Session heavyweight George Terry has had quite the career, having amassed credits with ABBA, Bee Gees, Diana Ross and many, many other big-name acts over the years.

Not only that, during the 1970s the unsung electric guitar hero was Eric Clapton’s guitarist, providing chops on No Reason to Cry (1976) and Backless (1978), and hitting the road on numerous occasions throughout the decade.

Through Slowhand, Terry was also given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet a Beatle – which took place after a particularly heavy night of drinking.

Speaking to Guitar World, Terry recalled the time he met George Harrison while staying at Clapton’s house.

“The band had to practice jams of slow blues tunes for over a week,” Terry explains. “It drove me crazy to do the same thing every day. After more than a week of it, I had a little too much Jack Daniels and went to sleep in the upstairs bedroom.

“Early the next morning, I woke up to Eric and George playing ukuleles at the foot of my bed. I thought I was dreaming, but the hangover assured me I wasn’t.”

Terry’s time as Clapton’s guitarist during the ’70s was certainly eventful, even without the impromptu ukulele jams with George Harrison.

He once had to step in and cover his boss’ playing when Slowhand was spiked with LSD before a show.

The pair would do great things together in the 1970s, and as Terry recalls, their relationship began rather spontaneously: Terry – who was at this point already a seasoned session player – spotted Clapton walking towards Criteria Studios, and offered to give him a lift.

“After giving Eric a ride to the studio, I told him I played with an in-house band that Mack Emerman [who founded Criteria Studios in 1958] let hang out there.

“I told Eric that we usually play for fun, in between being called into sessions, and invited him to join us if he wanted to play a bit or run down a song. He took me up on the offer and we played a few different kinds of grooves.”

Slash might be best known for his solo and Guns N' Roses work, but there's no denying he's also the ultimate collaborator. From his work with Michael Jackson, to trading licks with Iggy Pop and even whipping up a solo on I’m Just Ken from the 2023 blockbuster Barbie, Slash has racked up his fair share of credits.

As such, it takes a lot for Slash to be starstruck. However, he couldn’t help but do “a double take” when he was invited by producer Don Was to feature on Bob Dylan’s 1990 release, Under the Red Sky, and walked into a session full of legends.

“The scene at the studio was a total trip,” Slash told Guitar World in 1990. “I walked in at about 2 p.m. and George Harrison and Kim Basinger were there hanging out – I did a double take on that one.”

Yet, he nearly missed Dylan himself. “Next, I noticed this little guy wearing leather gloves and a hooded surfer's sweater, which struck me as odd because it was warm out. Finally, I realized it was Dylan. I thought, ‘What's going on here?’”

Slash described Dylan as “pretty quiet” while “George was laying down some slide, and we started just getting drunk and stuff.” Slash was asked to play on a song with “a pretty silly title, Wiggle Wiggle.”.

“I just learned it on the spot,” he remembered. “It was such a simple [song], yet superb.”

Yet, Dylan had a very specific direction in mind which took even Slash by surprise.

“When I went to play the lead, Bob came up and asked me to play like ... [incredulously] Django Reinhardt! l couldn't figure out where he was coming from. I didn't hear that at all!” he recalled.

“So basically, I just laid down the part I thought should be there. Everybody seemed to be happy with it. It was just a funny day, but the song got done.”

The solo was eventually left on the cutting room floor as Dylan thought it sounded too much like Guns N' Roses.

However, in a more recent interview with Gibson, Slash said that he’s more than grateful for the experience, as, legends in one room aside, “at that time, I hadn't done a lot of session work and it was a great learning experience.”

And, speaking of Slash, one of his crew members revealed what it takes to tech and tour with him.

When James Taylor was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the turn of the century with three Grammys to his name, the legendary folk rock singer-songwriter had the Beatles to thank for kickstarting his career.

After all, he got his first real taste of success when the Fab Four signed him to their label, Apple Records. Following a year or so of trying to make it in New York with his band, the Flying Machine, the group “starved to death”, and Taylor looked to new shores for new opportunities.

“After the band dissolved in New York City, I went home to North Carolina to sort of recover and lick my wounds for a while,” Taylor tells Jimmy Kimmel in a new interview.

“Then, not knowing what else to do, I talked my folks into buying me a plane ticket to go visit a friend who lived in London. I took my guitar and some songs, and I ran into some people who were enthusiastic about my music. They convinced me to make a little demo.

“My friends and I started sort of shopping these around, and eventually, I got in touch with Peter Asher,” he continues. “I went over to his house, played through some songs I had, and as luck would have it, he had just taken on a job as the head of A&R. He was looking for new talent to sign to Apple Records.”

Established in 1968, Apple Records was founded by none other than the Beatles.

Speaking to Guitar World about what happened after his meeting with Asher, he once detailed: “Peter and his wife really heard something in my music. And he took me to Apple, where I played for George and Paul.

“I had some kind of competence and the arrogance of youth when auditioning for George Harrison and Paul McCartney, without which nobody would ever do anything, because you'd hedge your bets.”

Needless to say, he did enough to score a record deal and recorded his self-titled debut album with the help of both Harrison and McCartney, in the same studio the band had committed the White Album to tape.

For a musician whose previous creative project had “starved to death” just years earlier, it was a remarkable turnaround, and one that set him on the path to becoming one of his generation's greatest songwriters.

Something in the Way She Moves, which would get a public release in 1968, was included on that demo tape, and by the time Fire and Rain – which peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned him his first Grammy – dropped in 1970, his career was more than up and running.

In related news, GW's Neville Marten has penned a heartfelt piece explaining what he learned from interviewing the acoustic icon.

Dave Mason, the English singer-guitar icon who co-founded Traffic and sessioned with some of the biggest artists of all time, has died at the age of 79.

The news was confirmed in a statement issued by Mason’s publicist on Wednesday (April 22) morning, which read, “On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of the passing of Dave Mason.

“On Sunday, April 19, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, celebrated songwriter, musician, singer, and author passed away peacefully at his home in Gardnerville, NV. Dave Mason lived a remarkable life devoted to the music and the people he loved.”

Last year, Mason was forced to cancel all of his scheduled tour dates amid ongoing health issues, after it was announced he’d been battling a serious heart condition. The condition was discovered in 2024, though Mason later contracted an infection during recovery in March 2025.

Not long after, Mason announced his retirement from touring, closing the curtains on 60 remarkable years of rock ‘n’ roll and marking the end of a significant and storied era in music history.

Mason leaves behind a tremendous legacy in the world of rock music, having penned some bona fide classics both as a founder of Traffic, and as a successful solo and session artist.

Born in May 1946, Mason co-founded Traffic as a youngster alongside Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, and Chris Wood, and in 1967, they released their debut single, Hole in My Shoe. Penned and sung by Mason, the single shot up to the Number 2 spot in the UK charts and was an early indicator of the guitarist’s psychedelic influences.

The single was followed by the band’s first two records, Mr Fantasy (1967) and Traffic (1968). Mason, despite leaving the band between the two albums, featured on both, writing and singing on other core Traffic standards such as Feelin’ Alright and You Can All Join.

Those records highlighted Mason’s robust guitar style, typified by its utilitarian emphasis on melody and ‘serving the song’. It served him well when he left Traffic and pursued a career in session and solo work.

Indeed, Mason’s post-Traffic days were defined by a series of high-profile collaborations with some of the biggest names in guitar music. He recorded and toured with the likes of George Harrison, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Michael Jackson.

He also famously played on Jimi Hendrix’s cover of All Along the Watchtower, playing the acoustic guitar, and served as Harrison’s guitar player during the Beatle’s All Things Must Pass project.

Speaking to Guitar World in 2014, Mason discussed how he ended up working with Hendrix, recalling, “I was aware of Jimi when he first came to London, even before he had ever made a record.

“I met Jimi at a late-night club one night and just started talking to him. He was a Traffic fan and I remember he got up and played with the band that was there that night and I just said, "Wow!" [laughs].

“One night, Jimi and I were at a party listening to John Wesley Harding [Bob Dylan’s latest album at the time] when Jimi got it into his head that he wanted to do All Along the Watchtower. I remember he said to me, ‘That’s the coolest song! I’m gonna go and record it! You want to come and do it with me?’ That's basically how it started. He was just amazing.”

As for his collaboration with Harrison, Mason told Guitar World in a separate interview that his work on All Things Must Past stemmed from a social bond he had with the Beatle.

“I was just one of a lot of people there; if you ask me which tunes I played on it, I can’t remember,” he noted. “I just played some acoustic rhythm guitar on a couple of them, and I think I played electric guitar on one, but I’m not sure. I was one of a number of musicians that were invited.

“I knew George more from the Beatles and from hanging out with him, as I sort of knew a little more of him socially than I did musically. He gave me my first sitar; he also played me Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band before it came out.”

Other major moments in Mason’s storied career also include a stint in Eric Clapton’s Derek and The Dominos, as well as a brief period as a member of Fleetwood Mac, with whom he recorded 1995’s Time.

Despite having contributed to the fabric of English rock music across his career, Mason remained humble, and in a reflective interview with Guitar World he looked back on the music he made.

“I knew they were great tracks that created attention, but it's hard to say what people would really think because at the time, I was living it,” he said of his work. “Looking back now, I was very fortunate to have ended up playing with so many great artists, even just for a moment.

“To me, I’m just another guy who picked up the guitar and went out to make music. Fortunately, I started writing things that resonated with people.”

Mason is survived by his wife and partner, Winifred Wilson, and his daughter, Danielle.

Eric Clapton’s 1913 Gibson Style-0 archtop, nicknamed “Pattie” after George Harrison’s wife and Clapton’s love interest, Pattie Boyd, is up for auction on May 8 as part of Heritage’s Vintage Guitar Auction.

It's the same guitar that was used to write some of the most iconic tracks of Clapton's Cream era, as well as George Harrison’s post-Beatles career

Last May, the historically significant guitar went up for sale on Reverb for $949,999. Now, Beatles and Clapton music fans have another opportunity to lay their hands on a guitar on which tracks like Here Comes the Sun, Something, and I Me Mine were written.

“Few instruments capture a personal and artistic story as vividly as ‘Pattie’ – a guitar that sits at the intersection of love, collaboration and some of the most influential songwriting of the late 1960s,” says Aaron Piscopo, Heritage’s Director of Vintage Guitars & Musical Instruments.

While not much is known about the acoustic’s early years, the guitar – serial number 14106 – met its fate when it was acquired by Eric Clapton in 1968. Prior to that, it seems to have been well taken care of – retaining its original finish and the quintessential Gibson scroll design on the upper boat.

While he was in town for Cream’s October 19 concert at the Forum in Los Angeles, Clapton brought the guitar to the home of Alan Pariser, the manager of husband-and-wife act Delaney & Bonnie, where he ended up meeting Harrison.

As legend has it, the pair shared some of the most fruitful workshopping and songwriting sessions, sowing the seeds for tracks such as Here Comes the Sun, Something, I Me Mine, All Things Must Pass, Let It Rain, and Presence of the Lord, and also believed to have helped inspire Clapton’s Layla.

Fast forward two years, and Clapton would pass the guitar on to Delaney Bramlett, during his collaboration with Bramlett’s band, Delaney & Bonnie. It remained in Bramlett’s possession for decades till his death in 2008. In 2013, it was sold in the Bramlett estate auction, and is now up for sale again via Heritage.

The all-star auction lineup also features Ace Frehley’s 1972 Gibson Les Paul Custom, which the Kiss guitarist used on tour during the band’s mid-to-late ’70s era, with photographic evidence and documentation cementing Frehley’s link to the instrument.

“Ace Frehley’s identity is inextricably bound to the Les Paul,” Piscopo adds. “Its sound and visual presence became inseparable from the rise of KISS and the larger-than-life persona of rock in that era.”

The live auction will be taking place at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, starting at 12:00 PM CT, while the online session will be kicking off at 4:00 PM CT.

For more information, visit Heritage Auctions.

In more recent news, the seventh edition of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival was announced, featuring a packed lineup including the likes of Buddy Guy, Joe Bonamassa, and John Mayer.

In his role as producer, Don Was has often had to play the diplomat, especially when he found himself caught in the crossfire of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But they weren’t the only stars he had to mediate between.

In 1990, while behind the desk for Bob Dylan’s Under the Red Sky, he found himself at the center of disagreement over a guitar solo between the folk rock legend and one of his guest collaborators, George Harrison.

“I learned a lesson pretty early on,” Was says in conversation with Rock & Roll High School . What was the lesson? Well, as he puts it, it was “benign honesty.”

“George Harrison came in to overdub guitar in the song,” he explains. “I'd never met George Harrison before. The room was aglow with personality and charisma.

“And Bob, I guess, on a previous record, had only let George play an overdub one time, and then he cut him off. So, as we’re walking into the control room, George Harrison said to me, ‘Don't let him do that again. Give me a chance to play it a few times,’ which Bob overheard.”

Was plays the comment as being “jocular” and fun, rather than it coming from a place of malice. Then, without much warning, the engineer hit record. Without even hearing the song before, or having even tuned up, Harrison cut a take.

“All things considered, George played a respectable solo; he was digging his way out of not knowing what key it was in,” Was recalls.

“We get to the end, and Bob says, ‘Okay, that's great. Thank you,' [clearly eager to move on]. George Harrison turns to me, and he says, ‘Wait a minute, what do you think, Don?’ And Bob goes, ‘Yeah, what do you think, Don?’ Time slowed down.”

This is a man who grew up idolizing these two elite musicians, who considered selling his car to get a ticket to the Concert for Bangladesh. But he realized, in that moment, that he wasn't there to be a fan.

“I said, ‘Well, you know, it was good. Why don't you tune up, and we'll do another one. Let's see if we beat it.’

“It was diplomatic,” he says. “I didn't insult anybody, but I got us to the next take, and there's a lesson in benign honesty. And Bob didn't really mean it, you know. He was just fucking around. We got the solo. It didn't take long.”

Harrison, ultimately, was a dab hand at quickfire guitar solos. When Mike Campbell couldn’t face the heat of soloing in front of Harrison while cutting a Traveling Wilburys track, he insisted Harrison did it himself, and he made light work of it.

Meanwhile, Was has made the bold claim as to why John Mayer is better than the Beatle because of one key aspect of his musicianship.

The Rickenbacker 360/12 might not have been the very first 12-string electric guitar to appear on the market – it was preceded by the 12-string necks found on the doubleneck Gibson EDS-1275 and Stratosphere Twin in the ’50s and the single 12-string neck Danelectro Bellzouki in 1961 – but it instantly elevated the electric 12-string from novelty item to essential tool upon its public debut in 1964.

A 360/12 prototype given to George Harrison was prominently featured in the Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night and its accompanying soundtrack, inspiring insatiable lust for the lush sounds of the electric 12 among aspiring and pro guitarists alike.

The Byrds, Beach Boys and other popular ’60s bands that didn’t begin with “B” (like the Jefferson Airplane, the Rolling Stones and the Who) further increased the popularity of the 360/12’s distinctive jingle-jangle sounds.

Although the 360/12 was essentially a Rickenbacker 360 model (introduced in 1958) with a 12-string neck, the innovative headstock design still was a noteworthy engineering achievement. Rickenbacker president F.C.

Hall thought the standard 12-string headstock looked awkwardly elongated thanks to its 6x6 tuner configuration, so he asked the head of Rickenbacker’s woodshop Dick Burke to figure out a way to fit 12 tuners onto a standard six-string size headstock. Burke quickly came up with an ingenious and elegant solution that combined normal electric guitar tuning pegs with classic-style pegs inset in headstock slots.

Early Ric 360/12 models were equipped with low-output “toaster” single-coil pickups that deliver a very bright and metallic tone. Later versions come with Hi-Gain single-coil pickups that produce a richer, fuller sound.

While the toaster pickups play a major role in the sound of songs like Ticket to Ride and Mr. Tambourine Man, a good studio or pedal compressor is also essential for dialing in warmer tone and the perfect treble shimmer without strident overtones.

Generally, a crystal-clean amp setting works best, and the amp can even be pushed to the edge of overdrive with good results, but too much gain and distortion usually results in an indecipherable mess.

The original six-saddle bridge makes it difficult to intonate all of the strings properly, which is particularly noticeable when playing above the 12th fret.

Fortunately, replacement 12-saddle bridges are available from Rickenbacker and other manufacturers. Traditionally, the 360/12 features a 21-fret neck, but since 1969 Rickenbacker have offered 360/12 models that expanded the total number of frets to 24. Currently, the traditional 21-fret neck is standard.

The jangly sound of the Rickenbacker 360/12 instantly evokes images of the mid-’60s, and most players who have picked one up since then have used it for music heavily inspired by that era.

Tom Petty and Mike Campbell, James Honeyman-Scott (the Pretenders), Johnny Marr, Marty Wilson-Piper (the Church), and Dave Gregory (XTC) helped revive the Ric 360/12 sound during the ’70s and ’80s, and Steve Howe proved that it could even work in a progressive rock context with Yes.

More recent 360/12 fans include Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien of Radiohead, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Jeff Buckley and Andy Bell of Ride and Oasis.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

“With The Beatles, George Harrison was a confirmed Gretsch fan – with the occasional Rick 12, for sure,” guitar historian Tony Bacon observes. “As for Gibson, however, in Beatle terms that was a late development for George.

“He’d owned and briefly used an ES‑345, but there he was at London’s Empire Pool in May 1966 playing a rather nice looking SG Standard. George acquired his SG probably in the early months of ’66 – it shipped from Gibson in October ’64.”

Amelia Walker of Christie’s – which recently sold the guitar for $2,271,000 at auction – says that the SG became a go-to guitar that saw a surprising amount of service over a two-year period at a crucial juncture of the band’s career.

“George Harrison played the Gibson SG both on stage and in the studio from 1966 to 1968,” Amelia says of this guitar, made early in the production run of ‘true’ SGs.

“He would put the guitar into immediate use on recording sessions for the Beatles 1966 studio album Revolver, including on the tracks Paperback Writer and Rain.”

“The SG would become one of his longest-serving studio instruments, used during the sessions for Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 and the White Album in 1968. Harrison is seen playing the SG in the promo videos for Paperback Writer, Rain, and Lady Madonna, and would carry the guitar on tour to Europe, the US and Japan in 1966.

“The SG would also be used by John Lennon for Hey Bulldog in 1968. It is incredibly rare for such a well-documented and extensively used Beatles guitar to come to auction.”

• World record for most expensive guitar shattered three times in one night at Jim Irsay auction
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

It was the night when the records fell – 23 of them in total – when all pre-auction estimates were smashed, and quite possibly the market for vintage guitars with player kudos will never be the same again.

The Jim Irsay Collection: Hall of Fame auction, hosted at Christie’s in New York, was truly a historic event, with all 44 lots sold and a cool $84,091,350 changing hands – a record for a guitar auction. By close of play, those figures saw Christie’s exceed its sales estimate by 373 per cent.

After 21 minutes of intense bidding – received like a Federer vs Nadal rally at the Arthur Ashe Stadium – the world had a new most-expensive guitar, and to the surprise of no one in the weeks leading up to the auction, it was David Gilmour’s Black Strat, the heavily modified Stratocaster that “he grew tired of” and sold, but not before tracking Comfortably Numb and Shine on You Crazy Diamond with it, anointing it as the ne plus ultra of Pink Floyd guitars.

The hammer came down at $14,550,000. For that kind of money, here’s hoping they threw in a guitar strap and a fresh set of D’Addario NYXL 10s.

But it did not take long for jaws – and records – to fall once more. Inside the hall, there were some Amex Platinum credit cards going uncomfortably numb as the bidding heated up for Jerry Garcia’s custom-built Tiger, the electric guitar that was six years in the making, comprised of the finest tone woods known to humanity, and the Grateful Dead icon’s most-celebrated guitar.

