How to unfold your love. Starting life as a tender acoustic song, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ became an epic rock track, and one of George Harrison’s finest … Wenner found the lyrics "slightly self-righteous and preaching", representing "a general set of incidents, a message, like a sermon, impersonally directed to everyone", and concluded: "I am willing to bet something substantial that the lead guitarist on this cut is Eric Clapton, yet another involution of the circular logic on which this song [is] so superbly constructed as a musical piece. Still my guitar gently weeps. Difficulty: intermediate. Eric Clapton & Paul McCartney Look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping While my guitar gently weeps Look at the floor and I see it need sweeping Still my guitar gently weeps I don't know why nobody told you How to unfold your love I don't know why someone controlled you They bought and sold you Look at the world and I notice it's turning While my guitar gently weeps … [6] As Harrison put it, "[the book] seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else, as opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental. Inspiration for the song came to Harrison when reading the I Ching, which, as Harrison put it, “seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else, as opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental“. [85][nb 7] According to Beatles historian Erin Torkelson Weber, the release of the White Album marked the start of a period when many observers began to consider his songs "equal to some of Lennon and McCartney's best compositions", a view that was heightened with his two contributions to the Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road, "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun". [55] While Harrison led the band in welcoming back their drummer, by installing a large flower display all over Starr's drum kit,[56][57] he continued to think that his bandmates were not giving their best to the song. Eric Clapton’s most well-known guest recording session undoubtedly took place on 6 September 1968. [102] McCartney identified it as one of his favourite selections on the 1995–96 Anthology outtakes series,[103] and he grouped the song with "Something" and "Here Comes the Sun" as candidates for Harrison's "greatest track". [47][48] In this atmosphere, Harrison had initially been reluctant to present his new compositions to the group. It was written by George Harrison, the band's lead guitarist. The song conveys his dismay at the world's unrealised potential for universal love, which he refers to as "the love there that's sleeping". Harrison and Clapton often performed the song together live, during which they shared the lead guitar role over the closing section. [105] Jagger said: "It's lovely, plaintive. While my guitar gently weeps I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping Still my guitar gently weeps I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love I don't know how someone controlled you They bought and sold you. Clapton's performance was ranked 42nd in Guitar World's 2008 list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos". Paul McCartney, another one of the five original musicians who appeared on the original Beatles recording (John Lennon is the fifth), would go on to perform "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with Clapton and Starr in November 2002 at the Concert for George. [149] Santana did a cover for his twentieth album Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time, in 2010, featuring singer India Arie and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. [41] Harrison biographer Joshua Greene says that its message reflects the pessimism encouraged by world events throughout 1968, such as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in the United States, and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. [10], The song reflects the disharmonious atmosphere within the Beatles following their return from India. [11] Harrison continued to work on the lyrics after this initial writing session. The song conveys his dismay at the world's unrealised potential for universal love, which he refers to as "the love there that's sleeping". Who says the word go at the start of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Clapton’s contribution can be heard in the song’s guitar solo and blues-inspired rhythm. I don't know why nobody told you. During the recording of The Beatles (aka the White Album), Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr were getting on each other's nerves. [109][110] Clapton's performance was ranked 42nd in Guitar World's 2008 list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos". [152] In 2016, Regina Spektor performed the song for the soundtrack to the film Kubo and the Two Strings, accompanied by Kevin Kmetz on a shamisen. So I opened this book and I saw ‘gently weeps.’ I shut the book and then I started the tune.”. [118] At Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, held at Madison Square Garden in New York on 1 August 1971, Clapton performed the song on a Gibson Byrdland, a hollow-body guitar more suited to jazz[119] or country music than rock. [99], Writing for The Observer in 2004, Pete Paphides described "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as "George Harrison's startling coming of age as a songwriter" and one of the few tracks that "pick themselves" when listeners attempt to edit the double album down to a single disc. [71], Everett credits Clapton's guitar contribution with making the Beatles recording a "monumental" track. 5:03. This version remained in EMI's archives through the 1980s. S initial reluctance: “ he said, ‘ Oh, no you. Before the final version, with entire verses being lost along the way in early 1968 it left free! The start of While My Guitar Gently Weeps '' at every one of the Beatles for a full-band in... 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