{"id":285452,"date":"2025-11-27T02:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T02:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/285452\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T02:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T02:58:11","slug":"the-mystery-behind-eric-clapton-and-while-my-guitar-gently-weeps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/285452\/","title":{"rendered":"The mystery behind Eric Clapton and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Clapton\u2019s guitar solo<\/a> on the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is among the most noteworthy moments in the band\u2019s history. It marked the first time an outside guitarist contributed to the group’s recordings.<\/p>\n

Classical musicians had played on their tracks over the years, and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, as well as Marianne Faithfull, sang on their 1966 hit “Yellow Submarine.” But Clapton’s solo on the George Harrison composition was a game changer.<\/p>\n

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Even Clapton was surprised when Harrison made the invitation. “I can’t do that,” he said<\/a>. “Nobody ever plays on the Beatles’ records.”<\/p>\n

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Remarkably, many of those involved in the recording have no recollection of the session. That includes the man behind the recording console that day in Abbey Road Studio Two: engineer Ken Scott.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember absolutely nothing about it,\u201d he says in conversation with Rick Beato [via Guitar World<\/a>]. \u201cWhen I was writing my book [Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust], I asked the question, \u2018What was it like, Eric playing on that? How did they react?\u2019 and I had to answer, \u2018I can\u2019t remember.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He even underwent hypnotherapy, which uses relaxation and focus to access the mind’s subconscious, to try to get his memories back.<\/p>\n

He was surprised to find he’s not alone.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI went to John Smith, who was my assistant engineer, [who said], \u2018I don\u2019t remember anything about it.\u2019<\/p>\n

“I went to Chris Thomas, George Martin\u2019s assistant, who was producing at that point because George was on holiday, and [he said], \u2018I don\u2019t remember anything about it.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing I vaguely remember is Eric saying that the only way he\u2019d play on it is if he sounded like the Beatles, as opposed to Eric Clapton.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ken Scott: Crafting the Sound of The Beatles, David Bowie and Mahavishnu Orchestra – YouTube
\n\"Ken<\/p>\n

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The guitar part was later treated to ADT \u2014 Artificial Double-Tracking \u2014 to pull its sound further away from the guitarist\u2019s usual realm. The device \u2014 which used a tape delay with a variable-speed oscillator to create a slightly mismatched copy of a recorded track \u2014 had been dreamed up by the engineer Ken Townsend at the request of John Lennon, who was looking for a way of avoiding double-tracking his vocals.<\/p>\n

When applied rather heavily to Clapton\u2019s electric guitar<\/a> part \u2014 which he played on Harrison\u2019s \u201cLucy\u201d Les Paul<\/a> \u2014 it gave his solo its rather peculiar, wobbling sound.<\/p>\n

The Beatles – While My Guitar Gently Weeps – YouTube
\n\"The<\/p>\n

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There is at least one member of the Abbey Road crew who recalled Clapton’s session. The late engineer Brian Gibson spoke about the recording with Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn for his book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. <\/p>\n

His memory was quite clear, and it may explain why the session passed without making much of an impression on those involved.<\/p>\n

“Eric behaved just like any session musician,” Gibson said. “Very quiet. Just got on and played. That was it… There were no theatrics involved.”<\/p>\n

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” would kick off a fruitful creative period for Harrison, who had begun collaborating with Clapton to escape the creativity-stifling atmosphere in which he found himself in the Beatles. Their partnership spawned Cream\u2019s “Badge” as well as “Here Comes the Sun,” another Harrison hit, from 1969’s Abbey Road.<\/p>\n

In related news, the 1913 Gibson acoustic the pair frequently wrote on surfaced on Reverb earlier this year<\/a> with a hefty $1 million price tag. It’s currently up for auction<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eric Clapton\u2019s guitar solo on the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is among the most noteworthy moments…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-285452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}