It set another record for a Garcia-owned guitar – and needless to say, for a guitar built by Doug Irwin, selling for $11,560,000.

Of course this was the sort of night that someone would spend the best part of seven million bucks on a left-handed student-model Fender guitar that is the definition of player grade.

Yes, Kurt Cobain’s 1969 Competition Mustang from the Smells Like Teenage Spirit video fetched a record (for a Cobain guitar) $6,907,000. It was previously the world's most expensive guitar, and so, on the night, its record was broken three times.

Julien Pradels, president, Christie’s Americas, said the night was a testimony to Irsay’s curation of the most important guitars, musical instruments and pop-cultural ephemera in history.

This wasn’t just guitars breaking records; we had Ringo Starr’s Beatles logo Ed Sullivan Show Ludwig drum head going for $2,881,000; Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics sheet for The Times They Are a Changin’ sold for $2,515,000… Someone paid over one-and-a-half million dollars for a saddle!

“Lot after lot we felt like we were making history,” said Pradels. “The Irsay sale did justice to the brilliance of the collector, and of the monumental pieces he brought together, iconic objects that tell the story of our culture and our times. The Irsay Collection is singular, but Christie’s will have other amazing sales in this space moving forward.”

There was the record sale for any guitar owned by a woman, as Janis Joplin’s Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar went for $381,000.

There was a new record set for a Gibson guitar, as Eric Clapton’s The Fool SG sold for $3,003,000, while his 1939 Martin 000-42 – i.e. the one from MTV Unplugged, “See if you can spot this one…” and all that – changed hands for a whopping $4,101,000.

It was an expensive night to be a Beatlemaniac with deep pockets. Brace for more records: George Harrison’s Gibson SG Standard mopped up $2,271,000; John Lennon’s Broadwood piano (okay, that’s not a guitar) sold for $3,247,000.

Even when the lots were not making world records they were destroying pre-auction estimates.

Many exceptional guitars were sold for eye-watering sums, such as John Lennon’s 1964 Rickenbacker Model 1996 and his 1963 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins, with both going for $1,270,000.

Prince’s Custom ‘Yellow Cloud’ seems a bargain at $635,000, and that seems to be the going rate for iconic “shape” electrics as The Edge’s korina Explorer, a backup on U2’s Joshua Tree tour, went for the same price.

Harrison’s Bisgby-equipped Maton Mastersound, which older readers might remember seeing onstage when the Beatles played the UK in the summer of ’63, sold for $279,400 – and please let it have been Josh Homme who bought it, because that would look just the thing on a QOTSA stage.

The 1966 prototype Vox Kensington semi-hollow guitar, once owned by the Beatles, would look crazy on any stage with its tulip-inspired body shape and arcane electronics – and at $609,600 it would legit be crazy to take it on any stage, or out of the house for that matter.

Would this even be a history-making auction without a Johnny Cash guitar? Of course not. The Man in Black’s 1956 Martin D-21 fetched $215,900, and with its battered top and vibe off the charts, that, legitimately, feels like a good buy.

And so it went on, Paul McCartney’s Yamaha BB-1200 (an underrated bass guitar) sold for $228,600. Oh, and another David Gilmour guitar breaking the multi-million-dollar mark with his Wish You Were Here 1969 Martin D-35 going for $2,393,000. A lot of money, but you can be damn sure that it’ll make your Em7 and open G chords sound godly.

Last, but by no means least, one of the coolest guitar-related items to be auctioned in opening salvo from the Jim Irsay’s über collection is taken from the Grateful Dead’s ‘Wall of Sound,’ the 600-watt/300-watts-per-channel McIntosh MC2300 power amp nicknamed Budman. It sold for $381,000. That’d add a little punch to your backline.

So there you have it. As a wise man who is known to collect the odd guitar (to play them too), always says, “A guitar is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.”

But that's not all from Jim Irsay Collection. There will be a further three epic auctions, with the Icons of Popular Culture going live today, (March 13), The Jim Irsay Collection: Icons of Music going live on March 14, while the Jim Irsay Collection: Online, which is live from March 3 to 17.

See Christie's for more details.

The Jim Irsay Collection: what sold and for how much?

• David Gilmour Black Strat – $14,550,000
• Jerry Garcia Tiger – $11,560,000
• Kurt Cobain Smells Like Teen Spirit Mustang – $6,907,000
• Eric Clapton’s MTV Unplugged Martin 000-42 – $4,101,000
• Eric Clapton’s Gibson SG “The Fool” – $3,003,000
• David Gilmour’s Wish You Were Here Martin D-35 – $2,393,000
• George Harrison’s 1964 Gibson SG Standard – $2,271,000
• John Lennon’s 1964 Rickenbacker Model 1996 – $1,270,000
• John Lennon’s 1963 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins – $1,270,000
• The Beatles' 1966 Vox Kensington prototype – $609,600
• Prince’s Custom ‘Yellow Cloud’ Electric – $635,000
• The Edge's 1976 korina Gibson Explorer – $635,000
• George Harrison's Maton 'Mastersound' – $279,400
• Johnny Cash's 1956 Martin D-21 – $215,900
• Gibson circa 1954 Les Paul Custom prototype – $152,400

In the 1970s, Fanny – led by sisters June and Jean Millington on guitar and bass, respectively – broke the mold as the first all-female band to sign to a major label, Reprise Records – a Warner Bros. Records subsidiary that also housed acts like Jimi Hendrix and Fleetwood Mac.

Their pioneering approach also extended to their gear. June famously incorporated a Leslie speaker into her rig, after her original idea – that of using her Gibson ES-355’s stereo feature – didn’t quite work out.

“I am deaf in one ear,” she tells Guitar World. “That's why I'm always on the left side of the stage. I even tried to play it through two amps.”

However, there was one approach that actually did work. “Richard [Perry, famed record producer] came back from London because it was 1970, and we were in the studio, and he had a tape of the Beatles, and it wasn't finished yet, but it had George Harrison playing the [Let It Be] solo through a Leslie speaker. And I freaked out. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't done, but it was so powerful.”

The Leslie, designed by Don Leslie in the late ’30s, is a speaker cabinet that creates a swirling, moving sound by physically rotating its speakers. When used as part of a guitar rig, the player can then control it with an external switch or pedal that alternates between high- and low-speed settings, creating a truly distinctive sonic texture.

She continues, “I went right out and told our roadies we had to create my rig to include playing through a Leslie. What I would do is, I had a pedal, and I could turn it on, and I could vary the speed also.

“So I did have two amps on stage. I had my Fender, and I had that Leslie, and nobody else was doing that at the time. That Leslie was heavy, but we carried it everywhere.”

Guitar World’s interview with June and Jean Millington from Fanny will be published in the coming weeks.

And, speaking of the connection between Fanny and The Beatles, June recalls how the Fab Four turned out to be fans – and how the band ended up recording with seminal Beatles engineer, Geoff Emerick.

Christie's has just announced the details of the historic sale of the Jim Irsay Collection. Widely regarded as the greatest guitar collection on Earth, it will be auctioned off in a series of sales in 2026.

Compiled over decades by the late billionaire businessman and owner/CEO of the Indianapolis Colts, the Jim Irsay Collection has achieved a mythical status, as it includes some of the most famous acoustic and electric guitars to ever exist.

“Jim Irsay was an incredible collector with an eye for rare treasures tied to the most important moments in our collective history,” explains Christie's Americas President, Julien Pradels.

“It is a privilege to offer this renowned collection at Christie's, giving collectors and visitors a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view, be inspired by, and bid on these objects.”

The first live sale is set to feature around 50 lots, comprising some of the most sought-after treasures in the collection

Highlights include David Gilmour's “Black Strat,” Kurt Cobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit 1966 Fender Mustang, Jerry Garcia's “Tiger” guitar, John Lennon's 1963 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120, George Harrison's stage-played Gibson SG, and Eric Clapton's MTV Unplugged 1939 Martin 000-42.

The once-in-a-generation auction will kick off with almost 400 items, tracing pivotal moments in music, film, sports, pop culture, and, of course, guitar, history, over four auctions from March 3 to March 18 – alongside a free, public exhibition at Christie's New York from March 6 to March 12.

For more information, head to Christie's.

Having worked with John Mayer on three studio albums over the course of nearly 10 years, Don Was is something of an authority when it comes to appraising and appreciating the guitar great’s musicality.

It is usually both Mayer’s irresistible guitar tones and unparalleled fretboard chops that receive most of the praise. But Was is uniquely positioned to appreciate other aspects of his musicianship – and, according to him, there are a few particular aspects of Mayer’s playing that could put him above a legendary Beatle.

Speaking to the Everything Mayer YouTube channel, the famed producer reflected on the parts of Mayer’s records that he believes are overlooked by fans, prompting some strong comparisons to none other than George Harrison.

“He's a great arranger,” Was says of Mayer’s under-appreciated talents. “The thing that separates John from everybody else that I've worked with, in terms of the process we go through, is I've never seen anyone with that many ideas for arrangements.

“He's never short of ideas. We know we have to do something in a section, and he'll find 10 different, really elegant ways of making that section work. And my job is never to tell him what to play. It's to help him sort through the wealth of information that he's laid down to choose the most effective.”

Arrangement is just part of it, though. Was also praises Mayer’s ability to create guitar sounds that are wholly unique to his own musical DNA, comparing it to Harrison’s own track record of doing the same while changing the face of music with the Beatles. In that regard, though, Mayer might just take the cake.

“His guitar tones are unparalleled,” Was continues of Mayer. “They're not just evocative, cool sounds, but they're thick and they're warm and they jump out of speakers – and I'm not sure how he does it.

“Yes, he's got the best gear you can have, but I've played his guitars and I don't sound like him. I think people might take that for granted. That's one of the first things I noticed when I listened to those records after not hearing them for a while.

“George Harrison was good at stuff like that, getting distinctive sounds that you only hear once on a certain song. That's a strength of John’s. It’s the same thing.

“I was loath to say John's better than George Harrison. It ain't gonna sit well with people, but he might be better than George Harrison.”

It’s a bold claim, but again, Was is perhaps uniquely positioned to make it. In the late 1980s during the sessions for Bob Dylan’s Under the Red Sky, Was worked with Harrison, who visited the studio to lay down a slide guitar solo for the album’s title track.

In a soon-to-published interview with Guitar World, Was dives deeper into his partnership with Mayer, saying, “His relentless pursuit of excellence is one reason that he's one of the biggest and most respected artists on the planet.”

Elsewhere in that interview, Was also looked back on how he started working with the Rolling Stones – after a particularly frosty first encounter with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.

The unique 1913 Gibson acoustic guitar, which Eric Clapton and George Harrison used to write some of their most iconic songs, is going up for auction this week.

The quirky Style-0 archtop, fondly nicknamed "Pattie", has been listed by Heritage Auctions, and is currently awaiting an opening bid of $150,000.

The auction comes mere months after the acoustic was listed on Reverb for almost $1,000,000. It remains to be seen whether it will eventually sell for anywhere near that figure when the auction comes to a close in nine days time.

Not much is known about the guitar’s earliest years, but the fate of the Gibson Style-0 Archtop, which bears the serial number #14106, changed dramatically when the two guitarists got their hands on it in the late ‘60s.

It’s lovingly been dubbed “Pattie” after Pattie Boyd, the woman they both married. Heritage Auctions has dubbed it “not only a testament to Gibson's golden era, [but] an icon of late 1960s rock history.”

It came into the pair's possession during a particularly creative patch in 1968, which included some famed collaborative Los Angeles songwriting sessions.

Harrison was photographed playing the guitar in October 1968 alongside Clapton at Alan Pariser's Los Angeles garden. According to reports, it was here that the seeds of some of Harrison’s most iconic compositions – including Here Comes the Sun, I Me Mine, and All Things Must Pass – were planted. It’s also believed to have helped inspire Clapton to write Layla.

This guitar, then, sits at the very center of the Harrison/Clapton relationship, and a shared love that sparked some iconic music.

Clapton later gifted the guitar to Delaney Bramlett, who played a key role in Calpton's and Harrison’s respective solo careers, around 1970. It was first auctioned in 2013, five years after Bramlett’s death.

The guitar is in surprisingly good condition despite being well over 100 years old, although there are some signs of its workhorse nature.

See Heritage Auctions for more.

A cornerstone of the legendary Abbey Road Studios, record producer and engineer Ken Scott played an instrumental role in the careers of David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and the Jeff Beck Group, to name a select few.

He was also one of the five main engineers for the Beatles, learning the ropes alongside the band's ascent to fame. His first gigs as an assistant engineer included working on several tracks on the A Hard Day's Night album and Long Tall Sally EP.

Scott was also involved in the opus that was to become The White Album, and, in a recent Rick Beato interview, he gave some insight into the industry legend that is Eric Clapton's uncredited solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

“I remember absolutely nothing about it,” he says matter-of-factly. “But I'm not the only one. When I was writing my book, I've been asked the question, ‘What was it like Eric coming and playing on that? How did they react…’ and all of that, and I've just had to answer, ‘I can't remember.’

Scott even admits he “actually tried hypnotherapy” to try and bring back memories from those sessions specifically, so he could answer that million-dollar question, but nothing came up.

“I went to John Smith, who was my assistant engineer, my button pusher at that point [who said], ‘I don't remember anything about it.’ I went to Chris Thomas, George Martin's assistant, who was producing at that point because George was on holiday, and [he said], ‘I don't remember anything about it.’

“The one thing I vaguely remember – Chris and I have talked about it – is Eric saying that the only way he'd play on it is if he sounded like the Beatles, as opposed to Eric Clapton,” he recalls.

The technique they employed to achieve that effect? “We used ADT,” he explains. “ADT is either artificial double tracking or automatic double tracking, whichever you choose to use.”

He continues, “It stemmed from John [Lennon] not wanting to sing the song twice. He went to Ken Townsend, who was one of the amp room guys, and said, ‘Is there a way you can come up with something so that I don't have to sing it twice?’ Ken went away, and as brilliant as he was, he came back and said, ‘I may have got it.’”

Indeed, in a Guitar Player interview from 1987, George Harrison himself actually confirmed that this technique was used to make the solo sound... well, more Beatles-esque.

“Eric played that, and I thought it was really good,” he said. “Then we listened to it back, and he said, ‘Ah, there's a problem though. It's not a Beatle-y enough’ – so we put it through the ADT to wobble it a bit.”

And, speaking of George Harrison and Fab Four solos, in a 1988 Guitar World interview, the famed guitarist revealed that, while he typically sketched out his solos in advance, there was one classic Beatles track that was a notable exception.

Picture “The Beatles” in your mind – what do you see? There's the logo, four mop-top lads in suits, screaming girls mobbing airport runways... and Paul McCartney plucking away at his Hofner violin bass guitar.

Obviously, though, generational talent that he is, McCartney is and always has been a mean guitarist as well. Even before the world's most famous rock group went their separate ways, McCartney had already put to vinyl an enviable catalog of six-string greatness.

As a matter of fact, McCartney was originally supposed to not only be a guitarist in the Fab Four, he was supposed to be the lead guitarist.

In the following exclusive extract from the updated The Beatles Anthology book, McCartney shares the story of how a single onstage clam-up in the band's early days paved the way for a young George Harrison to claim the lead guitar role, which he would occupy for the rest of the band's music-reshaping existence…

PAUL McCARTNEY: A great thing about Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and the provinces, is that they all have places with famous names, and the first gig with The Quarry Men was on Broadway – in Liverpool. (We made our first record in a little demo studio in Kensington, Liverpool.)

For my first gig, I was given a guitar solo on Guitar Boogie. I could play it easily in rehearsal so they elected that I should do it as my solo. Things were going fine, but when the moment came in the performance I got sticky fingers; I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ I was just too frightened; it was too big a moment with everyone looking at the guitar player. I couldn’t do it. (I never played a solo again until a few years ago.) That’s why George was brought in.

I knew George from the bus. Before I went to live in Allerton, I lived in Speke. We lived on an estate which they used to call the Trading Estate. (I understand now that they were trying to move industry there to provide jobs, but then we didn’t ever consider why it was called a trading estate.)

George was a bus stop away. I would get on the bus for school and he would get on the stop after. So, being close to each other in age, we talked – although I tended to talk down to him, because he was a year younger.

(I know now that that was a failing I had all the way through the Beatle years. If you’ve known a guy when he’s 13 and you’re 14, it’s hard to think of him as grown-up. I still think of George as a young kid. I still think of Ringo as a very old person because he is two years older. He was the grown-up in the group: when he came to us he had a beard, he had a car and he had a suit. What more proof do you need of grown-upmanship?)

I told John and the other Quarry Men about this guy at school called George: ‘He is a real good guitar player, so if you’re thinking of guitar – this is your boy.’ They said, ‘OK, let’s hear him, then.’

George could play Raunchy so well it really sounded like the record. We were all on the top of an empty bus one night and I said, ‘Go on, George.’ He got his guitar out and sure enough he could play it, and everyone agreed, ‘You’re in. You’ve done it.’

It was rather like me knowing the words to Twenty Flight Rock. With George it was: ‘He’s a bit young, but by God he can play Raunchy well.’ George was like our professional guitarist from then. Later, John did play some Chuck Berry-style solos, but he gave over the solo chair to George and became known as rhythm guitarist.

• This excerpt is taken from The Beatles Anthology 25th Anniversary Edition, published by Chronicle Books.

Since making its debut on October 11, 1975, NBC’s Saturday Night Live has been a pop-culture juggernaut like no other.

But before becoming a weekend staple for generations of late-night viewers, creator Lorne Michaels’ variety show began as a brash, uniquely irreverent counterculture experiment boldly pairing off-the-cuff outsider comedy with of-the-moment musical guests – for the record, the first show featured Billy Preston, Janis Ian and, arguably most memorably, Andy Kaufman miming his way through the Mighty Mouse theme song.

Indeed, while it’s a comedy-first operation, music has always been a major part of SNL’s appeal – and, obviously, that means we’ve seen a lot of guitarists grace the show’s stage.

It’s been a spot for bands to crank it up just before their careers went supernova. Others faltered spectacularly on live TV, beneath the bright lights of Studio 8H and under the watch of millions of viewers at home.

Some of the greatest guitar virtuosos showed up unannounced for once-in-a-lifetime jams. A pair of blues-loving bees morphed into the show’s breakout musical act.

While it’s all made for hundreds upon hundreds of must-see moments, to paraphrase the show’s iconic metalhead character, Wayne Campbell – a.k.a. Mike Myers, an obtuse on-air shredder in his own right – some were more worthy than others.

So, in honor of the show’s staggering 50 years on the air, ladies and gentleman, behold the 50 greatest guitar moments in SNL history.

50. The Rolling Stones – Shattered

Season 4, Episode 1; October 7, 1978

While nabbing the Stones was a major coup, the band’s lone SNL appearance isn’t remembered for being great. Mick Jagger’s voice is shot and unpretty through Beast of Burden, but Shattered taps into the sleazy urgency of the Some Girls era.

It also embodies the chaotic, anything-goes-in-the-moment spirit of live TV right about the time Jagger starts snapping his ivory sportcoat at Ronnie Wood, wet-towel style.

49. The Devil Can’t Write No Love Song sketch

Season 25, Episode 5; November 13, 1999

Garth Brooks plays a down-on-his-luck musician willing to sell his soul for a hit. Ready to make a trade, Lucifer – a horned-and-bearded Will Ferrell – bursts onto the scene with a devil-red Fender built out of a “hell-spun mixture of the bones of fornicators.” Trouble is, the dark lord is a damned terrible songsmith. Fred’s Slacks is a brittle-toned, out-of-tune geek-rock atrocity, and his originals only get cringier from there.

