As George Harrison sat trying to explain the song structure of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ to his fellow bandmates, he couldn’t help but feel frustrated by their nonchalant reaction. “I worked on that song with John, Paul and Ringo one day, and they were not interested in it at all,” he said, “And I knew inside of me that it was a nice song.”
Harrison got Eric Clapton into the studio to help record the guitar, given that his other bandmates didn’t seem bothered by the song. We all know now that ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ is one of The Beatles most well-respected and loved songs. If it weren’t for Harrisons insistence that it was a good song, it likely wouldn’t have seen the light of day.
This was a common occurrence for Harrison, as he was a prolific songwriter but constantly had his ideas rejected, given they weren’t deemed fit enough for the established Paul McCartney and John Lennon sound. As such, when The Beatles broke up, and the band members pursued solo careers, Harrison relished that he could suddenly record all of the songs he had been sitting on throughout his time with the band.
His album All Things Must Pass is celebrated as one of the greatest solo albums by a Beatles member. It’s a great collection of songs and features many of Harrison’s contemporaries who helped put the record together. It’s an album that still holds up, as people frequently listen to it and enjoy Harrison’s songwriting majesty.
One of the most popular songs from the album is ‘My Sweet Lord’. It was Harrison’s first-ever single as a solo artist and also one of his most famous. He said in an interview that the song was written about a mantra. “First, it’s simple. The thing about a mantra, you see,” he said, “Mantras are, well, they call it a mystical sound vibration encased in a syllable. It has this power within it. It’s just hypnotic.”
Even though the song was successful and marked a new chapter for Harrison, it wasn’t long before it proved to be a point of contention for him. Harrison was taken to court by The Shirelles, who were a soulful girl group. It was claimed that to write ‘My Sweet Lord’, Harrison had ripped off their track, ‘He’s So Fine’.
When John Lennon was asked about the song and whether or not he believed Harrison used the similarities on purpose, he seemed to hint at the idea that it was all intentional. “Well, he walked right into it,” Lennon said during an interview with Playboy, “He knew what he was doing.”
When the interviewer asked Lennon to clarify what he meant and whether he thought Harrison ripped off the song on purpose, he said that Harrison could have gone to lengths to limit the similarities. “He must have known, you know, he’s smarter than that. It’s irrelevant, actually, only on a monetary level does it matter,” he said, “He could have changed a couple of bars in that song and nobody could ever have touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off.”
