The piano line George Harrison never got tired of: “Note for note”
The Beatles’ vision was always to become the “toppermost of the poppermost”. They managed to make British music be taken as seriously as the American blues boys that came before them and were irresistibly cheeky while doing so, including the shy George Harrison. As the success grew, it’s a fair assessment to say that their egos did, too, which sparked unruly and, quite frankly, childish spats of selfish competition.
By the time The Beatles recorded the White Album, tensions had begun to build amongst the boys. The fight for ownership, creative lead, and the longest hair was on. George Harrison had successfully given the band ‘Within You, Without You’ and ‘Taxman’, but still found himself scrapping to be taken as seriously as Lennon and McCartney. At this point, not even Ringo was far behind him.
The White Album was the first of The Beatles records to be mixed for stereo. This opened up the opportunity for a spatiality of parts to work more cohesively in the mix. Unfortunately, this wasn’t reflected in the boys’ attitudes, and the respective songwriters of each song received very little input from other members. This is outrageously evident in the bizarre jumps from baroque pop to blues and back to rock.
The writing of the album made each member a recluse in their own creative spirals, so intently that Harrison recalls McCartney being “so on a roll—but it was a roll encompassing his own self. And in his mind, everything that was going on around him was just there to accompany him. He wasn’t sensitive to stepping on other people’s egos or feelings.” In all fairness, it paid off, as McCartney reportedly managed to bag 11 writer/co-writer credits.
However, he did manage to soften his ruthless tactics in order to help out the most peaceful Beatle, Harrison, on perhaps his greatest work, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. After Harrison admitted that at this stage, it was difficult to even reach a point of being able to offer his own songs to a record, in 1992, he shared that “Paul would always be really creative with what he’d contribute. For instance, that galloping piano part on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ was Paul’s, and it’s brilliant right to this day.”
As the rightful guardian of the song, Harrison continued to perform it on his solo tours and gracefully gave a nod to the collaborative efforts that he cherished long after the disbandment of The Beatles. He went on to admit that “on the Live in Japan album, I got our keyboardist to play [McCartney’s piano part] note for note.”
The version of the track on Harrison’s Live in Japan album overtly features Eric Clapton playing his incredible solo instead of him being uncredited as on the original recording. Whether he liked it or not, it was a smart move not to be featured. There were already too many soldiers in that war.
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