48. Joan Armatrading – I’m Not in Love / Down to Zero

Season 2, Episode 21; May 14, 1977

The highlight of Joan Armatrading’s SNL performances is the sound of her rich and oaken vocal – but her stately 12-string chording chimes through the mix quite nicely, too.

Whether through the dew-eyed I’m Not in Love or the yearning folk-rock of Down to Zero, guitarist Jerry Donahue also brought a waterfall-rippling wave of flanged-out fretboard elegance to the arrangements.

47. System of a Down – B.Y.O.B.

Season 30, Episode 18; May 7, 2005

The SNL censors were prepared to bleep out the F-bombs SOAD’s Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian regularly scheduled into their zany, kinda thrash/kinda ska single B.Y.O.B. The latter let loose an unscripted “fuck yeah” during a surf-zested string slide, though, which ended up putting he and the rest of System on SNL’s blacklist. They never played the show again.

46. Metallica – Fuel

Season 23, Episode 8; December 6, 1997

An argument could be made that SNL blew it by not booking Metallica during the height of ’80s thrash and that they slept on the biggest metal band in the world circa Enter Sandman.

But producers gave ’tallica fans that which they desired by finally bringing aboard the band during their Reload period. Fuel found Kirk Hammett all-gassing his wah-wah solo. James Hetfield kept on theme by strapping himself to a flame-emblazoned Flying V.

45. The Tragically Hip – Grace, Too

Season 20, Episode 16; March 25, 1995

When original Not Ready for Prime-time Player Dan Aykroyd was asked to co-host this episode, he agreed – with a caveat: fellow Ontarians the Tragically Hip had to come along with him.

Gord Downie grinned cherubically as he flubbed his first line, but Canada’s Band otherwise nailed the artfully hard-rocking Grace, Too, guitarist Rob Baker flexing a wide, flavorful vibrato into its finale.

44. Adam Sandler – The Thanksgiving Song

Season 18, Episode 7; November 21, 1992

Sandler used his Weekend Update segments to test out goofball characters like Cajun Man and Opera Man. The news desk was also where he developed his voice as a singer-guitarist, and that all starts with The Thanksgiving Song.

Coming out the gates with cheerful 7th chords and a toothy grin, he uses the quaint acoustic jazz-folk song to toast turkey dinners and serve up a side of pop-culture non-sequiturs.

43. Queens of the Stone Age – Little Sister

Season 30, Episode 19; May 14, 2005

Though drummer Joey Castillo was already clonking his plastic jam block hard-and-heavy through this segment, Will Ferrell apparently felt that Queens could use more cowbell.

The comedian reprised his famous Gene Frenkle character – ill-fitting shirt and all – and whapped to his heart’s delight, but the impromptu percussive performance wasn’t the scene-stealer. Credit that to Josh Homme putting on a clinic with his serpentine flair.

42. Big Ricky & the Minnows – “Bass Lake” sketch

Season 50, Episode 16; April 5, 2025

A lakeside potluck jam on Tom Petty’s Free Falling goes horribly awry once Big Ricky – played by an increasingly exasperated Jack Black – realizes everyone hitting the stage is hoisting a bass and the soupiest tone of all time (“The quality of sound feels like a sinus infection”).

The low-end nightmare swells into a dozen rhythm-stringers and one particularly talented basset hound trying to find their footing within the frequency, with disastrous results.

41. Spinal Tap – Big Bottom

Season 9, Episode 18; May 5, 1984

Talk about bass chops, these guys got ’em. Unlike Black’s bass sketch, Tap’s low-end monstrous performance of Big Bottom was no shit sandwich. Performed on air just two months after This Is Spinal Tap hit screens, the band’s performance of their multi-bass opus rumbled with hilarious, horn-dog fervor.

Derek Smalls lays down the initial rhythm with a double-neck bass. Nigel Tufnel hits those perfect fourths like a pro. The synth-bass is on point, too. But it might be David St. Hubbins mud-flappin’ lead bass prowess that pushes the ludicrous metal anthem into overdrive.

40. J Mascis & the SNL band – Out There

Season 25, Episode 16; April 8, 2000

It’s a travesty that J Mascis never got to chop through this Where You Been? stunner on the show with the rest of Dinosaur Jr. in the ’90s. Nevertheless, a 20-second sampling of Out There – which Mascis performed while sitting in with the house band – found the alt-rock guitar hero wham-smashing his way through a micro-sized but massive-sounding SNL moment. This performance took us to the commercial break seconds after the show staged its iconic “More Cowbell” sketch.

39. The Black Crowes – Sometimes Salvation

Season 18, Episode 9; December 12, 1992

Sometimes Salvation is a funny pick because the Crowes’ aching, extended blues ballad shares a similar feel to the SNL band’s longtime closing credits jam, Waltz in A. Where it differs is that the Georgia rockers also had Marc Ford sustaining a series of seismically reckless and romantic bends through his spacious solo. And it’s spectacular.

38. Foo Fighters – Times Like These

Season 28, Episode 13; February 22, 2003

Foo Fighters are prolific SNL guests, having hit the program nine times since 1995. Their third pop-in at 30 Rock came during the promotion cycle for One by One and began with a crunching version of All My Life.

But Times Like These is what makes the highlight reel – not just because the Foos crushed their yearning anthem with ease, but because Jim Carrey stormed the stage mid-song to air guitar his right leg like a maniac.

37. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Stone Cold Bush / Under the Bridge

Season 17, Episode 14; February 22, 1992

Dubious to include, but hard to ignore, the Chilis left a strange taste in millions of mouths with this off-kilter two-fer. Stone Cold Bush was funky, but merely fine – Flea gets appropriately slappy on the bass, but things get weird when vocalist Anthony Kiedis soccer-slides toward John Frusciante and boots his bandmate in the butt.

Under the Bridge is even more tense, with Frusciante cresting through a loose fluidity that paints a bit too outside the lines – and with a lot of brown. He ends the alt-ballad howling in falsetto like a hound from hell. The rest of the band seem stunned over their tragic Magik performance.

36. Boz Scaggs – Lowdown

Season 2, Episode 2; September 25, 1976

Elliot Randall’s wildcard solo is one of SNL’s most uproarious musical WTF moments. Halfway through the hit’s soft disco shuffle, Randall rips out to center stage for a furious hellfire of hammer-ons.

He tries to hit a behind-the-nut bend but kind of biffs it, then walks back with a huge smile to resume his soulfully rhythmic plinking.

Slang-style praise or secret diss, Scaggs jumps back in to croon with perfect comedic timing: “You ain’t got to be so bad.”

35. Prince – Partyup

Season 6, Episode 11; February 21, 1981

Prince’s most storied SNL performance arguably isn’t this one, and it wasn’t even in public – rather, a slow-jammed Let’s Go Crazy during the show’s 40th-anniversary afterparty in 2015 apparently had cast members losing their minds. But his televised Partyup in ’81 was still plenty iconic, with the Purple One parading around in thigh-high boots and sex-grinding his guitar with slinking funk licks.

34. Tracy Chapman – Give Me One Reason

Season 15, Episode 9; December 16, 1989

Here’s a good reason to have owned a VHS machine in the ’80s: Chapman’s rhythm-locked, Grammy-winning blues-rocker Give Me One Reason was performed on SNL a full six years before it made it onto an album.

Chapman anchored its television debut with subtle, staccato acoustic fingering and her soulful vocal, though the house band gets into the action, too; Tom “T-Bone” Wolk injects jumping-bean bass accents while bandleader G.E. Smith delivers Delta-ready slidework.

33. Devo – (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

Season 4, Episode 2; October 14, 1978

Devo’s subversive take on the Stones classic harnesses the palpably anxious and painfully horny undercurrent of the anthem arguably better than when it’s ever sung by Jagger.

Sweet release arrives through this performance, where Devo – deep in their matching hazmat suit-and-3D glasses era – twitch through the tune like a bunch of broken androids, Mark Mothersbaugh wilding out while using a Hagstrom 1 with boosts and overdrives duct-taped all over its cherry body.

32. Pearl Jam – Not for You / Rearviewmirror / Daughter

Season 19, Episode 18; April 16, 1994

Pearl Jam were arguably the biggest band in the world in the spring of 1994, so SNL showcased the hell out of the Seattle quintet during their second appearance on the show – even offering them a rare third song. Their Daughter performance, in particular, presented an extended Jam; the group gave the alt-rock anthem a funky two-minute outro full of vibe-heavy fretless bass and ad-libbed Crazy Horse lyrics.

31. AC/DC – Stiff Upper Lip / You Shook Me All Night Long

Season 25, Episode 15; March 18, 2000

AC/DC’s SNL debut found the band cranking into their Back in Black classic a whopping 20 years after its initial release. In a solid performance, Angus Young wails hard and goes full-Curly while spinning around the ground during the finale.

Earlier in the evening, though, the eternal schoolboy and brother Mal arguably locked in harder for the gritty, then-current and super-underrated Stiff Upper Lip.

30. Punk Band Reunion at the Wedding sketch (Crisis of Conformity – Fist Fight in the Parking Lot)

Season 35, Episode 14; February 6, 2010

What begins as a father sheepishly getting his old band back together at his daughter’s wedding reception quickly devolves into one of SNL’s most raging hardcore performances ever. Fred Armisen sneers his way through ’80s-style Reagan-punk lyrics, while the arrangement itself quotes Suicidal Tendencies’ Institutionalized.

The table-crashing, glass-smashing melee gets all-too-real once drummer Dave Grohl’s mic cuts out. A cream Strat-strapped Kutcher saves the day by lunging over with another mic – which also reveals he’s definitely not the one punk-chording through their Parking Lot.

29. The Replacements – Bastards of Young / Kiss Me on the Bus

Season 11, Episode 7; January 18, 1986

G.E. Smith was a Replacements fan and called the group when SNL needed a last-minute replacement for the Pointer Sisters. The Replacements proceeded to get drunk backstage with host Harry Dean Stanton and strolled out to deliver slapdash Tim songs while sloshed out of their skulls.

Paul Westerberg fumbled lyrics, Bob Stinson played a loaner Les Paul after he fell on his own guitar on the way to the stage. The night was best summed up by the first line of Bastards of Young: “God… what a mess.”

28. Bonnie Raitt – Thing Called Love

Season 15, Episode 11; January 20, 1990

Nearly 12 years to the day after her first SNL appearance, Bonnie Raitt returned to the show to slide through this blues-rock blazer. At one point she bats at the body of her Strat to gain some gnarly sustain. Later, she juxtaposes a fiery, near-30-second glass slide solo against the arrangement’s laidback, roadhouse-reggae breakdown.

27. Lenny Kravitz – Are You Gonna Go My Way / Always on the Run

Season 18, Episode 18; April 17, 1993

Everything went Kravitz and co-guitarist Craig Ross’ way. Sporting the rawest and most iconic rock riff of ’93, the pair brought harmonized pull-offs and Hendrix-ian sharps to a pitch-perfect performance of Are You Gonna Go My Way – and then Ross delivered a wailing solo.

They then dug into their retro-rock war chest for Mama Said single Always on the Run, expertly swaggering themselves through fuzz-funk syncopation before Ross splintered off with another heater solo.

26. Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit / Territorial Pissings

Season 17, Episode 10; January 11, 1992

Nirvana’s Nevermind dethroned the King of Pop’s Dangerous from the Number 1 spot on the Billboard chart the same week they dropped by SNL. Understandably, they played Teen Spirit, the industry-revolutionizing game-changer that got them there.

That said, Territorial Pissings was the livelier of their two performances; Cobain capped the manic track by smashing his guitar into a tower of logo-less cabs; Krist Novoselic hucks his bass into the air like loose change; Grohl rains drum hardware across the soundstage.

25. Rage Against the Machine – Bulls on Parade

Season 21, Episode 17; April 13, 1996

Interestingly, the SNL time bookers paired billionaire media mogul and Republican nominee hopeful Steve Forbes with left-leaning political rap-rockers Rage Against the Machine.

Rage tried to hang upside-down U.S. flags across their cabs as a form of protest, which led to an onstage confrontation with patriotic stagehands, who yanked away the subversive Stripes milliseconds before the band kicked into Bulls. Tom Morello crushed it with his wah work and mock-scratch technique. Then the band got booted out of the building.

24. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – You Don’t Know How It Feels / Honey Bee

Season 20, Episode 6; November 19, 1994

Petty’s fifth of eight appearances on SNL came during his Wildflowers cycle and boasted a new, temporary Heartbreaker behind the drum kit: Dave Grohl. The performance interestingly falls between the latter’s post-Nirvana, pre-Foo Fighters period, and he hits those cans heavy.

You Don’t Know How It Feels was a crowd pleaser, but the real treat is Honey Bee. The swamp-soupy garage-blues tune had Mike Campbell dripping out liquid gold guitar leads, but Petty hits an uncaged-and-uncouth, bendy solo of his own.

23. Aerosmith on Wayne’s World

Season 15, Episode 13; February 17, 1990

Satirically or not, SNL’s resident headbangers-cum-cable access hosts hoisted the flag for heavy music during a time where the show probably should have booked more metal acts.

Nevertheless, Wayne and Garth still got their party on with Aerosmith one time, with Joe Perry and Brad Whitford beefing up Mike Myers’ mock-squealing Wayne’s World theme as a basic-but-brawny basement rocker. Aerosmith also hit a pair of Pump tunes for the show, but this was their biggest bash of the night.

22. Fear – Beef Baloney

Season 7, Episode 4; October 31, 1981

Fear was brought onto SNL as a favor to fan and then-former castmate John Belushi, whom showrunners were hoping would pop back on the program for a cameo.

Fear then invited hardcore kids from across the Eastern seaboard – including members of Minor Threat and Negative Approach – to mosh out during a chaotic four-song medley. Bassist Lee Ving is constantly chasing a micstand as it gets knocked about by stage divers.

21. Phoebe Bridgers – I Know the End

Season 46, Episode 11; February 6, 2021

Phoebe Bridgers wasn’t the first person to smash a guitar on SNL, but she’s the one who got the most flak for it. I Know the End starts subtle, but the indie-rocker ended up primal screaming her way through the climax – which likewise found co-guitarist Harrison Whitford delivering quixotic scalework – before yanking off her jet black Danelectro and decimating it against a speaker wedge. The misogyny brigade tried to shame her on socials; Bridgers sold the axe for $100,000 and donated it all to charity.

20. Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band – Hot Head / Ashtray Heart

Season 6, Episode 2; December 22, 1980

Beefheart’s underrated early ’80s period found the experimental icon making music with the meanest-sounding iteration of his Magic Band. They put on a feisty performance for a shocked SNL crowd – guitarist Moris Tepper, in particular, spewing hot fire with his junk-blues sliding.

Beefheart cradled a cigarette, brilliantly rifling off a dadaist word salad through a haggard wheeze that sounded like his lungs had burnt right down to the filter.

19. Living Colour – Cult of Personality / Open Letter (to a Landlord)

Season 14, Episode 16; April 1, 1989

Living Colour’s April Fool’s appearance found Vernon Reid going off-the-charts gonzo with his inspired fusion playing.

He cut loose through a mind-bending, minute-long solo on Cult of Personality and then leaned into a vivid display of ambulance siren-styled inverted bending on Open Letter (to a Landlord).

The only thing that might’ve outshone Reid’s playing was Corey Glover’s extremely late-’80s, iridescent purple-and-yellow BodyGlove wetsuit.

18. Rihanna (with Nuno Bettencourt) – Diamonds

Season 38, Episode 7; November 10, 2012

Nuno Bettencourt never got the funk out on SNL during Extreme’s peak. Despite this, the Boston virtuoso was able to shine bright like a diamond when he popped up on the show as part of Rihanna’s backing band. The focal point is the pop star, without question, and Bettencourt begins the song with minimalist, volume pot-craning ambiance. But by song’s end, he’s soaring through the mix with a boldly prismatic vibrato.

17. David Bowie – Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

Season 22, Episode 12; February 8, 1997

Armed with a Parker Fly, an unruly series of harmonic slides and an onslaught of out-of-control pinch-squeals, ace guitarist Reeves Gabrels (nowadays a member of the Cure) was a beast to behold on Scary Monsters.

Bowie & Co. were supposed to play something off 1997’s Earthling, but they went rogue and performed the retro cut as a form of protest after the singer objected to a sketch idea – and as a dig on Lorne Michaels, who told Bowie about a terrifying cocaine binge he’d been on while listening to Scary Monsters in the ’80s.

They were ushered out of the building ASAP. Bowie reportedly regretted not grabbing the fruit basket on the way out.

16. Top of the Pops sketch (aka Ian Rubbish & the Bizarros – It’s a Lovely Day)

Season 38, Episode 21; May 18, 2013

Fred Armisen’s SNL tenure was full of musical characters, one of his most memorable being comically hate-filled Spirit of ’77 punk eccentric Ian Rubbish.

While the U.K. snarler had many memorable lyrical barbs, Armisen’s last show as a full-time cast member found him slapping on Rubbish’s peroxide wig and a Fano Alt de Facto to deliver an earnest farewell anthem called It’s a Lovely Day.

It turns into a jam featuring Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, J Mascis, Aimee Mann and Michael Penn. Is this one of Armisen’s top-10 greatest TV appearances of all time? Yeah, probably.

15. H.E.R. – Hold On

Season 46, Episode 4; October 24, 2020

H.E.R. wowed guitar-heads doubly in this Season 46 standout moment. She shot melodious, mile-wide vibrato through the ceiling during a revelatory performance of R&B slow jam Hold On.

She also used her time on SNL to showcase a then-brand-new signature Fender Chrome Glow Strat, which reflected a rainbowed array of colors beneath the stage lights that was almost as resplendent as her tone.

14. Robert Cray – Smoking Gun / Right Next Door (Because of Me)

Season 12, Episode 13; February 28, 1987

While Smoking Gun was tight, we’re going to suggest that it’s Cray’s run-through of Right Next Door that left a stronger impression on the music-loving public.

There’s a sleek, clean-channel mystique coursing through the smooth-blues arrangement, Cray accenting his adulterous tale with perfect, passionately plinking accent rhythms.

By song’s end, he bait-and-switches us with a yearning backend climax of wry little wriggles and finger-snapped string work. Of course, if you're going back and watching all these, don't deprive yourself of Smoking Gun.

13. The Smashing Pumpkins – Cherub Rock

Season 19, Episode 5; October 30, 1993

The Pumpkins went in for the kill during their first appearance on SNL. The performance of loud-quiet-loud classic Today was spectacular, but the alt-rock champs went nuclear on Cherub Rock.

Billy Corgan shreds his sinewy vocal cords throughout and wails a furious solo on his modded Bat-Strat. James Iha likewise gets in a few nasty and textural bends before they put this all-out bash to bed.

12. Beastie Boys – Ricky’s Theme / Heart Attack Man

Season 20, Episode 8; December 10, 1994

The Beasties’ second muscial spot of the night began with instrumental soul jam Ricky’s Theme, where auxiliary Beasties player Money Mark’s morning glory electric piano glistened against Ad-Rock’s sly-and-wily wah-wah guitar and MCA’s lithe standup basslines.

An extended cymbal segue leads to gear-swapping and a furious aesthetic pivot, as the Boys then go buckwild with a pacemaker-exploding old-school hardcore freakout. Ad-Rock smashes an S-shape into the ground – splinters fly into the air as the screen fades to black.

11. Adam Sandler – Lunch Lady Land

Season 19, Episode 11; January 15, 1994

From Red Hooded Sweatshirt to The Chanukah Song, most of Adam Sandler’s SNL music went unplugged. But unencumbered by the confines of the Weekend Update desk, the Sandman went full-electric with a black Gibson Les Paul to strum this Bruce Springsteen-ian opus about elementary foodstuffs revolting against their maker.

