The musician Tom Petty thought sounded immaculate: “So inventive”
There’s no artist who can claim to have a perfect track record. While there are a few musicians with inflated egos who like to say that nothing that they ever did was bad, it would be insane to think that there aren’t at least a few tracks that don’t measure up to the best things that you’ve ever done. Tom Petty was never going to claim that he was a rock and roll god, but working with George Harrison showed the heartland rocker that the guitarist had the master’s touch.
Of course, that is because Harrison may have been one of the most subtle guitar gods to walk the Earth. He could certainly play the most lyrical guitar solos ever written, but he was usually one to downplay his ego half the time, either shying away from the spotlight or not getting in the way of John Lennon or Paul McCartney in The Beatles.
When he struck out on his own, his use of the slide guitar is still one of his greatest contributions to rock and roll. Whereas artists like Duane Allman would adopt the slide guitar as a core part of their sound, no one made it sound more human than Harrison, usually taking what could have been a great vocal line and making it sound like the guitar was crying out in pain whenever he performed with it on.
There are even a few times when you can hear Harrison’s influence in Petty’s music. Aside from working with him in The Traveling Wilburys and the former Beatle helping out on Full Moon Fever, Mike Campbell actually filled in a similar role whenever he played with Petty, being well-versed in the slide guitar and never playing an over-the-top solo unless it was called for.
Still, even Petty had to admit that no one in his group, or any other group for that matter, was going to measure up to Harrison, telling Rolling Stone, “He was very in tune when he played; the slide was very precise and had just a beautiful vibrato on it. It really sounded like a voice, like a very distinct, signature voice that came out of him. Just listen to those records. They’re so immaculate, so inventive. He was a guy who could just add so much.”
And it’s not in the case of Harrison’s solo career. Whenever Lennon and McCartney showed their mates how a song went in their early days, all they had were chords and the melody, meaning that Harrison would need to add in guitar fills on the fly, which resulted in some of the best rock and roll lead breaks ever.
In fact, some of them are so much a part of the song that Harrison should have probably gotten credit on the final mix. Even though ‘And I Love Her’ was primarily written by McCartney, it’s a crime that Harrison didn’t get any proper credit for his opening lead guitar lick, which is practically the meat of the entire song.
Even though Harrison will forever be known as the more reserved member of The Beatles, his music was the glue that kept everything together even when things were dire. Yes, he may have been considered “quiet” by comparison, but when he did choose to speak through his guitar, a lot of fans stopped what they were doing to listen.
