‘This Guitar (Can’t Keep from Crying)’: The most neglected George Harrison song
Each individual Beatle could have just retired from public life after the Fab Four split, and one would understand why. It would be a tragedy, to be clear. I don’t want to consider a world without Plastic Ono Band, ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, ‘My Sweet Lord’ and… the Thomas the Tank Engine narrations, I guess, but how in Christ’s name do you follow up the literal Beatles?! The sheer pressure that was on each individual Fab to succeed was intense, but for George Harrison, I can imagine the external pressure wasn’t the issue.
After all, this was a man who spent the latter half of his time in The Beatles throwing a strop because none of his songs were being used on the records. He saw himself as a songwriter on par with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and on the strength of his best moments, he wasn’t far off. ‘Something’, ‘Here Comes The Sun’ and ‘Within You Without You’ are some of the finest songs The Beatles ever created, and he wanted more opportunities to prove that.
Yet, he wasn’t. At least not as much as he would have liked. While he was given at least one spot on The Fabs’ latter-day records, sometimes two, this led to George stockpiling a small mountain of songs that he considered as good as any Beatles song that made its way onto their records. So when the band came to an end, it was time for George Harrison to make good on those words and show the world just what they were missing.
Thus, the external pressure to have hits and live up to the years of success he’d had in the world’s biggest band must have been intense. Yet the internal pressure to prove himself the equal of Paul and John must have been so much worse. Fortunately, his solo debut album All Things Must Pass was essentially all those songs put into one album (it’s why it was a triple album). Thus, that album’s massive success must have been a cathartic moment of vindication.
Where did the most neglected George Harrison song come from?
However, the unfortunate side effect of releasing that many songs at once is that you have no more songs, and by his own admission, Harrison wasn’t a Lennon-like consummate artiste or a McCartney-like songwriting machine. He appreciated having his own time and pursuing his own interests, be that learning the sitar or producing movies or just finding himself. Never forget that The Beatles split when Harrison was 27 years old.
Thus, George Harrison, more than the other Beatles, was often the first to dip back into his Beatles experiences for songwriting inspiration. Much of this would come later in his solo career, like when he’d flip ‘Here Comes The Sun’ on its head for 1978’s ‘Here Comes The Moon’, or when he’d dive straight into dewey-eyed nostalgia on Cloud Nine‘s somewhat cringeworthy ‘When We Was Fab’.
However, there was one version of this that worked like gangbusters. Perhaps helped by the fact that it’s a sequel song, or a “son” as Harrison himself would put it, to arguably his greatest moment as a songwriter ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps‘. ‘This Guitar (Can’t Keep From Crying)’ was written as a response to critics of his 1974 tour with Ravi Shankar, which got venomous notices from the press for being too much of a departure from his years with The Beatles.
Thus, the ever-confrontational George Harrison decided to give those hacks a kiss-off, singing “I thought by now you knew the score / You missed the point just like before / But this guitar can’t keep from crying.” Quite wonderfully, he builds this clapback around a structural and melodic call-back to the White Album classic. By giving his naysayers exactly what they asked for and delivering it with a slap around the chops, Harrison also found his muse and created one of his high points as a solo act.