Sandler sells his Jungleland rip with goofball heartland earnestness. Of course, the sight of Chris Farley’s hair-netted Lunch Lady gracefully plié-ing across the stage near Kevin Nealon’s sentient Manwich pushes the performance into all-timer territory.

10. Fishbone – Sunless Saturday / Everyday Sunshine

Season 16, Episode 16; March 23, 1991

Despite its gloom-clouded song title, Fishbone were beyond brilliant on Sunless Saturday. Frontman Angelo Moore somersaulted across the stage with manic energy and put on an acrobatic vocal performance. John Norwood Fisher flexed thick bass thwaps across the soul-metal fusion piece.

A double-strapped Kendall Jones switched between acoustic strums and flanged-out-and-frantic tap solos on an S-shape. Keeping things on-theme, they then dipped into the funkily Vitamin D-dosed “Everyday Sunshine” for their second song.

9. St. Vincent – Birth in Reverse

Season 39, Episode 21; May 17, 2014

While the Season 39 finale brought out rappers 2 Chainz and Lil Jon for a pair of sketches, Annie Clark commanded the stage with playfully panicked art-punk energy during her performance of Birth in Reverse. Early on, she’s twitching out jazz chords on a vintage 1955 M-75 Aristocrat.

By the finale, a choreography routine finds St. Vincent and guitarist Toko Yasuda harmonizing post-shred bristliness while parading the stage like a pair of nectar-crazy hummingbirds.

8. Elvis Costello – Radio Radio

Season 3, Episode 8; December 17, 1977

“I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen; there’s no reason to do this song here.” In one of the show’s most iconic moments, musical or otherwise, Elvis Costello came into 8H to play Less Than Zero but abruptly and awkwardly halted the single to re-route his band toward a spritely but unexpected Radio Radio.

The swerve had staff panicking behind the scenes. He’d later say it was because Zero was too slow; it might’ve been that its lyrics on the rise of British fascism were, well, incredibly British. Costello satirically recreated the chaos for SNL’s 25th-anniversary special in 1999, hijacking Beastie Boys’ Sabotage to once again play Radio Radio.

7. David Gilmour with G.E. Smith & the SNL Band – Song for My Sara

Season 13, Episode 7; December 12, 1987

This episode brought out two musical guests, wildly juxtaposing Buster Poindexter’s broad, brass-heavy calypso-sleaze smash Hot Hot Hot with Gilmour’s tastefully funky instrumental, Song for My Sara.

Supported by the SNL band, the latter echo-quaked melodious vibrato from his headless Steinberger GM 3T. T-Bone Wolk thumb-and-finger popped his way through the piece. G.E. Smith is all smiles while supporting the Pink Floyd legend. The song was never officially released, making Gilmour’s drop-in appearance even more unique.

6. Eddie Van Halen with G.E. Smith & the SNL Band – Stompin’ 8H

Season 12, Episode 13; February 28, 1987

Van Halen’s lone and unplanned SNL appearance arose out of boredom. As then-wife Valerie Bertinelli was rehearsing skits that week, EVH ended up in the music office trading licks with Smith, and together they whipped up a bluesy lil’ choogle named after the show’s 8H soundstage.

Eddie goes full Orca-moan on his striped Kramer 5150 before flitting between tasteful quarter-note taps and cut-throat runs. Smith is ear-to-ear grinning while chopping at his Tele. The two guitarists literally – but playfully – butt heads mid-stage, though they stood united for this memorable drop-in moment.

5. Stevie Ray Vaughan – Say What! / Change It

Season 11, Episode 10; February 15, 1986

As Double Trouble drummer Chris Layton recalled years later, host Jerry Hall’s then-husband, Mick Jagger, was around during rehearsals. Mick almost sat in with the band for their SNL debut but ultimately didn’t have the stones to go through with the team-up. Instead, a mass of Texas talent graced the stage, with SRV first hitting 12-bar instrumental Say What! as a screaming, whammy-and-wah-wild workout.

For the cocksure Change It, he strutted through flavorful blues runs alongside fellow Strat-smith, brother and Fabulous Thunderbirds co‑founder Jimmie Vaughan.

4. George Harrison and Paul Simon – Here Comes the Sun / Homeward Bound

Season 2, Episode 8; November 20, 1976

Back in the first season, Michaels went on-air to offer the Beatles a hilariously paltry $3,000 – to split however they’d like – if they appeared on his show (“You want to give Ringo less? That’s up to you”). Paul McCartney and John Lennon were apparently watching the show together in NYC and damn near took a cab to 30 Rock to collect. But it was Harrison who became the first Beatle to play on SNL, and he did it with another music icon.

In one of most stunningly tender musical moments of the early years, Harrison and Paul Simon teamed up to strum and folk-finger through the former’s Here Comes the Sun and the latter’s Homeward Bound, back to back. Outside of their acoustics and gentle vocal harmonies, it’s pin-drop silent in the studio, the audience watching history in the making.

To say the least, the performance was more than alright – it was god damned magical. McCartney would ultimately show up as a musical guest four times between 1980 and 2012, and he closed out this year’s 50th-anniversary show with another Abbey Road classic, The End. Ringo hosted in 1984.

3. Jack White – Taking Me Back / Fear of the Dawn

Season 48, Episode 13; February 25, 2023

Ever since the White Stripes bashed through a radically raw Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground on 8H in 2002, Jack White has been an SNL fixture.

On top of being a five-time musical guest, he once ripped a solo as a six-stringing wedding crasher in a 2018 sketch and also covered Rockin’ in the Free World during this year’s SNL50 concert.

While he cut a memorable double-handed tapping tribute to EVH in 2020, his mic stand-toppling, pedalboard-maximalist Taking Me Back / Fear of the Dawn medley in 2023 was a fiendishly feral display of fuzz-blown sonics and wah expressionism.

2. The Blues Brothers – Soul Man

Season 4, Episode 6; November 18, 1978

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd prototyped their musical-brothers band in the first season with a buzzy, bee-costumed performance of Slim Harpo’s I’m a King Bee. They eventually bought some fedoras and rechristened themselves as Jake and Elwood Blues.

Flanked by members of the SNL band (blues vet Matt “Guitar” Murphy and Stax session all-stars Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn), this Season 4 cold open is the Brothers’ defining moment – and it led them toward a hit record and a blockbuster film.

After smashing into a sweat-box vamp of Otis Redding’s I Can’t Turn You Loose, they choogle through a cool-as-ice cover of Sam & Dave’s Soul Man. Cropper steps into the spotlight with sleek vibrato waggling while Elwood honks his harmonica.

1. Frank Ocean with John Mayer – Pyramids

Season 38, Episode 1; September 12, 2012

Pop-bluesmith John Mayer’s earnest-but-animated performance style was roasted on the show several times, via squinty-eyed, fat-tongued and faux-ripping impersonations from Bill Hader, Jimmy Fallon and host Ashton Kutcher. Mayer got the last laugh with his staggering 2012 guest solo for Frank Ocean.

The R&B singer walks over to a vintage arcade cabinet and starts gaming once Mayer unearths deep, atmospheric bends on a finish-obliterated Strat. A fighting game plays on in the background, but Mayer delivers the knockout blow.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

What is it?

The backstory to John Lennon’s association with the Framus Hootenanny 12-string is a tale for another day. But the basic headlines are that Lennon bought his Framus acoustic guitar in 1964, allegedly inspired by Bob Dylan’s use of a 12-string on a recent recording.

It made its first appearance with The Beatles in the studio during the sessions for Help! and subsequently on Rubber Soul, and can be seen in the film footage from the movie Help! during the You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away sequence.

Subsequently, the guitar was gifted to a friend and ended up packed away in an attic until its rediscovery and verification a few years ago. When it reached Julien’s auction in New York in May last year, it went for an eye-watering $2.8 million.

The good news is that Beatles fans without such deep pockets can now recreate their own fab moments thanks to Framus reissuing the exact model used on those historic recordings. And as a bonus, Framus has released a six-string Hootenanny from the same period, too. Alas, this never featured in The Beatles’ long and rich history, but it’s nice to have it along for the ride.

Of the original Hootenanny 12-string guitar, Julien’s text accompanying the auction lot states: “When strummed, it immediately identifies itself as that guitar. If you know the chords, Beatles tunes fall out of the soundhole effortlessly. Like an audio time-capsule from 1965, the Framus is a direct link to those records.”

How faithful its 21st-century doppelgänger is in that respect remains to be seen – and heard, of course – but our curiosity, particularly that of the ardent Beatles fans among our number, was stirred.

Obviously the star of the show here is the 12-string and so that was the instrument we first plucked from its case. The first thing that struck us was the ’50s/’60s look of the guitar. It definitely is a bit of a time capsule in its own right in that respect.

We’re all used to contemporary acoustic designs, many of which, if not all, are based on guitars hailing from the big names in the USA. But back then there was a distinctly European flavour to the look of some acoustics.

For instance, how long is it since you’ve seen a floating bridge on an acoustic guitar? They were, and still are, commonplace on archtops but comparatively rare in the acoustic world. And metal string saddles are another mark of the past.

Gibson experimented with adjustable saddles on some of its mid-’60s acoustics and it’s certainly true that the ability to raise or lower the action with a thumbwheel is less time-consuming than taking a trip to a luthier to shave a bone saddle to gain the same effect.

Then there’s the archtop-like tailpiece and zero fret to take into account. All hallmarks of a different age and furnishings that help fix the Hootenanny to a point in time.

Looking past the guitar’s inherent quirkiness, we find a spruce top with sapele back and sides. Lennon’s original had mahogany for its back and sides, but while this is a diversion from the ’60s spec, sapele is a good enough substitute.

Another surprise is the nitrocellulose finish throughout, and beyond that Framus offers a variety of different finishes for both models including sunburst, high polish or satin.

The neck is mahogany with a distinct wide and shallow D profile; it shares many characteristics with that of a classical guitar in that respect. And the likeness to classical guitars doesn’t end there as the rosewood fingerboard is completely flat with no radiusing at all.

While we’re down the business end, we’ll add that the frets are very low, too. Not 1950s Gibson Fretless Wonder low, but at 0.96mm they’re on the skinny side. As a comparison, a Les Paul Standard we have to hand measures in at 1.29mm fret height.

The six-a-side tuners have Kluson-like casings and vintage-inspired white buttons and the truss rod cover is gold-coloured metal that has been embossed with the Framus logo. It’s also a nice touch that both guitars come with a choice of two different self-adhesive scratchplates that you can choose between to complete that 60s look.

The spec sheet tells us that the Hootenanny is a “round-shouldered dreadnought”, but it’s a little more trim than the standard 380mm to 400mm widest-point dread dimensions at 374mm. Once again, overall, the body doesn’t look too far off from the outlines of a classical guitar, rather than the bulk of a contemporary D-18 or J-45.

Whereas you might expect the 12’s six-string sidekick to be essentially more of the same, and this is true in terms of body furnishings and materials, it goes rogue when it comes to body shape. Once again the spec hails the six as a “round-shouldered dreadnought”, but it is decidedly smaller.

To look at it without a tape measure in hand, you’d swear it was more of a folk size or a slightly more meaty 00. In any case, the Hootenanny 6-string arrives with an attractive dark sunburst and a satin finish. As we’ve said, many of the 12’s construction details are to be found here, including the tailpiece, floating adjustable bridge, spruce top and sapele back and sides.

It certainly maintains that unmistakable ’60s vibe of acoustic guitars from Europe found on its sibling. Obviously, the neck dimensions are different – although we still have those low frets and flat fingerboard – but the profile is a more comfy C, rather than the 12’s D.

Casting a critical eye over both instruments reveals that the build is good in both cases, but the crux of the matter is how they sound. Will we be able to summon up the 12-string spirit of Lennon and Harrison? There’s only one way to find out...

Specs

Framus Hootenanny 6-string

• Price: £809 (approx. $1,040 – inc hard case)
• Origin: China
• Type: Round shoulder dreadnought
• Top: Sitka spruce
• Back/Sides: Sapele
• Max Rim Depth: 113mm
• Max Body Width: 372mm
• Neck: Mahogany
• Scale Length: 643mm
• Tuners: Vintage-style, closed nickel, ivory coloured buttons
• Nut/Width: Bone/44mm
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Frets: 19
• Bridge/Spacing: Height-adjustable rosewood with metal saddle
• Electrics: N/A
• Weight (kg/lb): 1.45/3.2
• Options: Finishes only: Vintage Natural High Polish or Sunburst High Polish (£899), Vintage Natural Nitro High Polish or Sunburst Nitro High Polish (£989)
• Range Options: Hootenanny 12-String
• Left-Handers: No
• Finish: Vintage Sunburst Satin

Framus Hootenanny 12-string

• Price: £1,050 (approx. $1,145 – inc hard case)
• Origin: China
• Type: 12-string dreadnought
• Top: Sitka spruce
• Back/Sides: Sapele
• Max Rim Depth: 114mm
• Max Body Width: 374mm
• Neck: Mahogany
• Scale Length: 645mm
• Tuners: Vintage-style closed nickel, ivory-coloured buttons
• Nut/Width: Bone/50mm
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Frets: 19
• Bridge/Spacing: Height-adjustable rosewood with metal saddle
• Electrics: N/A
• Weight (kg/lb): 1.99/4.4
• Options: Finishes only: Vintage Natural Satin or Sunburst Satin (£870), Vintage Natural High Polish or Sunburst High Polish (£960)
• Range Options: Just the Hootenanny 6-String in either plain or sunburst finishes (as above)
• Left-Handers: No
• Finish: Vintage Natural Nitro High Polish
• Contact: Framus

Playability and sounds

We’ve all heard the jokes about the time it takes to tune a 12-string, but we were a little taken aback with our initial experiences with the 12 in this respect. Having tuned each individual string with a Peterson tuner, our first exploratory chord was still way out of tune.

Testing the guitar’s intonation at the 12th fret we found that it was out by a semitone. In other words, instead of an E on the top string at the 12th fret, we were greeted by an F. Something was wrong here and, as always, the prime suspect was the position of the bridge and, sure enough, it was in completely the wrong position.

This is something every seasoned archtop player will have encountered at one time or another and it’s a relatively easy fix with a floating bridge… but it’s a time-consuming bout of trial and error, nonetheless.

A little while later and everything was ship-shape in the intonation department and so we returned to listening to what the Hootenanny had to say for itself. Initial probing strums revealed a very bright sound, no doubt helped along by the zero fret at one end of the scale length and that metal saddle at the other.

It’s doubtless that the tailpiece and floating bridge contribute to the slight ‘unamplified archtop’ timbre we detected, too. We took a listen to The Beatles’ You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away and John’s 12-string there does have that similar trebly edge to it and so this guitar passes the ‘Fab Four’ test.

As far as playability and feel are concerned, the wide flat ’board and those low frets take a little getting used to, but once we’d spent some time playing, we found we could pretty much forget about both these factors and get on with the job of executing just about every 12-string guitar part we could remember.

Over to the Hootenanny 6-string and we immediately categorised the sound as being rootsy, bluesy with a touch of front-porch Americana on the side. We’re sure the tailpiece and floating bridge play a serious sonic role here as both guitars share very similar traits.

If Delta blues is your thing, there’s a lot to be recommended, but if you’re looking for a more modern Martin/Gibson dread experience, you’re not going to find it with the Hootenanny. However, we’re happy that both instruments are exactly what they’re set out to be: snapshots of the past.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★☆

With instruments so specifically aimed at the target of yesteryear and with – as far as the 12 is concerned – a very specific instrumental voice, it’s always hard to judge them without letting any prejudices inspired by playing and listening to big-league acoustics for many years cloud your vision.

But that’s really not what these Hootenanny guitars are all about. These are voices from the past and will appeal to players who are seeking the particular niche that they represent.

Guitar World verdict: It’s true to say that there are guitars out there that would do a similar job – and many of them may cost less. But if it’s the whole ’60s chic, floating bridge, jazz-box tailpiece and (as far as the 12 is concerned) Beatles association that appeals to you, then we’d recommend you seek them out.

Hands-on videos

Thomann

• Best 12-string guitars 2025: our pick of 12-string acoustic and electric guitars
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Under normal circumstances, a Beatles covers album might not be headline news. But For The Love Of George – the latest release fom Robin Nolan, a player ranked among Britain’s greatest exponents of Gypsy jazz for three decades – is the final link in a chain of events so fantastical, improbable and downright surreal that, even now, there’s a hint of disbelief in his voice.

The seed of this project was planted in the mid-90s, when George Harrison personally invited the then-busker to perform at his Oxfordshire estate, Friar Park.

Nolan’s friendship with the family continued beyond Harrison’s death in 2001. And after plucking up courage during one particularly convivial soirée, the guitarist shared his vision: a new studio album that reinterpreted the quiet Beatle’s best moments in Gypsy jazz fashion, recorded on the fabled instruments in his music room.

Harrison’s widow, Olivia, not only agreed but went one better, inviting the younger guitarist to deploy the chords scribbled on an envelope by her late husband as the jump-off for a brand-new song.

“George’s songwriting is so incredible,” says Nolan. “He’s obviously overshadowed by the other two [John Lennon and Paul McCartney], but it’s just a joy to get his songs out there in this context.”

How did you first come into the orbit of George Harrison?

“So I came to Amsterdam to busk after I fell in love with Django Reinhardt’s music. I was living in London at the time, but it was challenging for playing this music. We didn’t have any gigs and we couldn’t really busk anywhere, but we heard about Amsterdam and there was this square called the Leidseplein. So we just turned up there and started playing and never went back. We worked on the street every day for, like, 10 years, and that’s how we learned and practised this music.

“One day in ’94, one of George’s gardeners was on holiday here and he bought one of our CDs, and then gave it to George and Olivia back at Friar Park, and they obviously loved it. And then, luckily, my number was on the back. So I got a surreal call from George and didn’t believe it was him for ages.”

Tell us about your earliest memories of meeting George in person.

“He wanted us to come over and play at a party he was having at Friar Park, which is this incredible Gothic mansion in Henley-on-Thames. So one minute we’re playing under the tree on the Leidseplein; the next we’re playing for The Beatles.

“And, you know, everyone is famous except for us: Tom Petty, the Heartbreakers, Ravi Shankar, race car drivers, Monty Pythons, you name it. It’s that A-list kind of scene. We were just playing there in the background. And this kind of music, it’s nice for a party, so that went down really well.

“George was so curious about the guitar. We played a bit together and it was like he just wanted to learn. He loved Django, Eddie Lang, and all that kind of stuff, and I think he liked us because we were kind of naive and just young kids. We weren’t in the business; we just wanted to play. We had that spirit, which I think he found refreshing.

“That was the beginning of the friendship with him, and with Olivia and Dhani [George and Olivia’s son]. We were kind of the house band at Friar Park. We would play at birthday parties or summer parties in the garden and it was always the same, like, ‘Oh my God, is that Eric Clapton?’ Obviously, you’re in a different world there. But we had a friendship going with his family and it was always something really special for me.

“Then George passed away in 2001 and we continued the friendship with Olivia and Dhani. In fact, the night before the Concert For George, held at the Royal Albert Hall [2002] a year after his passing, they had a special night at Friar Park where everyone was there, and we were playing. It was quite sombre and emotional.”

What were the first steps towards making the album, For The Love Of George?

“A couple of years ago, I was there at Friar Park again, playing at a very small dinner party for Olivia. We were just hanging about after dinner. It was a really nice atmosphere. I’ve always wanted to do a George Harrison project, so I just plucked up the courage and I asked Olivia: ‘I’d love to play on one of George’s guitars,’ because I knew they were upstairs. She just said, ‘Of course – which one?’ I just said, ‘Erm, the Ramírez?’

