The guitarist John Lennon wished he’d worked with: “Clapton choked up”
George Martin wasn’t totally sold on The Beatles when he first heard them play. “I met them in London, and when I listened… it was OK, but it wasn’t brilliant,” he would reflect many years later. However, his interest was first piqued by the foursome’s witty Teddy Boy charm. “The magic bit came when I started to get to know them because they were terribly good people,” Martin added.
These four personalities took the band very far throughout the 1960s, with their songwriting and social chemistry creating a whole greater than the sum of four quarters. Yet, very few people would describe any of the Beatles as instrumental virtuosos.
Of the four, Paul McCartney was the most technically skilled, with his impressive multi-instrumental dexterity earning him Stuart Sutcliffe’s role as bassist in 1961. Meanwhile, George Harrison, who proved himself to be a fine songwriter and composer, lacked confidence in his abilities, especially after meeting Eric Clapton.
Harrison was famously humble for a celebrity of his stature. “I’ve always been embarrassed at the idea of being in Guitar Player magazine,” he told Guitar Player in 1987. “I’m just a skiffler. I do ‘posh skiffle’, that’s all it is…”
The ‘Something’ songwriter sold himself short in this comment, but it is true that his lack of virtuosity called for external expertise. Famously, McCartney ended up handling the lead guitar parts in Harrison’s Revolver contribution ‘Taxman’ because the latter was having some difficulty getting the progression down during a limited studio window.
Elsewhere, Harrison had his friend and eventual love rival Clapton play lead guitar on his “White Album” classic ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. Perhaps he should have sung, “While Clapton’s guitar gently weeps,” although this is admittedly less catchy.
As seen in Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back, Harrison struggles to get a word or song in edgeways towards the end of the band’s time together. Consequential bickering culminated in Harrison’s temporary departure from the band mid-session. “See you ’round the clubs,” he famously said as he left the room.
In a knee-jerk reaction, as he watched the door close on Harrison, Lennon offered an alternative. “I think if George doesn’t come back by Monday or Tuesday, we ask Eric Clapton to play,” he told Get Back director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. “We should just go on as if nothing’s happened.” Harrison ultimately returned, at least until The Beatles’ official disbandment several months later.
Several major factors are credited with bringing The Beatles to a conclusion in April 1970. Among them was John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s detachment amid a spiralling relationship with heroin. “The two of them were on heroin,” McCartney reflected many years later, “And this was a fairly big shocker for us because we all thought we were far-out boys, but we kind of understood that we’d never get quite that far out.”
Lennon’s heroin addiction compounded his preexisting personal challenges related to fame, global conflict, and childhood trauma. Although he had subtly referenced heroin in the 1968 track ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’, Lennon took a more direct approach a year later with ‘Cold Turkey’.
‘Cold Turkey’ received a cold appraisal from Lennon’s bandmates, leading him to record the song as a solo single to follow ‘Give Peace a Chance’. The song features Eric Clapton on guitar and hears the Beatle anguish over his addiction struggle: “Temperature’s rising/ Fever is high/Can’t see no future/Can’t see no sky/ My feet are so heavy/ So is my head/ I wish I was a baby/ I wish I was dead”.
Although Lennon was generally impressed by Clapton’s talent, something seemed to occur during the ‘Cold Turkey’ session that alienated him. In a 2023 interview with Classic Rock, Rick Neilsen, the guitarist from Cheap Trick, revealed that Lennon wanted him to play on the single in hindsight. “I was in the studio, playing,” Nielsen remembered, “and John looked at Jack Douglas and said: ‘God, I wish I’d had Rick on ‘Cold Turkey’. Clapton choked up.'”
Several years later, Lennon asked Neilsen to join himself and Yoko Ono in the studio during sessions for Double Fantasy. The guitarist contributed to early recordings of ‘I’m Losing You’ and Ono’s answer song ‘I’m Moving On’. However, his raw approach didn’t tesselate with the album’s cleaner sound, so later versions recorded with David Bowie’s guitarist Earl Slick made the final cut.
