The solo that changed guitar playing, according to George Harrison: “Opening up new worlds”
If George Harrison, the inventor of playing the guitar, gave you a compliment on your own instrumental style, you’d sit up and listen.
Of course, ‘inventor’ is jokingly pushing it, but the point still remains that the former Beatle was one of the greatest axemen to ever walk the Earth, and for every rocker you come across with a six-string in their hand, many of the roads lead back to the root of his influence. He was a god of the form, put simply, and nothing could change that.
Yet even still, Harrison didn’t just come out of the womb plucking the mesmerising melodies to ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. He had to learn from somewhere, and indeed, there was a path of rock and roll icons that paved the way for him to be enshrined at the gates of musical heaven with his untouchable status.
After all, Harrison and all his Beatles chums grew up in the height of the 1950s, a time when rock and roll was bursting onto the scene and with it, a whole new way of playing music, courtesy of a special set of players. Buddy Holly was obviously prime among them, because without his gracing of the scene, all future guitar virtuosos knew they would be nothing. Everyone from Keith Richards to Eric Clapton hailed him as a pioneering hero.
Harrison, the Liverpudlian legend, was no different in this respect, crediting the ‘50s hero with the largest part of his sonic education, as well as his entertainment back in the day. There was no need to be flamboyant in his praise, though – he said it best in a 1974 interview when he stated: “I think one of the greatest people for me was Buddy Holly.”
Harrison summed it up perfectly by adding, “He was very good – exceptionally good”. This was particularly true because Holly’s work opened the would-be Beatle up to expansive new horizons; sounds he had never heard, and notes within solos that he had never seen played by anyone before.
“Buddy Holly was the first time I ever heard A to F-sharp minor,” he explained, recalling the moment he first heard it. “Fantastic! He was opening up new worlds there. And then A to F, A, D, E, F and F# minor. He was sensational.” Indeed, it does take a true master of the craft to show you that the possibilities are really endless.
“That’s still one of the greatest guitar solos of all time. Right till this day, I could play you the ‘Peggy Sue’ solo any time,“ he said of Holly’s groundbreaking 1957 rocker in an interview with Guitar Player. While ‘Peggy Sue’ might be a simple solo when stacked up alongside what followed from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, you could argue it was a vital precursor to what followed, and its innovation still stands up.
Holly’s career, let alone his time on the planet at large, was tragically short – but it spoke volumes about just the type of musician he was that in the space of just a few years, he was able to create a transcendental legacy that has lasted the rest of history, from Harrison to the rest of the world.
So really, when it boils down to it, Harrison may be one of the gods when it comes to the guitar, but you could stay that Holly comes in at just one step above him on the ladder. It’s not like hierarchies truly matter at that level, but if anyone’s still intent on keeping the score, the ‘50s star might just have won them all.