“She dashed upstairs and came back a second later – and then suddenly I was standing there holding the Ramírez, the flamenco guitar that George used on And I Love Her and Till There Was You. Of course, first of all I played the intro to And I Love Her and then I used that guitar for the rest of the night.

“Everyone’s sat around and we’re doing a little concert. Everything came together: I was in George’s house, playing the same notes on the frets where he played them, on that famous guitar. It was just an amazing feeling. It’s like there’s a vibe and a spirit you can’t put your finger on, but it was really special.”

It must have felt like a natural next step to suggest a studio album?

“Later on, I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to record an album on George’s guitars?’ Olivia thought it was a great idea. With all the logistics, it took a while to happen, but I did the backing tracks in Amsterdam and then eventually I came back to Friar Park with a recording guy and we were allowed into George’s guitar room – you know, the inner sanctum, surrounded by Beatles history, all the guitars and everything from his life.

“I recorded the guitar parts on his Ramírez and Gibson J-160E, which is the only guitar to be on every Beatles album. And then, on the title track, I used the Rickenbacker 12-string, which is the A Hard Day’s Night guitar.

“I felt a lot of responsibility. I know what George was like and he didn’t suffer fools – and he knew if you were just trying to be flash – so I wanted to be sincere for him. I think that comes across in the music on this album.”

It’s amazing how well George’s songs lend themselves to the Gypsy jazz treatment.

“It is amazing. When I look at it objectively, sometimes it’s a challenge with epic songs like My Sweet Lord – you know, how do you turn that into a swing cover without being cheesy?

“I just managed to do it somehow on these songs, not falling into the trap of trying to mimic the song exactly but kind of making it a swing song or a Latin song. I was very careful to make his music sound beautiful in this context. I was really trying to be true to his melodies and his chords because they’re so interesting. People are seeing his songs in a different light now and the feedback has been amazing.”

The covers are fantastic. But this album also has an original song, doesn’t it?

“Yes, the other really interesting thing is the title track, For The Love Of George, which is published, amazingly, as a Harrison/Nolan composition. The chords are from him and the melody is me. Olivia texted me a picture of an envelope [pictured overleaf] and it just had chords scribbled down by George, like, a B minor crossed out and an arrow pointing to something else.

“She asked me: ‘Do you think George ever did anything with this? Why don’t you have a look?’ So I was staring at it and I really started getting the vibe. Like, ‘What did he mean here?’ I started to get a little bit obsessed and I slowly pieced it together, like, ‘Maybe this is what he was meaning?’ and I put together the chord sequence and then added a melody on top. I was trying to get something that was really ‘George’. I could kind of hear him humming this melody.

“Finally, I put the whole track together and then sent it back to Olivia, which was nerve-racking because she might not like it. But she said: ‘Oh, it sounds so George.’ That was really inspiring, you know? That song kind of spearheaded this project – and all three guitars are on that title track.”

It must have been difficult to actually sit in George’s studio and hold it together…

“I think, honestly, I just had one thing in mind, which was to make this album beautiful for him. I wasn’t trying to impress any other guitarists. Just handling any of those guitars, I felt beyond nervous, but it was more like I was channelling something really special for him when I was in that room. It wasn’t the kind of atmosphere where it was like, ‘Oh, let’s give it a couple of hours and come back.’

“I knew we didn’t have unlimited time in there, so I just really did it as intensely as possible. It was a real relief listening back and hearing how we’d captured those guitars. Like, ‘Oh yeah, that sounds good.’ Because we didn’t have a chance to listen back to anything at the time, I just did it with headphones.”

Handling those guitars, it must feel like you’re holding a piece of history.

“Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was ridiculous recording And I Love Her with the Ramírez because it sounds exactly the same. And the A Hard Day’s Night Rickenbacker just sounds like The Beatles, you know?

“Then the Gibson – I think Paul and John had written I Saw Her Standing There and some of the early classics on that guitar. It was quite a high action and quite a challenge to play that one as well. It had a real gnarly kind of feel to it. You can’t help but be affected by the spirit of those guitars.

“You know, it might never happen again with those guitars. They’re in that room, and it’s basically like a museum – there’s not people just playing them and recording with them. Not Clapton, not Jeff Lynne, no-one. They’re just there and they’ll still be there when we’re all gone and someone will be curating them.

“It’s rock ’n’ roll history. It’s just that I have this unique relationship and friendship with the Harrisons that, you know, I was in the right position and had the idea to do it. It all came together. And it easily might not have – but it did.”

• For The Love Of George is available now on Dark Horse Records
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

George Harrison’s 1974 North American tour was the former Beatle’s first tour following his former band’s 1970 breakup. The 45-show trek – which included November and December dates throughout the U.S. and Canada – was in support of Harrison’s fifth solo album, Dark Horse, which was released that December.

The tour put Harrison under extreme pressure to prove himself as a live solo performer under his own name. Sadly, things didn’t necessarily go according to plan.

From the outset, the typical on-the-road rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and Harrison’s spiritual pursuits didn’t make for a good mix. Meanwhile, the lack of Beatles material in Harrison’s set – which many fans were understandably hoping to hear – and the lengthy Indian-music set by tour partner Ravi Shankar led to many fans and critics seriously lambasting the tour.

Harrison’s vocal issues throughout the tour – due to a bad case of laryngitis (also heard on the Dark Horse album) – only made matters fray further. Some people were even calling it the “Dark Hoarse” tour.

Looking back on that tour in his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, Harrison said it “was the nearest I got to a nervous breakdown.”

In the aftermath of the Dark Horse tour, Harrison wouldn’t hit the road again until 1991 – and that was only for a brief Japanese jaunt with Eric Clapton and his band, the results of which can be heard on 1992’s Live in Japan. Interestingly, there has never been an official live album from Harrison’s ’74 tour.

Harrison’s backing band for the tour featured some superb musicians, including keyboardist (and longtime Beatles buddy) Billy Preston, saxophonist Tom Scott, bassist Willie Weeks and a young, recently discovered guitarist named Robben Ford, who had just finished a stint touring with Joni Mitchell.

Ford had been hand-picked by Harrison, who said, “once in a blue moon there is an artist so natural to the blues and to jazz as Robben Ford.”

“I had just done nine months with Joni Mitchell,” Ford says today. “That’s where I met George. He was in England with Joni, so he invited me to do the tour, so those two gigs were done back to back. But that whole Dark Horse tour was a really weird thing. George was uncomfortable being a band leader, and he didn’t really have any band-leader chops. Because of that, we were all just kind of on our own.

“He also didn’t come to a lot of rehearsals. We’d be there for rehearsal, but he wouldn’t show up for hours and hours. So it was kind of a drag, and because of that the whole tour had a very loose kind of quality to it and didn’t feel glued together. Basically, George played guitar and I played guitar, and that was that.”

Due to the lack of cohesiveness to the shows, the allocated guitar duties between Harrison and Ford were mainly uncommitted. “He was singing, and I was the lead guitar player, as we never discussed what we were going to play together,” Ford says. “So, as I said, there was an absence of input from George.”

Ford recalls that Harrison’s religious beliefs and moral stance tended to conflict – every now and then – with what was going on behind the scenes out on the road. “George could take the opportunity,” Ford says, without elaborating, although it’s widely known that Harrison would occasionally engage in a bit of drug and alcohol use on the road. “But he was always nice and I never had any bad vibes from him – ever.”

Having come from a background in blues and jazz, Ford – who turned a mere 23 years old during that tour – found the guitar-playing duties rudimentary at best and fairly unchallenging in terms of musicianship.

“The music was very simple,” he says. “I don’t mean it in a derogatory way when I say it was mainly cowboy chords, like C, D and G. It was just triads, minor chords and major chords. There was nothing challenging about it in any way whatsoever, so I didn’t learn anything from it.”

That said, there were some highlights, including the band’s take on Harrison’s White Album classic, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. “I really enjoyed playing that song; that was where George and I actually traded back and forth,” Ford says. “But my style and his were so different, as he was a very simple player, with long notes, and I was into playing a lot of notes.”

Gear-wise, while Harrison stuck with a pre-CBS sunburst Fender Strat and “Lucy,” his storied (and refinished) 1957 Gibson Les Paul, Ford played a Guild Starfire IV.

“It actually wasn’t a very good guitar,” he says. “I was still learning about electric guitars in those days. I also used an Ovation acoustic/electric, and I played through a [Mesa] Boogie as the guy from Boogie brought amps to George and me. As for effects, I had an MXR fuzz tone and an MXR phase shifter.”

More than 50 years later, Ford credits his ’74 tours with Harrison and Mitchell as having been integral to solidifying his reputation as a wunderkind guitar player.

“I got a lot of exposure that really kind of made my career, especially to have that kind of exposure at such an early age,” he says. “Had I not been working with those guys, I don’t know what I would’ve been doing. I would’ve had a band of some sort, but those tours really put me in a position to be playing with great musicians.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

George Harrison’s “Lucy” Les Paul is one of the famous electric guitars in rock history, and when it was stolen from him, the Beatle did everything in his power to get it back.

The tale reads like a movie script: theft, mystery, TV pleas, a chase across the Mexican border, and a hardy stand-off. It turns out that Norman Harris of Norman's Rare Guitars played a key role in getting the guitar back, and it cost Harrison a pretty penny.

The Beatle had been gifted the cherry red guitar by Eric Clapton, who had used it to track his hugely influential While My Guitar Gently Weeps lead lines. It's a cut that's widely regarded as one of the greatest guitar solos of all time, and the guitar's prestige was furthered when Harrison used it on two of the Beatles' biggest albums, White Album, and Abbey Road.

Then, in 1973, the axe was stolen and promptly sold to music shop Whalin Sound City. A Mexican musician by the name of Miguel Ochoa didn’t take a second glance when he saw it in the store.

“It got sold in a store in Hollywood and they tracked down who bought it,” Harris explains in a new Instagram post from CBS Mornings Plus. “And the guy said, ‘I bought it in good faith. I would like another late ’50s Les Paul in exchange.’”

So, Harris was drafted in to help with his demands.

“My friend Dale said, ‘I've got a buddy who's got three of them,’ and Dale calls me. He goes, ‘Listen, I’ve got this really important customer. I need you to come down here right away. It's George Harrison.’

“I say, ‘Where,’ and he says, ‘He's getting a slice of pizza.’ With that, the door opens. It was like the Pope and the President all in one.”

Harris, with the full weight of his burgeoning vintage gear empire behind him, was more than happy to help.

“He ended up buying two,” he goes on. “One to trade to get Lucy back, and one he fell in love with that he wanted for himself.”

Though armed with the appropriate goods, Harrison’s mission was far from complete, but for Harris, his role had been played. It also rounded out a full-circle moment for Harris: one of Harrison’s guitars is the one that got away from him.

He was offered his infamous Gretsch Country Gentleman in his early gear-shifting days, but conceded that he’d be “embarrassed to tell somebody because they’d call me a liar”.

Harris’ involvement in the retrieval of Lucy is just another colorful tale in the storied life of Norman’s Rare Guitars, which is now the subject of a star-studded Netflix documentary. In the future, the store may well be run by Joe Bonamassa as Harris casts a glance towards retirement.

Ochoa, meanwhile, also came out the deal better off. The Les Paul he got as part of the bargain was sold at auction for $312,500 in 2022.

On day in 1994, gypsy jazz guitarist Robin Nolan was busking in Leidseplein, a lively square in Amsterdam. A tourist bought one of his CDs. “And he turned out to be George Harrison’s gardener,” Nolan says. “He gave the CD to George, thinking he might like it. The next thing I know George and Olivia [his wife] call to ask if we’d play at their Christmas party.”

There began a friendship, with Nolan’s combo becoming what he calls “the house band” for parties at Friar Park, the Harrisons’ home (and home studio) in England’s Thames Valley.

“We played [their son] Dhani Harrison’s 21st birthday, and everyone there was famous except for us,” Nolan says with a laugh.

“Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Tom Petty, Ravi Shankar, the Monty Python members. We’d be doing our Django Reinhardt stuff and George would say, ‘Check these guys out!’ Our CD was in his jukebox with all his favorite music. We even got to play together. It was surreal.”

Nolan is celebrating the friendship with For the Love of George, tasteful gypsy jazz re-imaginings of 10 Harrison and Beatles songs, plus the original title track – a virtual co-write with Harrison.

That began with a texted pic Olivia sent Nolan of an envelope with a chord progression scribbled out in George’s hand. “I had to unravel the mystery of what he intended,” Nolan says. “As I played the changes, I kind of heard George’s voice humming in my head.”

He sent a melodic idea to Olivia.

“That was nerve-wracking. I thought, ‘God, she might hate it.’ But she texted back, “Oh, it sounds so George!’ Now the copyright says, ‘Harrison-Nolan.’ Unreal.”

As if that’s not enough, Nolan recorded the album at Friar Park. Aside from his Polak Gypsy Swing 42N, he played what he calls the “crown jewels” of George’s collection. These include the Gibson J-160E, the Rickenbacker 360 12-string and the Ramirez gut-string heard on the Beatles’ And I Love Her.”

“When you put your fingers in the same place that George put his fingers on the same guitar from an epic recording from the Beatles, and it sounds the same, it blows you away,” he says.

Nolan will be touring this year while maintaining his educational outreach via his Gypsy Jazz Club instructional books and videos. Though the soulful fluidity of Django is integral to the new album, Nolan says, “Noodling or trying to shred was out the window. With these songs, I was only thinking of George. I just wanted to play for him.”

• A Tribute to George Harrison is out now.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Veteran guitarist Dave Mason has been forced to cancel all of his scheduled 2025 tour dates amid ongoing health issues.

The English singer-songwriter is best known as one of the founding members of Traffic and as a session guitarist. He's worked with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to George Harrison across a tireless career spanning seven decades, and today continues to battle a serious heart condition.

It was discovered during a routine check-up last year and led to his fall 2024 tour being postponed and subsequently rescheduled for this summer. Steps were taken to treat the condition, but he faced a further setback after contracting a severe infection while recovering in March.

Mason’s camp says he has been “courageously battling” the infection ever since, but nearly three months later, there is little sign of improvement.

“With deep regret, I must cancel all tour dates for 2025 due to ongoing health issues stemming from the infection I had in March,” Mason writes on Facebook. “I’m incredibly grateful to my team of doctors – this has been challenging territory, to say the least.

“A heartfelt thank you to all the fans, and to my family, band, agents, and the venues who’ve waited patiently and supported me throughout this journey. Your kind messages have lifted my spirits more than words can express.

“Recovery is a long road,” his statement concludes. “My love for you all runs deep.”

From playing 12-string acoustic guitar on Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower – a song voted the greatest cover of all time last year – to featuring on George Harrison's 1970 solo album All Things Must Pass, alongside credits with the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, and Eric Clapton, Mason's career has been storied, to say the least.

“I got to know Hendrix a bit when he was becoming a sensation in London,” he told Guitar Player of his encounters with the late guitar great.

“I saw Hendrix at the Scotch of St. James when Chas Chandler was taking him around to sit in and jam with everybody, and I think McCartney was there that night. This guy gets up and starts playing and I'm like, ‘Holy shit! Who the fuck is this?’”

Of the Watchtower recording session, he adds: “Mitch Mitchell was playing drums and Jimi and I sat down facing each other, with Jimi on six-string acoustic and me on 12-string.

“It took me 10 or 11 takes to get the timing on the intro right. I stayed and watched the whole session, with him putting bass and electric guitar on the track and it was one of the most incredible, inspiring musical experiences I’ve ever had. Absolutely inspiring to watch him work.”

In 2023, the 79-year-old told Guitar World that he built up his commendable resume without “a lot of technique,” admitting, “I wish I knew more about what the hell I was doing when I’m playing.”

“I’ve treated guitar more as a melodic instrument than anything,” he added. “So if I’m noodling around it’s probably mostly going to be some blues stuff.”

Self-deprecating or not, Mason's talents have kept him in high demand. He formed the psych-rock outfit Traffic in 1967, but his time in the band was tumultuous, ultimately paving the way for a more stable career as a session player. He’s also released 16 solo albums, the most recent being 2023’s A Shade of Blues.

Josh Homme is so cool he has to live in the desert. It’s, like, medical or something, regulates the body heat. But seriously, when we talk of rock stars having a certain presence, the Queens of the Stone Age frontman is the kind of person we mean – he’s the walking definition of cool.

He, is however, reassuringly human, and we have video evidence to prove it. Said footage shows us why no one – besides maybe four other people, two of whom are deceased – is cool enough to play George Harrison’s iconic 1968 Rosewood Telecaster and not break out into a sweat, to find that even the gift of speech has deserted them.

That is exactly what happened to Homme in this clip. Surrounded by Harrison’s guitars – the Rocky Stratocaster, the Duo Jet – the earth tones of the mise en scene a pleasing shade of vintage Tweed – Homme is handed the rosewood Tele by the late Alan Rogan, guitar tech of Pete Townshend and guitar whisperer for some of Johnny Marr’s most-famous six-strings, and he proceeds to melt.

Turning puce as he picks up the Tele, feeling not on the considerable weight of the instrument itself (a prototype that reportedly weighed in excess of 10lbs) but of musical history itself, Homme is lost for words.

It’s like he is speaking in tongues.

“Oh my God. Wow! Wow! I had no idea that… Wow!” But what can you say? You’ve been handed the thing. You are on camera. You can’t back out. Do as the late, great Frank Zappa said, shut up and play yer guitar.

Homme duly plays, gives it his best shot, against all odds he attempts to get his right hand into the aerobic zone, work the muscle memory of QOTSA’s groove, but that is no good. Sometimes you get so flustered that there’s nothing that will work.

We have all been there. Just remember the first time you tried out an electric guitar in a store, on a Saturday afternoon perhaps. Not the first time you had done so. But you have gotten just good enough as to be self-conscious and critical of your playing. Everything sounds choked. The strings – these precision engineered alloys of nickel and steel – turn to spaghetti.

Homme tries some licks. It is no use. This was the prototype electric that was there as the curtain began to fall on the greatest pop-cultural institution of all time.

Fender saw this as a promotional coup. They had presented the Beatles with some very nice kit: a Bass VI, Jazz Bass, plus their Bassman and Twin Reverb tube amps, a Rhodes Piano, and a PA system. The coup de grâce was to be the Tele, a prototype built by Fender's Roger Rossmeisl and Philip Kubicki. Hendrix was to receive a prototype rosewood Stratocaster but sadly died before he could receive it.

Harrison’s ’68 Telecaster travelled in style. As in the fashion of Joe Bonamassa’s Principal Skinner and friends, it had its own seat on the flight over to London.

The design was quietly radical for the Telecaster. It had a sandwich body design, two slabs of rosewood, a thin slice of maple in between. Gibson used a similar “crossbanding” construction technique for some Les Pauls during the Norlin era.

It is cheaper, and this, after all, was a guitar that would go into production a year later. Fender would ultimately chamber the body, taking some of the weight out. A wise decision. Chiropractors could plan some vacation time again.

Although he would give the guitar to Delaney Bramlett in December 1969, Harrison’s prototype saw plenty of action with the Beatles. Harrison used it on the Get Back and Abbey Road sessions.

You can hear it on Get Back, Don’t Let Me Down, I’ve Got a Feeling, and the single version of Let It Be. You can see it in action on the Beatles' last live performance on the roof of the Apple Corps headquarters in central London.

You can see it and hear it in the hands of Homme above. But you might never see him playing it again. Once was enough.

“I think I have to stop playing these things. Man, I… Seriously, I think I have to stop playing these things,” he says. “I’ll tell you, some things you are supposed to touch, and some things you are never supposed to touch.”

A Gibson Style O archtop acoustic guitar – played and owned by Eric Clapton and Goerge Harrison – has gone up for sale on Reverb, but isn’t likely to stay there long.

