his guitar playing. Instead, they took in the whole thing. When you isolate Harrison’s guitar playing, you begin to understand just how exceptional he was and how much of a pivotal part he was to The Beatles swing that made them so popular in the first place. He has an interesting ability to dance between lead and rhythm, creating catchy melodies that don’t overpower the song but do capture the ear. It’s a gorgeous middle ground and something that most other musicians would find impossible to occupy.
On top of that, Harrison was happy to stand on stage and play his music. This was the case both in The Beatles when he went solo and when he formed the Traveling Wilburys. He wasn’t a showman in the traditional sense, and this lack of flamboyancy, throughout the development of rock music, gently nudged him out of the greatest guitarist conversation.
Rock music was well and truly established in the ‘60s, shortly after George Harrison had already risen to fame as a prominent musician and one-quarter of The Beatles. The image of the guitar player formed away from him, meaning he is criminally overlooked and one of the most underrated guitarists from the ‘60s.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.