The moment George Harrison slammed his friend Eric Clapton: “Incredibly hurt”
It took a lot to irk George Harrison. The moment he encountered the dhyana plane of Hindu mysticism and meditative enlightenment, the already stoic “quiet Beatle” held a solid reputation for collected composure spiked with his dry, acerbic wit. One particular beneficiary of Harrison’s easy company was guitar maestro Eric Clapton. Having actively pursued his wife Pattie Boyd—the subject of Abbey Road‘s ‘Something’ and Derek and the Dominos’ unrequited hard rock howl ‘Layla’—and eventually marrying her in 1979, Harrison maintained an admirable friendship until his death in 2001.
Having become acquainted when Clapton’s former band The Yardbirds had supported The Beatles at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1964, four years later the then Cream guitarist found himself as one of the few outside musicians to enter the Fab Four’s inner creative sanctum.
Inspired by the ancient I Ching philosophy of random universalism and The Beatles’ fracturing cohesiveness, Harrison knew his ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ piece needed something extra to grab the waning attention of principal songwriters John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Clapton arrived at EMI Studios on September 6th 1968, without a guitar and little idea of what was expected of him. Handed Harrison’s cherry red Gibson Les Paul—nicknamed ‘Lucy’—Clapton overdubbed the electric solo, cementing the cut to eternal hard rock royalty. So impressed with his guitar work and grateful for the uncredited favour, Harrison co-wrote Cream’s final single ‘Badge’ under the pseudonym L’Angelo Misterioso and gifted Clapton with an advance acetate copy of the upcoming The Beatles double-LP ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ featured on.
Touring in the States for Cream’s farewell tour, Clapton was a little too eager to spin the new record. “While I was in LA, I had been playing some of the songs on the album to various friends when I got a phone call from George,” he confessed in 2007’s Clapton: The Autobiography. “Word had got back to him that I was playing the album around town, and he was furious and gave me a huge bollocking…”
It’s an easy scenario to envisage. So stoked to have laid a guitar part on a Beatles track and enthused with the new record as much as anyone else in the music world, over excitement and a quiet urge to impress the party finds you whipping out the secret vinyl and indulging in your self-appointed Beatles salesman.
Hubris came crashing down when Clapton was on the receiving of one of Harrsion’s rare rages. Clapton explained: “I remember being incredibly hurt because I thought I’d been doing a grand job of promoting their music to really discriminating people. It brought me down to earth with a bang, and it was a good lesson to learn about boundaries, and not making assumptions, but it stung like hell”.
Avoiding him for a little while, bygones became bygones, and the pair’s friendship was rekindled, even after Harrison’s breakup with Boyd and her subsequent remarriage to Clapton. Comrades til the end, Clapton stepped up as musical director for 2002’s Concert for George memorial show in the Royal Albert Hall and performed a stirring rendition of their enduring bluesy ode to latent love’s awaited discovery.
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