Guitars this old are extremely difficult to come by – just ask film composer Ludwig Göransson who had to scour the globe for a 1932 Dobro resonator guitar for Sinners – let alone ones steeped in as much history as this.

“Offered here is one of the most significant surviving acoustic guitars from the late 1960s rock era – an ultra rare 1913 Gibson Style O Acoustic Archtop, affectionately known as ‘Pattie,’” the listing reads.

“Played/owned by Eric Clapton and George Harrison during their formative songwriting collaborations in 1968, and later owned by Delaney Bramlett, this is a rare and culturally critical guitar directly tied to the end of both The Beatles and Cream, the birth of their respective solo careers and their earliest songwriting sessions for Badge, October of 1968 in Los Angeles.”

Harrison and Clapton co-wrote Badge, from Cream’s final album, Goodbye, and they’d soon embark on successful solo careers in the wake of their bands not surviving the new decade.

The guitar can be seen in the Eric Clapton documentary Life in 12 Bars, with Harrison known to have played it during the writing of Badge. He’d later lift the song’s bridge section for Here Comes The Sun, which was released the following year. The guitar, then, has links to the final records from both legendary bands.

The listing goes on to say that the Gibson was used “extensively in songwriting circles during the creation of Superstar, Let It Rain, and other works that helped launch Clapton's solo career, the formation of Derek & The Dominos, and Harrison's All Things Must Pass era”

It features tuners dating to the 1950s–'60s and has undergone several period-correct repairs, including a neck reset, fretboard binding, bridge replacement, and a refret.

There’s no denying how gorgeous this instrument is. With a curvy horn that would make Prince purr and a highly worn top that symbolizes how much of a workhorse it was for two of Britain's most accomplished players, it's hardly surprising that it's listed for $949,999.

Built over 110 years ago, the guitar’s surprise sale, by the late Delaney Bramlett’s estate, presents a massive opportunity for vintage gear collectors. Any would-be new owners will need deep pockets, but this is museum-grade acoustic. It feels like the kind of guitar Jim Isray – the owner of some of the world’s most valuable guitars – would be all over.

Interested buyers can request a historic/forensic/analysis dossier to inspect the instrument at the seller’s Berlin, NJ headquarters by appointment.

Head to Reverb to see the listing.

The music industry isn’t short of surprise success stories, but few guitarists have enjoyed a glow-up quite like Robin Nolan has, after the gypsy jazz virtuoso went from busking on the streets of Amsterdam to collaborating with George Harrison – and hanging out with an A-list cast of rockstars.

As the tale goes, Nolan's fortunes changed on an inconspicuous day in 1994. While he was playing in the Dutch city’s lively square of Leidseplein, a tourist bought one of his CDs – and from there the unlikely connection to the Beatle began to form.

“He turned out to be George Harrison's gardener,” Nolan says in the new issue of Guitar World. “He gave the CD to George, thinking he might like it. The next thing I know George and Olivia [his wife] call to ask if we'd play at their Christmas party.”

Harrison was always on the hunt for new music – David Crosby says he was the one who introduced him to Ravi Shankar, for instance – and an artist’s obscurity did little to deter the guitarist. A friendship blossomed, and whenever he decided to throw a party at his lavish home of Friar Park, Harrison recruited Nolan to play in “the house band”.

“We played [their son] Dhani Harrison's 21st birthday, and everyone there was famous except for us,” remembers Nolan, who rubbed shoulders with a who's who cast of music greats.

“Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Tom Petty, Ravi Shankar, the Monty Python members. We'd be doing our Django Reinhardt stuff and George would say, 'Check these guys out!' Our CD was in his jukebox with all his favorite music. We even got to play together. It was surreal.”

After Harrison passed in 2001, their relationship took another intriguing turn. Following years of ruminating on the idea, Nolan committed to penning a tribute album after a visit to Friar Park, where Olivia afforded him the chance to play Harrison's Ramirez acoustic guitar.

He’s now celebrated their friendship further with For the Love of George. The album sees his Harrison-adored gypsy jazz stylings redress 10 Beatles and solo tracks from Harrison's catalog, with one track actually co-written with George.

It started when Harrison's widow, Olivia, texted Nolan a photo of an envelope. On it, the Beatle had scrawled out a chord progression. This would be his muse for the album’s title track.

“I had to unravel the mystery of what he intended,” Nolan says of the writing process. “As I played the changes, I kind of heard George's voice humming in my head.”

A rough melodic draft was sent to Olivia, and while he waited for a reply his nerves began to shred.

“That was nerve-wracking,” he says. “I thought, 'God, she might hate it.' But she texted back, ‘Oh, it sounds so George!' Now the copyright says, 'Harrison-Nolan.' Unreal.”

Touchingly, the album was recorded at Friar Park, and features the “crown jewels” of George’s guitar collection, including his Gibson J-160E and two And I Love Her guitars – a Rickenbacker 360 12-string and the aforementioned Ramirez classical guitar.

“When you put your fingers in the same place that George put his fingers on the same guitar from an epic recording from the Beatles, and it sounds the same, it blows you away,” he reflects.

“Noodling or trying to shred was out the window. With these songs, I was only thinking of George. I just wanted to play for him.”

Nolan’s George Harrison interview features in the new issue of Guitar World, alongside an in-depth look at AC/DC’s Back In Black 45 years on.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up an issue.

The Byrds were famously one of the first rock ’n’ roll band to be signed to Columbia Records – no mean feat considering the label's longstanding love affair with jazz and classical Broadway show tunes, especially at the time.

An audition tape that landed in the hands of Miles Davis' agent – plus a little coaxing from the jazz trumpeter himself – led the quintet to secure their first deal with Columbia – and guitarist (and frontman) Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker 360 12-string would serve as the secret sauce that helped make their debut single stand out from the flurry of releases.

“Columbia was very conservative. They didn't like rock ’n’ roll,” McGuinn says in an interview with Pete Ganbarg on the Rock & Roll High School Podcast. “They thought it might tarnish their reputation as a quality label.

“So they gave us a record deal for one single, and if we didn’t get it hit with a single, we were out. So we needed a strong song, and that's where [Jim] Dickson [their manager at the time] came up with Mr. Tambourine Man. He knew Dylan, and he got a copy of it sent out from M. Witmark & Sons in New York, Dylan's publisher at the time, and we all sat around listening to it.”

However, not everyone in the band was as enthusiastic as Dickson about the song – which Dylan himself released in March 1965, roughly a month before the Byrds’ rolled out their own version.

“[David] Crosby said, ‘I don't like it, man.’ He said, ‘That folky 2/4 time never gonna play on the radio.’ And he was right. They were playing rock ’n’ roll.’” To make the song work for them, and more palatable to audiences, McGuinn changed the time signature to 4/4 time, and the band – along with Dickson – gave it the electric rock treatment, effectively creating the subgenre of folk rock.

A key part of the song's makeover was the addition of McGuinn's distinct jangly guitar playing – courtesy of his Rickenbacker. As the third-ever person to own a Rickenbacker – following a certain George Harrison – the Byrds' guitarist had big shoes to fill, but the left-field guitar eventually became his signature instrument.

"I've been listening to the Searchers and the Seekers, and they had these really cool 12-string intros,” he says of his initial inspiration to incorporate the Rickenbacker. “I found out later it wasn't a 12-string – it's two sixes in octaves – but they got to 12-strings later, and that sound for an intro was really captivating. I thought it'd be cool to do that with Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Speaking more about how he managed to achieve the “jingle-jangle” tone that continues to capture guitarists’ imagination to this day, McGuinn told Guitar World that his Rick was awash with compression – courtesy of Fairchild compressors and Pultec limiters.

“The technique was to run one compressor into another – piggyback them – just to get as much compression as possible to get as much sustain as possible. Because the Rickenbacker is a very short-sustain instrument. That’s good for rhythm, but it’s not good for lead.”

He continued, “The lead lines I was doing needed longer sustain. So we used compression. Originally, though, I think the reason why we started using compression wasn’t for the sustain. It was a by-product of the fact that [recording engineers] did it so that we wouldn’t blow up their equipment!”

The Byrds’ lasting impact can be epitomized in New York guitarist Christian Parker’s two albums’ worth of a love letter to the Byrds' repertoire – with Parker going as far as picking specific instruments and gear to match the era and the material.

John Barham wrote the orchestral and choral arrangements for two of George Harrison’s most celebrated albums: 1970’s All Things Must Pass and 1973’s Living in the Material World.

Barham, who was educated at the Royal College of Music and the School of Oriental and African Studies, both in London, was an assistant to Ravi Shankar, a longtime friend of Harrison.

Harrison and Barham first collaborated on Harrison’s often-overlooked 1968 soundtrack album, Wonderwall Music, the first solo album to be released by a Beatle.

We recently caught up with Barham for a rare interview – via email – about Harrison’s skills as a producer.

When you met George in 1966, you shared a love of Indian music, which was hardly mainstream at that point. Was there a sense that you were outsiders in your chosen fields?

“Yes, there was that sense, but we didn’t really discuss it. We talked more about spirituality and philosophy. I remember that the other Beatles were curious about other aspects of Indian culture, too, in particular, their [1968] trip to Rishikesh [India] and being influenced by the teachings of the Maharishi and transcendental meditation.”

In 1966, you did Alice in Wonderland with Ravi, and George wrote his first Indian-influenced song, Love You To, for Revolver. Do you think it was scary for him to introduce Indian music onto a record by the Beatles?

“I got the impression that he needed to be quite forceful to get his songs onto Beatles records. He was one against two of the greatest songwriters of their time. But also their equal. George was so intensely involved with Indian music as well as his work with the Beatles, and I think the strength of his conviction would have overcome any scary feelings.”

Wonderwall Music was one of George’s first forays into album production. What was it like working for him during those sessions? Was he completely in control or was he still learning as he went along?

“He was certainly in control – but I wouldn’t say completely in control. One of the things I liked about working with him was his ability to give musicians the freedom to express themselves while following his leadership.

“I recently checked the Apple Records box set and saw how many productions George was involved in. He was a quick learner, and working with Billy Preston, Badfinger and Ronnie Spector would have offered George – and myself– plenty of opportunities to learn a few tricks of the trade.”

How would you approach writing an arrangement for one of George’s songs?

“For the All Things Must Pass orchestral sessions, we first worked together at Friar Park [Harrison’s home – and home studio– in Henley-on-Thames, England] in a large room with two chairs and an upright piano.

“George sang and played ideas on the guitar, and I suggested ideas on the piano. I notated everything we agreed on so that there would be no surprises at the recording stage. It was very straightforward and collaborative.”

How did Phil Spector’s production style on All Things Must Pass affect your choices?

“Phil gave me complete freedom by not being present at the preparatory orchestral sessions. He left it to George and me. But during the recording, he demonstrated in front of the orchestra how he thought I should conduct.”

Did having George as the producer on Material World give you more freedom in your arrangements?

“The preparation and recording sessions were very similar, with the difference that Phil was not telling me how to conduct.”

On the new remix, they really brought out your orchestral arrangements. Were you frustrated with the original mix?

“I wasn’t frustrated, but I thought the balance in the original mixes of All Things and Material World was unsatisfactory. George’s vocals were too low in relation to the backing. This recent remixing of Material World is excellent, especially in regard to correcting that balance.”

What do you think George’s main gifts were as a guitarist?

“I think his main gifts were his melodic sense, simplicity, clarity and, for me, an instantly recognizable style that embodied melodic ideas with rock rhythms and an influence of Indian music.”

• Living in the Material World: 50th Anniversary box set is available now via Dark Horse.

Last month, Gibson released 150 Murphy Lab replicas of a special 1958 Les Paul Custom. Although Gibson has given Eric Clapton’s name to the run, the guitar has belonged to Albert Lee since 1979. In a new video for Gibson, Lee reveals the guitar’s full history, and Clapton isn’t even the guitar’s most famous player.

The story begins with a young Albert Lee’s obsession with Selmer, a guitar shop on London’s Charing Cross Road.

“Every Saturday I'd come up on the train see what was in in Selmer's,” begins Lee. “So he opened up this guitar case, and there's a brand new Les Paul Custom with a Bigsby on it. I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll join your band!’” he laughs.

“I played that guitar throughout the early ’60s. This guy persuaded me to sell it to him. He pestered me and pestered me,” Lee continues. “I let it go, and I regretted it for a long, long time.”

In 1978, Lee joined Eric Clapton’s touring band, and the subject of his old Les Paul came up.

“I remember the first day, chatting with Eric,” he recalls. “For some reason I had a picture of my old guitar with me, you know, and I showed it to him. I told him how much I missed that guitar. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I've got one of those at home somewhere.’”

“I didn't think any more of it,” Lee remarks. “The next day at rehearsals, you know, the roadie, he walked in with this big case and opened it up, and it's Eric's Les Paul Custom for me to play.

“I guess it was mine. From there on, I used it on the whole tour. Eric never asked for the guitar back. He was happy that I was enjoying it and using it on stage.”

Lee had no idea of the guitar's full history when it came into his possession.

“I found that out later on,” he admits. “I thought maybe it was Cream and maybe Delaney and Bonnie.”

Lee was correct in those assumptions, but it had a much longer history, as he now recounts:

“From Paul Kossoff to Eric and John Lennon and George Harrison playing it. I’d no idea Eric used it with Derek and the Dominos. Great bit of history there.”

The guitar had in fact been used to record Cream’s Disraeli Gears, where Clapton first used ‘woman tone,’ the sound of the bridge pickup with the tone control all the way off.

After that the guitar turned up in the hands of Free’s Paul Kossoff, although Clapton doesn’t remember what he did with it after Disraeli Gears. Still, the guitar was in Kossoff’s possession from ’67–’69, a period that includes the recording of Free’s debut, Tons of Sobs.

Clapton’s memory of the period is fragmentary, but he remembers, “We [Free and Blind Faith] were touring together,” adding that the two jammed together “quite a lot.”

After regaining the guitar, Clapton was pictured with it in The Sunday Times Magazine, at which point the guitar had uncovered humbuckers; the covers are now back in place.

In 1969 Eric Clapton joined John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band to perform at the Toronto Rock n’ Roll Revival. Footage from that concert shows Clapton with the Les Paul Custom.

From there, Clapton played the guitar on tour with Delaney and Bonnie, alongside George Harrison.

Michael Doyle, who researched the guitar for Gibson’s replica, says photos exist of George Harrison playing the guitar onstage while Clapton plays Harrison’s Strat. We couldn't find that, but we did find a widely circulated picture that appears to show Harrison playing the guitar while hanging out with Clapton and Bonnie Bramlett. Here's footage of Clapton playing the Les Paul with Harrison:

Michael Doyle also says that a photo of Derek & The Dominos shows Eric using the Les Paul Custom for slide work, “which makes sense,” Doyle contends.

“One of the reasons why he gave it away was because the frets were so skinny. If you can't get on with a guitar because the frets aren't right for you, what do you do? Well, set it up for slide.”

In other Albert Lee news, Steve Lukather recently spilled the beans on his secret supergroup with Lee, Eddie Van Halen, and Steve Morse. Meanwhile, Dunlop issued an Eric Clapton Crybaby in recognition that Clapton was one of the wah's earliest champions.

If you’d been taking bets in 1970 on which former Beatle would be the most successful in the new decade, George Harrison was definitely – to borrow the name of one of his future hits – the dark horse. But as he’d sing in that tune, “Baby, it looks like I’ve been breaking out.”

In November, he turned the page on the Fabs with All Things Must Pass, a triple album brimming with artistic confidence and gorgeous, melancholy songs, not to mention the world’s first-ever God-conscious Number 1 single.

The album topped the charts around the globe, earned two Grammy nominations and had critics spouting superlatives about the formerly quiet one. As Melody Maker put it, “Garbo talks! – Harrison is free!”

Free maybe, but as 1971 unfolded, he was caught up in all kinds of trouble and strife. There was the prolonged legal drama of the Beatles’ split, the newly filed copyright infringement case over My Sweet Lord (in the context of its similarity to the Chiffons’ He’s So Fine), a marriage on the rocks and a drug-addled producer who was losing his mind.

To this, George had single-handedly taken on the Concert for Bangladesh, a combination concert-album-film, all to raise money for a country beset by natural disaster and genocide.

The first-ever such relief project on the world stage, it was a logistical nightmare of trying to form a supergroup while convincing record companies and governments to forfeit profits. “I spent the month of June and half of July just telephoning people,” Harrison later said in a press conference.

If anything was keeping him sane during that time, it was meditation, music and guitar playing. And they all came together on 1973’s Living in the Material World, a song cycle about the healing power of love and prayer in a harsh, unfeeling world.

More than 50 years later, the album’s life-affirming messages remain potent and evergreen. Is there a better couplet for our moment than, “Give me hope / Help me cope with this heavy load”?

Now released in a 50th anniversary deluxe box set edition (about a year and a half late), produced by George’s son Dhani and widow Olivia, and sporting a vibrant new mix by Paul Hicks, the album has never sounded or looked better.

On a Zoom from Australia, Dhani talked to us about the challenges of assembling the project, why it’s sometimes helpful to fire your producer and the evolution of his dad’s unique slide guitar style.

You’ve been working with mixing engineer Paul Hicks for many years. How does your shared history give you creative insight into remixing your dad’s albums?

“We grew up as only-children together, and our dads had been at Abbey Road at the same time. His dad [Tony] was in studio three with the Hollies; my dad was in studio two with the Beatles. And then Paul worked for Abbey Road for 18 years. He was very close with my dad, and I’m close with his dad.

“Paul has spent the last 25 years remastering and remixing all the Beatles records. So he has the perfect encyclopedic knowledge of everything. We had a really good success on All Things Must Pass. And people were really happy with that remaster.

“When you build confidence like that, you can kind of push things a bit more, and I think that’s what we’ve really seen on Material World. We went back to the original 24-track tapes, as opposed to just a remaster. So this is what we call an ultra remaster.”

It was the first album your dad recorded at Friar Park, his home studio, right?

“Yes, and maybe they hadn’t quite dialed it in 100 percent yet, because they were still tuning the room. They were learning the songs in relation to how it sounds in the room.

“Since I’ve renovated the studio, there’ve been improvements that I made to the sound field, so you can get a truer mix. So I said to Paul, ‘It’s possible that you nailed the mix a bit better than they did in the original one.’ And that’s no insult to my dad and his engineers.”

When you start a project like this, do you make a wish list for what you want to hear?

“There’s definitely the fan wish list that we consider. People really wanted to hear Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond), so we made a vinyl 45 of that as a bonus. We have the most amazing archivists we work with. But you have to make choices about what will live in a digital space, and the stuff that’s only available if you have a turntable.

“We try to consider the price and make it very competitive. It’s expensive buying big box sets. It’s not something a lot of people can afford right now. So that’s why we were keen on keeping a lid on this one, making it accessible.”

Your design background helps to give the box its visual appeal.

“Thanks. They do have to occasionally reel me in on my design work, otherwise I’ll make these Death Star-size box sets that no one can lift. [Laughs] But we always like to have very good quality, high-res photos and treat them as if they’re part of a photo album or scrapbook, so people feel like it’s something from their family, like something you’ve put together yourself.”

What were the challenges going through the audio?

“On some songs, we had up to 90 takes, all done with the band. We didn’t want to drive everyone mad by including them all. [Laughs] I used to love my Beach Boys box sets, but after four takes of God Only Knows in a row, I want to go to the next track. I don’t feel like I’m listening to an album anymore.

“On the All Things Must Pass box, we did the extra disc that was like the ‘de-Spectored version,’ for want of a better term – the no-reverb version of the record that was from the demos. And then there’s the version you can listen to start to finish.

“I think people were surprised at how little we put on the Material World box set. But we went through all 90 takes of each song, and there are ones that just have the magic; those are the ones we included.”

