Who plays bass on The Beatles song ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’?
‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ is one of the most famous Beatles songs of all time. Forever enshrined in pop music lore as one of George Harrison’s most stirring compositions, the White Album cut transcended its original 1968 release to become a permanent fixture on classic rock radio. During the few time that Harrison played live during his post-Beatles career, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ frequently found its way onto his setlists.
“I wrote ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ at my mother’s house in Warrington,” Harrison explained in Anthology. “I was thinking about the Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes…the Eastern concept is that whatever happens is all meant to be, and that there’s no such thing as coincidence – every little item that’s going down has a purpose,” he added.
“‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ was a simple study based on that theory,” Harrison said. “I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book – as it would be a relative to that moment, at that time. I picked up a book at random, opened it, saw ‘gently weeps’, then laid the book down again and started the song.”
One of the best bits of well-known Beatles trivia is that Harrison’s friend Eric Clapton contributed the lead guitar on the final track. “We tried to record it, but John and Paul were so used to just cranking out their tunes that it was very difficult at times to get serious and record one of mine,” Harrison remembered. “It wasn’t happening. They weren’t taking it seriously and I don’t think they were even all playing on it, and so I went home that night thinking, ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ because I knew the song was pretty good.”
“The next day, I was driving into London with Eric Clapton, and I said, ‘What are you doing today? Why don’t you come to the studio and play on this song for me?’ He said, ‘Oh, no – I can’t do that. Nobody’s ever played on a Beatles record and the others wouldn’t like it.’ I said, ‘Look, it’s my song and I’d like you to play on it.’ So he came in,” Harrison added. “I said, ‘Eric’s going to play on this one,’ and it was good because that then made everyone act better. Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro and they all took it more seriously.”
That explanation also opens the door to an ongoing debate: who played bass on the track? For years, there was no conjecture – it was assumed to be Paul McCartney. Most authors and scholars attributed the part to McCartney after the band’s breakup, but in Harrison’s recollection, McCartney played the piano on the basic track. The main bassline was heavier and grungier than most of McCartney’s lines, so fans weren’t entirely sold.
Giles Martin, the son of producer George Martin and the producer helming The Beatles’ modern reissues and remixes, further added speculation to the lineup when he credited John Lennon for the bass part on the 50th-anniversary deluxe reissue of The White Album. The bass line certainly sounds like it was played on the Fender VI, the six-string bass that both Lennon and Harrison played at the time.
The most likely lineup for the basic track had Harrison on acoustic guitar, Clapton on electric, Ringo Starr on drums, McCartney on piano, and Lennon on organ. During the overdub stage, it seems likely that McCartney went in and added a bassline to the track. However, it also seems likely that either Lennon or Harrison doubled that part on the Fender VI. With the credits now dispersed between McCartney and Lennon, the likely answer is that both McCartney and Lennon added bass to the track.
Check out ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ down below and see if you can spot who is playing bass.
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