[TheHutt]

Кстати... я тут нашел в журнале MOJO потрясающую статью о Харрисоне и записи его песни "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." Статья сердце защемила...
Только что закончил ее забивать в комп. если никто не против, я ее выложу здесь.

GUN FOR HIRE
When Eric Clapton guested on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, he helped out a friend and kept The Beatles on their toes. By Ashley Kahn.

FRUSTRATION… FRUSTRATION… TRANSCENDENCE. That pretty much sums up the three-month creative process that brought a delicate George Harrison ditty ruminating on spiritual disconnection up to the sound and status of an enduring rock ballad. And, contrary to the possessive in the title, the irony of My Guitar Gently Weeps is that the featured instrument belongs to another. In 1968, Eric Clapton’s brilliant, sticky-fingered blues solo was the uncredited coup de grace that made this White Album track a classic. Today, it stands as the most celebrated performance on any Beatles record by a non-Beatle: a melancholy reminder of a band falling out of harmony, and of a friendship that outlasted a legendary love triangle.

For the group, the end of summer ’68 was a pressure-cooker schedule crammed with TV appearances, film shoots, arguments and sessions for their as-yet unnamed next album. Little surprise then that While My Guitar … was largely ignored by the other Beatles, who were more focused on material such as John’s Dear Prudence and Paul’s Helter Skelter. “They were not interested in it at all,” said Harrison.

Early that summer, the conception of While My Guitar… began with an experiment inspired by the “nothing-is-coincidental” philosophy held within the I Ching. “When I visited my parents’ house I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book,” Harrison explained in I Me Mine. “[ I ] saw ‘gently weeps’, then laid the book down again and started the song.”

George’s first draft included a list of alliterative words (“Tampering, tapering, tempering… Wandering, watering, wavering”) and a gelling theme of universality (“I look at the world and I notice it’s turning… with every mistake we must surely be learning”). Recording began on July 25, eight weeks into the sessions for the White Album, with George first tracking an airy, mostly solo acoustic demo. Now featured on Anthology 3, his vocal and solo guitar were spiced by a subtle organ overdub, an extra last verse and little hint of the more robust version to come.

The EMI studio logs show The Beatles as a whole approaching While My Guitar… six weeks later. On three separate days, an eventual 44 takes brought the song to its fleshed-out maturity. “George wanted to get the sound of a crying guitar, but he didn’t want to use a wah-wah pedal,” stated Abbey Road technical engineer Brian Gibson. “We spent a whole night trying to get it to work.”

By 3.45 am on the morning of September 6, The Beatles stopped and take 25 was deemed the best performance. But George returned to his Surrey home less than enthused. “It wasn’t happening,” he remembered. “So I went home that night thinking, Well, that’s a shame.”

Later that same day, George found what he needed in the driver’s seat. Grabbing a lift to the studio with Clapton, he had a flash of inspiration, turned to the fellow guitarist, and said “We’re going to do this song. Come on and play on it.” Clapton objected, “I can’t do that. Nobody ever plays on Beatles records.” But George’s insistence trumped any reservation; and there was another thing. “Look, it’s my song, and I want you to play on it.”

That settled, Clapton stepped into the studio, unpacked his Les Paul and quietly joined the group to slight surprise, but no objection. “We’d had instrumentalists before,” recalled Paul, “but we’d never actually had someone other than George – or occasionally me or John – play guitar.” Clapton’s presence added an important element beyond the musical; he put the lads on point. “Eric came in and the other guys were good as gold because he was there,” confirmed George. “Paul got on the piano and played a nice intro…”

Paul’s percussive attack sounded a funky, bell-like opening to a tune that built on the best take from the day before, adding overdubs of a new lead vocal, fuzz bass, vocal harmonies, percussion and organ. And, of course, Clapton’s vibrato-rich, impromptu solo. “His style fitted well with the song,” was Paul’s ultimate judgement.

But there remained a slight problem, recalled George. “We listened to it back… it [was] not Beatley enough. So we put it through the ADT [automatic double tracking] to wobble it a bit.” The effect remains one of the song’s most distinctive aspects, enhancing the song’s lugubrious aspect.

Thirty-five years on, While My Guitar… has become a tuneful symbol of the connection between the two guitarists, a friendship that began during the 1964-65 Christmas season when The Yardbirds featured on the bill of The Beatles’ three-week stand at the Hammersmith Odeon. “That’s the first time I met him,” remembered Harrison. “Then somehow Brian Epstein was managing The Cream and The Bee Gees and… that’s when I really got to know him quite a bit, it must have been 1966.”

Much has been made of the role of George’s first wife Patti Boyd, of the songs she inspired both guitarists to write (Something, Layla) and of Clapton’s long-frustrated attraction to Patti. George himself remained unaffected by the whole affair. “I think that deep down inside [Eric] wishes that it really pissed me off,” he stated only a few years ago. “But… I was happy that she went off, because we’d finished together and it made things easier for me.”

In truth, the Harrison/Boyd union survived a few years (11 legally – 1966/77 –but less in reality) while the Clapton/Boyd marriage lasted nine years (1979/88, though they were together from 1974). What endured the longest was the Harrison/Clapton partnership. Again and again, they met and performed: Concert for Bangla Desh, in 1971; The Prince’s Trust, ’87; Japan, ’90. As the years progressed, those performances grew rarer, always marked by the tune that had became their song: While My Guitar Gently Weeps.