Did you have a favorite discovery?

“Be Here Now, and some of the alternate takes for that [George borrowed the title from the book on spirituality by American yogi Ram Dass]. That’s just heartbreaking, and such an amazing song.

“We teamed up with the Ram Dass Foundation, making a beautiful video using the original illustrations from the Ram Dass book. They were riffing off each other, George and Ram Dass. That’s something that really captures the vibe of what was going on during the making of this record.”

George had wanted Phil Spector to produce this album, but when Spector showed up in London, he was in bad shape, drinking a lot, paranoid, holed up in a hotel room.

“Dad told me it was a pain in the ass. And he took the hotel room next to Phil, because Phil was an addict. Dad would have to take him to the hospital because he’d overdose, and he’d be just a mess, on all kinds of drugs. And that was a time when my dad was choosing the light, you know?”

It was a blessing in disguise that Spector couldn’t do the record because it pushed your dad into the role of the producer, working with a small ensemble, which I think is one of the strengths of this record.

“Agreed. I don’t think the Wall of Sound approach would’ve suited these songs. How many times have you heard that same thing where it’s like, ‘We were doing the record and the producer just wasn’t right’? And then it forced the artist to do it himself. And that’s when they became the guy. I’ve had it happen myself.

“You know, firing the producer at the beginning is usually one of the best things you can do. [Laughs] If you want to make something that’s true to yourself. George had needed the extra confidence with All Things Must Pass. It was a Number 1 album, and maybe he thought, ‘Okay, let’s get Phil back in to do this one.’

“But it was such a pain having to deal with him, because he was so out of it. My dad needed to free himself up from all of that dark energy. And then it turns into a band record. And it’s a ripping band, with a lot of cool cats like Jim Keltner and Nicky Hopkins.”

He was dealing with a lot of stress – the legal drama with the Beatles’ breakup, the My Sweet Lord copyright case and then trying to organize this massive relief project for Bangladesh.

“Yes, and this album really came about as a result of needing more money for Bangladesh, and the philanthropic movement he was trying to fund. Trying to get the money to go to the right places, in a charity sense, is very hard. But at the same time, I think you can also really hear how things are looking up for my dad, because he met my mother during this time.

“All Things Must Pass is a sad record. It was about the things that he’d gone through. On Material World, you can kind of see where the stuff he’s writing has a new feeling. There’s new foliage growing. It’s not winter anymore.”

The album opens with Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth), which is such a deceptively tricky rhythm part.

“It is! Actually, I did it recently with Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall, for one of his concerts. And I remember doing it also at the Concert for George [in 2002]. It’s really easy to get the signature wrong. I remember Jeff Lynne had a hard time with the syncopation.

“I think it was Jim Keltner’s favorite track to play, because it’s got that Indian rhythm influence, the Tihai [repeating a group of beats three times]. You know, like [sings], “Won’t you please, oh, won’t you please…” Here Comes the Sun has also got that Tihai.”

Something that always blows my mind is that your dad didn’t play slide guitar on any Beatles records.

“Well, Free As a Bird…"

Yeah, but on the original albums, from 1963 to ’70 he didn’t. And then in the early ’70s, he emerges with this distinctly beautiful slide sound.

“I think that definitely came off the back of hanging out with Ravi Shankar and learning sitar. There was more discipline involved. I remember watching when my dad would be doing stuff in the studio at home, and he was so concentrated, really focused on double tracking harmonies – or ‘guitarmonies,’ as he called it. He had his method.

“When we went to finish things on Brainwashed [2002], there would be, like, 20 solos. And then if you’d pull them all up, they would still work! And then it was like, ‘Wait, which one is the one?’ He would try so many things. But it wasn’t just like he just did it once and forgot about it. He really workshopped his parts and solos.

“I think that approach was because he only had that little bit of spotlight in every Beatles song. So much of it was George Martin telling him what he could or couldn’t play. So he had to be really clever. It might have not felt good at the time to be told what to play by George Martin, but I think that’s what helped create that later style.

“If you ever want to hear a solo that’ll blow your mind, listen to the Belinda Carlisle song Leave a Light On. It was a hit, and my dad played [slide guitar] on it. It’s ripping, one of his better solos.

“And then there’s Cheer Down from Lethal Weapon 2, which is fantastic. The live version from Japan is great as well. Dad really liked that Santo & Johnny Teardrop kind of style that they did on Sleepwalk.”

What’s the story with Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)? Did he intend to record it in addition to giving it to Ringo?

“I don’t know why it didn’t go on this record, unless it was specifically written for Ringo [ed. It was one of several Harrison-contributed songs on Starr’s hit 1973 album, Ringo]. I’m not sure. It’s such a great song, and I’m glad we have two versions, because they’re both great.

“It’s a demo. But keep in mind, my dad’s way of making demos is what we call ‘posh demos’ [Laughs], because you don’t really need to do much with them afterwards. Posh demos turn into tracks really easily!”

Do you remember the first time you heard Material World, and did you talk to your dad about it?

“I remember talking to him about the artwork, because I was discussing Wings, and I’d noticed that the Wings two-hands logo was like a double version of the Material World hand, and it was like, ‘Wow, cool!’ Obviously, I knew Give Me Love, which kind of lives separately in its own world. It’s such a famous song, you don’t think of it being part of the album.

“For me, I’m drawn to the album tracks. You go through each of my dad’s records and you find tracks like Here Comes the Moon [from 1979’s George Harrison] and you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s not something that I remembered!’ And then for this album, it was definitely Be Here Now. It’s powerful stuff. I remember sitting around playing acoustics with my dad and asking him to show me that opening riff.”

When you’re working on these albums, do you ever consult with the surviving players from the albums, such as Klaus Voormann or Jim Keltner?

“Not really. I mean, I haven’t spoken to Klaus for a long time. Keltner and I talk about stuff whenever we see each other. My mom had a good natter with him the other day, because he did two nights at the Albert Hall in London with Dylan.

“It’s funny, I remember asking Jim to come on tour with me, Joseph Arthur and Ben Harper back in 2012 with Fistful of Mercy. And Keltner said, ‘No, I don’t play shows anymore.’ And here we are in 2024, he’s on the road with Dylan, and he’s 82. So that was a lie. Thanks, Jim. [Laughs] Seriously, he’s one of my favorite people in the world, and I know he was really proud of this record and loved it.”

What’s the status of the Concert for Bangladesh reissue?

“We’ve got the audio done. It’s a blinder of an album. We also have the whole second show, which no-one’s heard before. But we don’t want to mix everything up and just put version after version of the same songs, because you lose perspective, and it ruins the listening experience.

“I’d rather hear the demo version from start to finish, then go on to the real version from start to finish, then the Day Two version from start to finish.

“We’ve started working on the film, using the same [AI-driven] algorithm Peter Jackson used on Get Back. We’re working with Peter on restoring it, which takes a long time. It takes years to finish these projects. And that’s with me trying to have my own career as well, in the meantime.”

Do you have any new music in the works?

“I just finished a tour that kind of drew a line underneath this year. It was a few select shows that we did for my last record, which was called Innerstanding [2023]. Hopefully next year, I’ll be able to get a couple shows in with the band Huun-Huur-Tu, who are the Tuvan throat-singing lords. They are just incredible.

“I’ve got another project that we haven’t announced yet, with one of my heroes of the English music scene. I can’t say more than that at the moment. Also, I’ve been working a little bit with Anoushka Shankar, and we were collaborating with the Bulgarian Women’s Choir of Sofia. So there’s just always lots of stuff in the pipeline.”

• Living in the Material World 50th Anniversary is out now via Dark Horse.

Like many musicians hailing from Mike Campbell's generation, The Beatles not only served as a source of inspiration throughout his career but, for Campbell, the Fab Four – George Harrison, in particular – were the reason he started playing guitar in the first place.

“I couldn’t take my eyes off them,” he writes in Heartbreaker: A Memoir. “Especially the one in the middle – the tall, skinny, dark-haired guitarist with the big hollow body Gretsch Country Gentleman. George. The quiet one.

“He smirked and played the perfect, 10-second solo to All My Loving – one minute in to a two-minute song – and that was it for me. That was it. I knew I needed a guitar. I needed one. I didn’t know why. I just knew.”

Come 1988, Campbell was operating in the upper echelons of rock ’n’ roll. And being part of this highly-coveted rank meant rubbing shoulders with the very Beatle who had compelled him to kickstart his own guitar journey.

The Traveling Wilburys – the supergroup composed of Harrison, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty – were preparing to release their first single, Handle with Care.

As the story goes, Campbell was personally asked by the Beatle to play a solo à la Eric Clapton. However, if you're currently scrambling to hear Campbell's contribution to the track, hold your horses – because he himself asked for his part to be removed from the final recording.

“I was right, and history proves me right,” Campbell told Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt. “I just had a hunch. I didn't think I played that well, but they were just being nice. I think I played pretty pedestrian.”

Campbell's solution was simple: ask his childhood guitar hero to play something better suited to the track.

“I thought, because I was intimidated, you know, I'm sitting there with George and Jeff, [He was like] ‘Okay, I'll try something.’ That wasn't my best, but I had a hunch that he [Harrison] could pull something out with the slide that would be more in the soul of the song, which he did.

“I just handed him the guitar, I had handed him a slide. The amp was already set up, and he just did it. Took the pressure off me!”

Mike Campbell's many stories from his decades-long career are encapsulated in his recently-released memoir – including insights into what he brought to the Heartbreakers as Tom Petty’s guitar foil.

This February, George Harrison would’ve turned 82. But, as is often the case, the universe had a different plan in mind, and – instead – the former Beatle left us at age 58 way back in 2001.

But despite his early exit, Harrison left behind a staggering amount of “stuff to listen to,” much of which is – inarguably at this point – historically important, if not the fodder of legend. In this feature, we’ve attempted to pinpoint – album by album – his greatest songs, solos, guest appearances and production credits.

We’ve started the timeline at 1963, excluding anything “unofficial” (sorry, Star Club, BBC and Decca!) but including his most impactful cameos. No, it’s not complete (not gonna happen!), but all the biggies (and a few smallies) are here. Dig in!

Enter, Beatlemania....

The Beatles – Please Please Me (1963)

The Beatles' debut album was drawn mostly from the group’s stage act. Completed on February 11, 1963, with minimal vocal overdubbing, producer George Martin added piano (Misery) and celesta (Baby It’s You) later.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison conformed to their stated roles of rhythm, bass and lead guitar respectfully, Lennon holding down the chord side on his Gibson J160-E or Rickenbacker 325, with Harrison adding syncopations, fills and solos on his Gretsch Duo Jet or Chet Atkins Country Gentleman.

Kicking off with Paul’s “One, two, three, four” count-in, I Saw Her Standing There sounded raw, sexy and exciting. Featuring George’s R&B-style fills and a solo typical of its time, it remains one of the greatest debut-album openers.

Ask Me Why finds George playing subtle Gretsch fills, with double-stops, chord stabs and a jazzy major 7th arpeggio to finish. Harrison sings two of the album’s 14 tracks, the better of which is Do You Want to Know a Secret, with his and Lennon’s J160-E’s plugged into their new Vox AC30s.

The album’s zenith sees Harrison providing the riff to Lennon’s one-take throat killer, Twist and Shout, an equally brilliant closer to one of pop’s most significant records. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: I Saw Her Standing There, Do You Want to Know a Secret, Ask Me Why

The Beatles – With the Beatles (1963)

After the triumph of their debut album and a slew of hit singles, there was bounty in the pot for the follow-up. Album opener It Won’t Be Long immediately reveals the record’s more polished and “produced” sound.

With eight band compositions including Don’t Bother Me, Harrison’s first writing credit, and some well-chosen covers, With the Beatles also makes the most of the group’s superb three-part vocal harmonies.

Paul McCartney’s All My Loving, his best composition so far, is a musical tour de force driven by his loping bass and Lennon’s relentless “triplets” rhythm guitar.

Harrison’s Chet Atkins-style solo, mostly played in sixths, is a mini marvel that reveals his unerring ability to conjure concise 'melodies within melodies.'

Another perfect case in point is Till There Was You; over Starr’s bolero-style drums George weaves a classical guitar break using diminished runs and dashing arpeggios (he repeated it, note perfect, albeit on his electric Gretsch, on the band’s first Ed Sullivan Show appearance in early 1964).

Devil in Her Heart, another Harrison vocal, demonstrates more melodic savvy, with lilting Spanish-style intro and outro solo in thirds. George’s big feature here, though, is on Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven, where he tightens up Berry’s signature licks to supply perhaps the definitive version of the song.

Also culled from the With the Beatles sessions were the group’s next single’s A- and B-side – I Want to Hold Your Hand, the track that propelled the band to superstardom in the U.S., and the beautiful three-part harmony ballad, This Boy. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: All My Loving, Don’t Bother Me, Till There Was You, Roll Over Beethoven

The Beatles – A Hard Day's Night (1964)

The album that kicks off with that chord! Harrison plays an Fadd9 on his Rickenbacker 360/12, doubled by Lennon on acoustic, with Paul playing a D bass note and George Martin adding a sustained piano chord.

Martin doubled Harrison’s Rickenbacker solo on piano, and George stylishly arpeggiated his Fadd9 to see out the song. The 12-string features on several tracks, complementing Lennon’s rhythm or adding breaks to I Should Have Known Better, the solo of which he ends on a neat-sounding sixth.

Harrison unleashes his José Ramirez classical for Paul’s And I Love Her, creating the statement intro that McCartney said dramatically aided the song’s impact. In the verses George picks out three-note arpeggios, and as the song changes key from E/C#m to F his solo mirrors the tune with genuine panache.

But this is an unabashed “pop” album, so Harrison’s guitar is used to color, punctuate and highlight and – while universally hailed as one of their finest albums – it really stands out on the aforementioned numbers. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: A Hard Day’s Night, If I Fell, And I Love Her

The Beatles – Beatles for Sale (1964)

Recorded in the midst of Beatlemania and constant touring, Beatles for Sale was snatched together from recording days here and writing sessions there. Harrison’s contributions include his cover of Carl Perkins’ Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby, with nods to his idol in the solos and a tight finishing lick.

Also in the country vein is Harrison’s work on Lennon’s I’m a Loser, where the coarse twang of his Gretsch Tennessean can be heard in the fills and Perkins/Chet Atkins-style solo.

On Baby’s in Black, George’s fills and solo are more experimental, with lazy bends and slurs and an almost out-of-tuneness that adds to the song’s dark nature. On I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party he provides more Perkins-style licks and a nicely paced solo. George’s Rickenbacker 360/12 came out for Eight Days a Week with its groundbreaking fade-in guitar lick. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: I’m a Loser, Baby’s in Black, Eight Days a Week

The Beatles – Help! (1965)

If Beatles for Sale was their “country” album, Help! represented the Beatles’ Dylan phase. Acoustic guitars, contemplative lyrics and the addition of new instruments and effects gave the album its singular vibe.

On the upbeat title track, Harrison created one of his signature licks, a descending run on the middle four strings. On strings five and four, starting at the seventh fret, was a rundown in chromatic minor thirds, but with the third and second strings played open.

As for guitar innovations, on The Night Before John and George doubled the solo in octaves, while for I Need You Harrison introduced the DeArmond volume pedal to enliven the A-Asus2-Asus4-A sequence.

On You’re Gonna Lose That Girl, George played his new Sonic Blue Fender Strat for the solo but aborted it due to the guitar’s heavy strings. He successfully re-recorded it later. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Help!, The Night Before, I Need You

The Beatles come of age

The Beatles – Rubber Soul (1965)

Widely heralded as bridging the gap between four moptops and the technically groundbreaking and socially aware group they were becoming, the Beatles also laid down the double-A-side single We Can Work it Out/Day Tripper during the sessions.

Harrison supplied two compositions: Think for Yourself, which McCartney dominated with his overdubbed fuzz bass, and If I Needed Someone, the electric 12-string riff that took back from the Byrds the sound he’d unwittingly gifted them.

With no tour distractions, the band treated the studio like their personal music laboratory, searching for sounds that matched their ever-growing maturity.

McCartney’s Drive My Car sees Paul playing the quirky guitar intro and slide solo. Harrison suggested he double the bass part with arpeggios on his Strat’s lower strings, following the chords and ending with the Hendrixy A7#9 over which they sang “Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah.”

For Lennon’s Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown), George introduced a sitar. Although a neophyte on the instrument that can take an Indian classical musician a lifetime to master, his mirroring of John’s vocal melody foresaw the psychedelia and prog-rock that were just around the corner.

On Nowhere Man, George creates a chord-based solo on his highly EQ’d Strat (possibly doubled with John’s), while for Paul’s Michelle he adds a warm-toned jazz-style break taught to him by Martin. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: If I Needed Someone, Nowhere Man, Drive My Car

The Beatles – Revolver (1966)

Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield called Revolver “the best album the Beatles ever made, which means the best album by anybody.” Paperback Writer and Rain were recorded for Revolver but released as a single instead.

Having busted so many barriers with Rubber Soul, the way was clear for the band, with Martin plus enthusiastic young engineer Geoff Emerick, to create something unprecedented. And such was Harrison’s progression that Taxman was deemed strong enough to open proceedings.

Featuring George’s spiky riff and 7th and 7#9 rhythm, it was McCartney, however, that supplied the sensational solo. “He did a little Indian bit on it for me,” Harrison said.

Although the sitar-led Love You To was Harrison’s greatest achievement on Revolver, the only guitar present is his distorted Bb chord against the song’s droning C key signature. On Lennon’s radical Tomorrow Never Knows” and dreamy I’m Only Sleeping, we hear another Beatles innovation.

Emerick turned the tape over so it ran the other way: George composed his guitar parts so that when the reel was flipped back, they’d be heard in reverse. It created an eerie but beautiful sound. I Want to Tell You, another Harrison original, kicks off with a twangy, angular riff played on his Strat; it most definitely inspired the Monkees’ Pleasant Valley Sunday.

Harrison reprised the Rickenbacker 360/12 for his solos in McCartney’s Here, There and Everywhere, but he and Paul shared guitar duties on And Your Bird Can Sing. The tone of their Epiphone Casinos, played in harmony against Lennon’s own Casino, is another brilliant moment. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Taxman, I’m Only Sleeping, Love You To, And Your Bird Can Sing

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

This album is viewed by many as the Beatles’ finest 39 minutes, 36 seconds. Although it was McCartney’s concept, and largely dominated by his songs (and fabulous bass playing), Harrison’s guitar still played a major role.

But on his magnum opus, the Hindu-influenced Within You Without You, he contributed only acoustic, leaving all the other instrumentation to London-based Indian musicians.

Harrison’s more notable six-string contributions to Pepper include his beautiful electric 12-string intro to With a Little Help from My Friends plus some fantastic harmonized fills and a well-thought-out solo in McCartney’s Fixing a Hole.

On John’s psychedelic masterpiece Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds he doubles Lennon’s vocal in the bridges as a sarangi player would, while in the choruses his Leslie’d Strat follows McCartney’s bass line. On Getting Better he overdubs a 15th-fret G octave on top of a third-fret Csus4 chord to give the song its bright attack.

The title track’s reprise is a whole-band effort, with George and John’s heavy rhythm guitars and plenty of highly distorted fills from Harrison. On the album’s legendary closer, A Day in the Life, Harrison plays only maracas (and along those lines, that’s Paul playing the blazing Good Morning Good Morning solo).

The double A-side Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever were recorded during the Pepper sessions and were originally intended for the album. George Martin described their omission as “the worst mistake of my professional life.” [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS:With a Little Help from My Friends, Fixing a Hole, Getting Better, Within You Without You

1967 to 1970: A magical mystery tour

The Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

The original U.K. double EP of six new songs to accompany the band’s 1967 Christmas TV special might have stood as the Beatles’ farewell to psychedelia. But Capitol demanded a U.S. album, so 1967’s singles, plus All You Need Is Love, bulked MMT up to album status.

