The guitarist whose praise George Harrison wanted more than any other: “It means more”
When George Harrison was in the Beatles, he was dubbed ‘the quiet Beatle’. But in reality, it was more that he was the Beatle stuck in the shadows, often lost under the looming presence of John Lennon and Paul McCartney as the band’s principal songwriters. As tensions there grew more and more difficult and Harrison felt increasingly underappreciated, he started looking for praise elsewhere, especially wanting it from one of the friends he respected most.
Some would say that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. While issues in the band were stacking up and up and up, involving things like Lennon’s drug use, McCartney’s disagreements over Allen Klein and an ever-increasingly lack of compromise between all four members, Harrison’s unhappiness was a major part of it. When Harrison first stormed out, saying he was quitting the band in January 1969, it was the beginning of the end.
By that point, though, Harrison simply didn’t feel like he was getting enough out of the group. His songs were constantly being rejected in favour of Lennon and McCartney. “Paul wanted nobody to play on his songs until he decided how it should go. For me it was like: ‘What am I doing here? This is painful!’” he said about that period when he began to feel like nothing but a backing player.
So, during this time, the guitarist was broadening his horizons and hanging out more with other friends. As he later moved into his solo project, it was really these other connections that would reignite his love and spur him on to make his own music without his group. Bob Dylan was a key figure in that. Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty, who made up the rest of the Traveling Wilburys, would be important people in his career, but none of them were as vital as Eric Clapton.
Clapton and Harrison’s relationship was an endlessly complex one. They were best friends first and regular collaborators. Then, Clapton started going after his wife, Pattie Boyd, leading to a big guitar battle blow-up when the affair was revealed. Boyd would eventually leave Harrison for his old friend. Yet, through all of this, their respect for one another as musicians was never faulted. In fact, Clapton seemed to maintain this almost god-like stature to Harrison as the ex-Beatle always wanted his praise.
“I love Eric. I love the touch he has on his guitar,” Harrison said in 1987, over a decade on from when he stole his wife. But despite that personal drama, none of it could cloud his admiration for Clapton’s playing as he added, “There’s things that Eric can do where it would take me all night to get it right. He can knock it off in one take because he plays all the time.”
The way Harrison talks about getting praise from Clapton feels like a student getting a ‘well done’ from their favourite teacher. “For me, if Eric gives me the thumbs up on a slide solo, it means more than half the population,” he said, unable to downplay just how fierce that admiration is as he looked up to his complex friend and musical peer seemingly more than anyone else.
