(Credits: Far Out / The Travelling Wilburys)
Sat 7 March 2026 16:15, UK
Any musician would have considered it the highest privilege to be in the presence of someone like George Harrison.
All of The Beatles had almost ascended to being higher beings by the time that they conquered the world, so to say that what they were doing was wrong or that any of them were in any way fallible wasn’t exactly going to be taken well by any of the potential Fab fans. But even when the band was falling apart, there were more than a few musicians who weren’t exactly in love with the idea of how Harrison started working out his first solo moves in the studio.
At the same time, Harrison seemed to have his own language when it came to structuring his songs. He didn’t have the luxury of bouncing off someone like Lennon and McCartney did, so a lot of his greatest tunes were about trying to find a way to fit something a bit abnormal into the mix. Not everyone was ready for a song like ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, but across the entire tune, Harrison was always looking for ways to twist people’s expectations, whether it was a key change here and there or adding in one note that sounded wrong in exactly the right way.
So when he finally broke out of the Beatles’ shackles, he seemed finally able to do what he wanted to. All Things Must Pass was about getting the best songs that he had written down on tape after being ignored for so many years, and he would gladly bring in as many friends as he could to help him. But even if he was having the time of his life with everyone from Derek and the Dominos to Billy Preston, his heart was still going out to Ringo Starr when he first began his solo career.
Starr seemed to have the least amount of career ambitions after the band split, and since he wasn’t a songwriter, no one wanted to see him fade into obscurity. All of his former Fabs were more than willing to help him out on a song or two, so after making his own muzak album on Sentimental Journey, Harrison found the perfect way to help Starr by helping him finish off some of his greatest tunes.
He had already done the same thing when working on ‘Octopus’s Garden’, so doing the same thing for some of his early singles was a no-brainer. But whereas a song like ‘It Don’t Come Easy’ was meant to be a simple little tune for Starr to kick off his solo career with, getting Stephen Stills to work on some of the guitar parts did make for a bit of a clash when he first walked into the studio.
Stills was used to working in his own way, so when he saw that Harrison and Starr didn’t have everything together, he left a lot of the legwork for the Fabs, saying, “George was friendly at first… and then we played together. I’ll never forget it. We had a session with Ringo, and George would start a solo as the playback was going by, and then make a mistake and start over again, even though the changes were different. Which drove me absolutely out of my mind. I finally had to put my guitar down and say: ‘When you’re done…’ I don’t know how he took it.”
Granted, maybe Stills wasn’t quite used to the way that the Beatles communicated with each other. Everyone seems to have their own common language in the studio, and even up until Harrison passed away, he was telling Jeff Lynne to use such musical terms as ‘more wobble’ on the strings when he was working on the final pieces of his album Brainwashed with the help of Dhani Harrison.
It’s not the easiest thing in the world working alongside one of The Beatles, but if you’re willing to go into their musical world for a little bit, some of the greatest musicians alive have shared their stories about how well things end up falling into place. There are plenty of opportunities for musicians to think too hard about what they’re playing, but if you’re willing to sit with the song for the right amount of time, it doesn’t take long for the classics to emerge.