Paul McCartney’s favourite version of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’
Towards the end of The Beatles, George Harrison became a musical force to be reckoned with. After cracking the foundation set in place by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Harrison started to emerge as a songwriter as the years went on, making a handful of classics on every album like ‘Taxman’ and ‘If I Needed Someone’. While Harrison was always progressing forward, it wasn’t until ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ that one of his songs outdid his bandmates.
Set in a minor key, Harrison sings about his guitar gently weeping as he talks about the harsh side of the human experience, going from mundane tasks like the floor needing sweeping to the world slowly passing by around him. Although Harrison knew he had a good song on his hands, it wasn’t taken as seriously when he first presented it to the band.
As told in The Beatles Anthology, Harrison remembered the rest of the band passively going through the song, recalling: “I don’t even think they were all playing on it. So I went home the night after and said, ‘Well, that’s a shame because I knew it was a pretty good song.” In order to boost morale, Harrison enlisted the help of one of his fellow guitar heroes to help bring the song together.
After asking Eric Clapton to sit in on the session, the rest of the band came alive, with Paul McCartney adding aching harmonies as ‘Slowhand’ made his guitar wail on the final solo. Although this version helped ignite the rest of the band into working on the song, Paul McCartney considers a different version his favourite.
When talking about the composition of the track, Macca claimed to like the Anthology version of the song even more than the one released on the album, saying: “That ‘Guitar Gently Weeps’ though, the best version I like anyway now is that solo version of George’s”. Before the band’s involvement, the version that McCartney refers to is a more simplistic take on the song, featuring Harrison playing on an acoustic guitar with a capo putting it in a lower key.
While the song is missing the iconic solo from Clapton, the more subdued take on the vocal is much more mournful in this version, as Harrison practically sounds on the verge of tears as he sings this version. There are also a few extra verses in this version that got cut from the studio take, including Harrison talking about sitting alone and doing nothing but ageing.
As for Harrison, his favourite take on the tune actually came from a live version that he and Clapton did in Japan in the 1990s, recalling, “I’m particularly happy about the way it came out on the live version. It’s far superior, I think, to the original studio recording, and Eric just plays his butt off. It’s really good.”
The acoustic version also got a release, being included as part of the Love album that came out, which featured a variety of Beatles songs arranged by George Martin and his son Giles for the Cirque de Soleil show. Regardless of which version was superior, this was the first breakthrough for Harrison going from a stand-out songwriter to someone who could contend with Lennon and McCartney.
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