On I Am the Walrus and Penny Lane, there’s little guitar of note, while on Fool on the Hill George merely strummed 12-string acoustic. For Flying, he played tremolo rhythm guitar then overlaid the “sliding sixths” idea he’d revisit for Don’t Let Me Down.

Strawberry Fields Forever is awash with orchestral instruments, Mellotron and studio trickery, but George’s solo makes use of string bends, open strings and trills.

For the Our World broadcast, All You Need Is Love was played partly live to an audience of around half a billion. George’s Strat solo ends with a “clunk” that (oddly) wasn’t fixed during the final mix. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Flying, Strawberry Fields Forever, All You Need Is Love

George Harrison – Wonderwall Music (1968)

This unassuming little record represents a slew of firsts. It’s George’s first solo album. It’s the first solo album to be released by any Beatle (unless you count 1967’s The Family Way, but that’s technically a McCartney/Martin project).

It’s the first album to be entirely produced by George. It’s the first time Harrison and Eric Clapton recorded together. And because it beat the White Album (more on that soon) by three weeks, it was the first album to be released via Apple Records, the band’s new label.

On top of all that, its title inspired a 1995 Oasis hit, and – with all its Indian music and musicians (in addition to all its Western music and musicians) – it arrived decades ahead of the world-music scene of the ’80s. But for all its firsts, Wonderwall Music is, well, underwhelming.

But when you consider that it’s just an instrumental soundtrack album – for Wonderwall, an interesting little film by Joe Massot (the same gent who co-directed Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same) – you’re easily able to adjust your expectations and welcome it as a bit of “bonus ’60s George.” Make that – on some songs – bonus ’60s George plus Ringo, plus Clapton.

Unlike later big-budget soundtrack albums, there’s no hit song here – no Live and Let Die, For Your Eyes Only or My Heart Will Go On. The closest thing to a catchy, standalone tune that you might hear on SiriusXM’s The Beatles Channel is the oddly pleasing Party Seacombe. And Red Lady Too is pretty cool (too). [DF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Party Seacombe, Ski-ing, Wonderwall to Be Here

The Beatles – The White Album (1968)

The band’s double, so-called White Album saw them drift away from psychedelia and revert to more straightforward songs while retaining groundbreaking production ideas. We’ll mention only the tracks to which Harrison added significant impact.

After Starr had walked out of the Back in the U.S.S.R. sessions feeling unloved, McCartney played drums and Harrison supplied the bottom end on Fender Bass VI. He also played the guitar solo and fills, but McCartney added the tremolo-picked 17th-fret A note over the last verse.

Lennon’s Dear Prudence sees John using the fingerstyle pattern taught to him by Donovan in India. Harrison devised a glorious solo played in octaves then rising in arpeggios to the top fret of his Les Paul.

Harrison contributed four compositions, and Savoy Truffle was a nod to Clapton’s love for Good News chocolates. The track is heavy with Harrison guitar, doubling the vocal melody and with a tasty, searing solo.

While Clapton famously helped rescue While My Guitar Gently Weeps with his stunning first-take soloing, George’s only guitar contribution was his strummed Gibson J-200.

The band’s favorite track is Lennon’s Happiness Is a Warm Gun, a composite of song snippets that Harrison helped John forge together. George plays stabbing chords and, most notably, the writhing, distorted solo on his Bartell fretless guitar.

Other great moments are Harrison’s acoustic Long, Long, Long and his solo on Paul’s mighty Helter Skelter. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Savoy Truffle, Long, Long, Long, Happiness Is a Warm Gun, Helter Skelter

The Beatles – Yellow Submarine (1969)

The Beatles were contracted to supply four songs for an animated film that fulfilled their three-movie deal. Although recorded before the White Album, it didn’t hit the shops until two months later.

Side one featured the four new tracks and two previous releases; the title track, on which Harrison played no guitar, and All You Need Is Love. Side two comprised orchestral arrangements from George Martin.

Of the four remaining tracks, Harrison’s Only a Northern Song sees him playing Hammond organ but no guitar, and on McCartney’s throwaway ditty Altogether Now he strummed acoustic only. However, his own Indian-inspired It’s All Too Much is littered with guitar.

The song begins with Hendrix-style feedback and sounds like George’s Bigsby-equipped Epi Casino rather than the Strat that some have suggested. Although Lennon and Harrison are credited as lead guitarists, we think it’s mostly George.

That leaves the album’s best cut, Hey Bulldog, where Harrison plays the blues scale riff on his Gibson SG then doubles it higher up before going into his spiky solo. Although credited to Lennon, it’s surely George, John only underpinning it with typical “rhythm/lead” double-stops. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: It’s All Too Much, Hey Bulldog, All You Need Is Love

Jackie Lomax – Is This What You Want? (1969)

This brief stop in our timeline represents another rung on the “producer George” ladder. Jackie Lomax – formerly of Liverpool rockers the Undertakers ((Do The) Mashed Potatoes, anyone?) – had a big, booming voice and should’ve been much more famous than he actually was.

And you’d think Harrison’s production of this Apple Records release – sessions for which took place in London and LA (with George thus becoming the first Beatle to record in the U.S.) – would’ve helped a bit.

Um, it didn’t. What’s even crazier is that the album features musical contributions by Harrison, McCartney, Starr, Clapton, Nicky Hopkins, John Barham and Klaus Voormann, not to mention members of LA’s Wrecking Crew; on top of that, lead-off single Sour Milk Sea was written by Harrison and features every Beatle besides Lennon, making it (arguably) more of “a Beatles song” than some of the stuff on the White Album and Let It Be.

Sour Milk Sea tends to get all the attention (such as it is) these days, but be sure to check out the title track (the red-headed stepchild of I Am the Walrus) and Harrison’s very out-front “backing” vocals on Going Back to Liverpool. [DF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Sour Milk Sea, Is This What You Want?, Going Back to Liverpool (included on later reissues)

The Beatles – Abbey Road (1969)

Abbey Road shows the band at yet another musically creative peak. Harrison brought the album his two best compositions, Here Comes the Sun – with its flat-picked 7th-fret capo figure – and Something, which contains his finest “tune within a tune” solo.

On Come Together, while John played the lead break following Paul’s Fender Rhodes solo, George created languid phrases with deliberately slow vibrato over the fade-out. And for Ringo’s Octopus’s Garden he whips around the frets of his “Rocky” Strat on the intro and rosewood Tele for the slicing main solo.

The guitar highlight is, of course, the three-way battle between Paul, who played first (Casino), George, who went second (Les Paul) and John who brought up the rear (Casino) on The End.

Played live in two-bar sections, it highlighted their distinct styles and approaches. Studio engineer Geoff Emerick said, “They looked like they had gone back in time, like they were kids again, playing together for the sheer enjoyment of it.”

But could George top this? Of course he could, and his exquisite solo after Paul’s “and in the end” couplet displays total understanding of what was required and is a fitting way to sign off. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Something, Here Comes the Sun, Octopus’s Garden, The End

The Beatles – Let It Be (1970)

Although (mostly) recorded before Abbey Road, Let It Be was held back due to the group’s dissatisfaction with the mixes. Lennon and Harrison suggested Phil Spector have a go at making things sound less scrappy, but his over-egging of the pudding angered McCartney, who later released a de-Spectored version, 2003’s Let It Be… Naked, with the orchestrations removed and John’s Don’t Let Me Down reinstated.

On McCartney’s Two of Us, Harrison’s riffy rosewood Tele licks complement the song’s lighthearted, folksy nature. Harrison added wah-wah rhythm to Across the Universe, while on I Dig a Pony, which is the live Apple rooftop version, George doubles John’s riff and adds country-style sixth fills and an angular solo.

Of the album’s two Harrison compositions, I Me Mine is the more guitar-forward, with his acoustic, plus distorted electric guitar intro, riffs and another of those distinctive, jagged solos. For You Blue is notable for George’s tight J-200 acoustic picking and Lennon’s Hofner lap steel solo. Let it Be’s title track featured Harrison’s C major pentatonic solo.

On the album version it’s a hard-edged, not overly musical tone, whereas the single featured a more pleasing, Leslie-effected take. For Long and Winding Road, Harrison’s Leslie’d Les Paul is all but buried, but McCartney rekindles it on Naked. [NM]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Two of Us, I Me Mine, Let It Be, Dig a Pony

The former Beatle turns Dark Horse: Harrison in the '70s

Billy Preston – Encouraging Words (1970)

From the moment Billy Preston galvanized the Beatles’ Let It Be sessions in early 1969, he and Harrison became fast friends and collaborators. Preston was all over All Things Must Pass and the Concert for Bangladesh, while Harrison co-produced and played on both of Preston’s Apple Records releases.

Because the title track was a hit, his debut album, That’s the Way God Planned It, is better known. But this 1970 follow-up is more consistent.

Preston was a facile and fierce keyboardist, so it makes sense that Harrison would naturally fall into more of a supporting role here.

But there are standout guitar moments throughout – the fast, funky strumming and Steve Cropper-style hammered chord inversions on You’ve Been Acting Strange, the wah-wah fills laced into Use What You Got, the Leslie-swirled picking and fuzz tones on Sing One for the Lord (which George co-wrote). For more guitar power, Eric Clapton and Delaney Bramlett are also part of the all-star session crew.

If you need further proof of Harrison’s generosity as a collaborator, he gives Preston first dibs on two of his best songs from that period – My Sweet Lord and All Things Must Pass (Encouraging Words was released a full two months before All Things Must Pass).

Preston takes the former straight down the aisle of a rollicking southern Baptist church, while he invests the latter with grandeur and classical flourishes. The two friends were definitely in tune musically and spiritually.

As Preston said, “I want to give people something that they’ll really remember, to help their lives. And what I’m talking about is God – a good solid message that makes you think.” [BD]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: All Things Must Pass, Sing One for the Lord, You’ve Been Acting Strange

George Harrison – All Things Must Pass (1970)

Consistently constrained by his distinctly third-fiddle role in the Beatles, upon the band’s ultimate dissolution Harrison the songwriter came into his own (and then some) on this mammoth triple album.

Packed with choice material, much of which had been accumulated during his latter tenure as a Beatle, many tracks had been simmering on his back burner for some years.

Isn’t It a Pity and Art of Dying date from as far back as ’66. I’d Have You Anytime
(co-written with Bob Dylan in Woodstock, New York) and Let It Down stem from late ’68. Meanwhile, an entire batch of material – All Things Must Pass, Hear Me Lord, the brash McCartney-targeted Wah-Wah – found its genesis during the Beatles’ Get Back rehearsals of early ’69.

Driven and inspired, Harrison remained prolific throughout his transmutation from Beatle to solo entity (What Is Life, Behind That Locked Door, Beware of Darkness), but it was the album’s lead single, My Sweet Lord, that demonstrated the veritable sea change in Harrison’s approach to guitar playing.

Total immersion in studying sitar with Ravi Shankar had coincided with Harrison losing interest in the apparent possibilities of his lead instrument, but via Robbie Robertson’s slide-mimicking, fluid lead work on the Band’s Music from Big Pink and slide exponent Delaney Bramlett (who actually instructed Harrison in the ways of slide playing during 1969’s Delaney & Bonnie and Friends tour, although some say Dave Mason had a hand in it as well), he constructed a mellifluous signature style that was to largely define the remainder of his career. [IF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: All Things Must Pass, Beware of Darkness, Wah-Wah, My Sweet Lord

John Lennon – Imagine (1971)

Can you imagine the seeming awesomeness of “long-haired, cross-legged guitar picker” George Harrison’s life in the very early ’70s? His songs and guitar playing could be heard on the Beatles’ Let It Be, his own All Things Must Pass and The Concert for Bangladesh (more on that soon), songs by Gary Wright (Two Faced Man), Badfinger (Day After Day), Harry Nilsson (You’re Breakin’ My Heart), Billy Preston, Doris Troy, Ronnie Spector and Ringo Starr (again, more on that soon).

Oh – and then there’s Imagine, John Lennon’s best-known (if not outright best) solo album.

Harrison actually plays on half the album, adding brilliant slide solos to Gimme Some Truth, Crippled Inside (this one on a resonator) and How Do You Sleep? while providing some sympathetic backing to I Don’t Wanna Be a Soldier and Oh My Love.

Harrison’s slide approach and tone would change over the years (compare 1971’s How Do You Sleep? to 1976’s True Love to Belinda Carlisle’s Leave a Light On from 1989), but his playing on Imagine represents the high point of that make-believe thing called George Harrison on Slide, Phase 1. [DF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Gimme Some Truth, Crippled Inside, How Do You Sleep?

Various – The Concert for Bangladesh (1971)

A year after the epic, three-disc All Things Must Pass made a wave or two, Harrison followed it up with yet another triple-discer – The Concert for Bangladesh, an album fed by two charity shows recorded on August 1.

We’re intentionally keeping the spotlight on Harrison’s studio work, but we can’t ignore this monstrosity’s many fine points, including:

• The first-ever live, “by a Beatle” recordings of “Something,” “Here Comes the Sun” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” on which Harrison finally plays a bit of lead guitar alongside Eric Clapton, the guitar star of the original 1968 recording.

• The first joint U.S. on-stage appearance by George and Ringo in five years – i.e., since the Beatles’ Candlestick Park show in August 1966. Five years is essentially meaningless today, but in the much more musically fertile late ’60s and early ’70s, five years felt like a lifetime. And not just for a guinea pig.

• More Ravi Shankar than you can shake a stick at.

• A spirited live performance of Starr’s Harrison-produced 1971 single, It Don’t Come Easy, which features sparkling, Leslie-infused guitar work by George.

This seems as good a time as any to mention that Harrison’s fretwork also graced two other Starr tracks from this era, 1971’s Early 1970 and 1972’s Back Off Boogaloo (produced by Harrison), which – regardless of whether or not anyone agrees with me – features one of his greatest slide solos of all time. [DF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Something, It Don’t Come Easy, Here Comes the Sun

George Harrison – Living in the Material World (1973)

Having successfully unbound himself from the creative limitations symptomatic of his former life as Beatle George, Harrison set his sights on his other ongoing obsession, the search for spiritual enlightenment. But nirvana-dashing distractions uniquely associated with being an ex-member of the formerly Fab Four weren’t that easy to shake.

Throw the massively commercially and artistically successful All Things Must Pass monolith into the mix, and expectations of its vinyl successor were unhelpfully stratospheric. The first indicator of what was to come from the most keenly anticipated album of the year arrived in the shape of Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth).

Outwardly self-explanatory (George asking his Lord for guidance, with a side order of universal fraternity and – as is his usual modus operandi – some sort of indication that he’s actually there), it captures a George still searching for enlightenment and possibly a little help on the career front. ‘Help me cope with this heavy load,’ he pleads soulfully, as only a man contractually obliged to deliver yet another hit record can.

Harrison’s exhortations are again accompanied by a trademark My Sweet Lord-esque slide, plaintively mimicking human supplication (see also the karma-tastically pacy The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord)). So, yes, there’s God, but being George (remember Taxman), there’s also Mammon with Sue Me, Sue You Blues bemoaning acoustically the ferociously litigious nature of ex-manager Allen Klein.

Living in the Material World itself contrasts materialism with spirituality to the dual accompaniment of A-list Western rockers (a name-checked Ringo included) and Indian classical tabla player Zakir Hussain.

But the Harrison slide is probably put to best use on Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long, a no-nonsense Brill Building-style pop song that really ought to have been a single. So did the album sell? By the truckload. [IF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth), Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long, The Light That Has Lighted the World, The Lord Loves the One (That Loves the Lord), Living in the Material World

Ringo Starr – Ringo (1973)

While there was significant, widely documented acrimony behind the ultimate breakup of the Beatles, all evidence would appear to suggest that no one ever managed to successfully fall out with Ringo.

Clearly as likeable as his lugubrious public image would have us believe, when he put out calls for assistance to the great and the good in advance of recording his third solo album, they were all answered in the affirmative.

Ringo features contributions from (among others) Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, Steve Cropper, Martha Reeves, Harry Nilsson, Marc Bolan and – most notably – John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. It was the first and only time all four Beatles turned out for a former band member’s solo album.

Its opening track, Lennon’s I’m the Greatest, is arguably the closest the Beatles ever truly came to fully re-forming (you’ve got Lennon, Harrison and Starr, not to mention Klaus Voormann and, for added authenticity, Let It Be keyboardist Billy Preston); in fact, it feels like it’s only a Giles Martin “tinkering” away from being a future Number 1 (overdub a McCartney bass line and harmony, stick Lennon’s guide vocal upfront, and watch the cash roll in).

Harrison’s work on Greatest recalls some of his own greatest Fab moments from descending Help! arpeggios to sharp Back in the U.S.S.R. rhythmic stabs; it’s as dead-on as even the Rutles could have managed.

Other standout Harrison moments include Photograph, a co-write with Starr upon which he contributes up-front chiming 12-string acoustic; his “Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond),” a decidedly countrified folk-rock, proto-Americana knees-up featuring David Bromberg and various members of the Band fiddling fiddles and plucking banjos as if their lives depend on it while Harrison adds Vini Poncia-abetted gang vocals and fluid picking; and album sign-off, You and Me (Babe).

Co-written (by Harrison) with former Beatles roadie Mal Evans, (Babe) provides a sentimental coda to Ringo’s all-star bash (an M.O. he clearly warmed to, if his various subsequent All-Starr Band tours are anything to go by) that saw neat supporting flourishes – including a further series of bold attention-grabbing arpeggios and a solo that, while celestial, has no intention of overstaying its welcome – from Harrison, prior to a fourth-wall-breaking, credit-listing spoken-word farewell from everybody’s favorite Liverpudlian drummer. [IF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: You and Me (Babe), I’m the Greatest, Photograph, Down and Out (non-album B-side)

George Harrison – Dark Horse (1974)

Things weren’t great in Harrison’s life during Dark Horse’s creative process. There was the unexpected criticism levelled at Material World, a long-percolating split with first wife Pattie Boyd that had spilled over into soap opera (she conducted affairs with Eric Clapton and Ronnie Wood as George found solace in the arms of Ronnie’s wife Krissy and Ringo’s wife Maureen).

Then there was all the post-Apple, post-Klein, post-My Sweet Lord plagiarism litigation. Plus, pulling together his own record label (also called Dark Horse), the drink, the drugs and the laryngitis he contracted during the latter period of recording, that carried over into a widely anticipated, if ultimately badly received, ’74 tour with Ravi Shankar.

But misery often engenders surprisingly fertile creative ground, and Dark Horse has its moments, not least its title track. Weirdly placed near close of play, it’s an inoffensive acoustic ditty, often weighed down with academic interpretations it doesn’t really deserve.

So Sad, laden with Here Comes the Sun-contrasting grey, wintry imagery, captures a post-Pattie George at his most despondent (cue lashings of lachrymose slide).

Harrison history wouldn’t be any poorer for the loss of either a largely wretched near-cover of the Everlys’ Bye Bye Love or the repetitions of Ding Dong, Ding Dong, but these clangers are more than offset by Simply Shady, a wordy, distinctly Dylan-esque examination of karmic consequences, rich in stinging, country rocking guitar asides with a lead vocal that actually benefits from the short-term ravages of laryngitis, and Far East Man, a co-write with Ronnie Wood that cogitates upon the power of friendship. Dark Horse failed to dent the U.K. album chart. [IF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Simply Shady, So Sad, Far East Man, Dark Horse

Splinter – The Place I Love (1974)

Splinter's overlooked debut album actually came out a few months before Dark Horse, but we’ve taken some liberties here because it’s easier to explain The Place I Love in the context of Dark Horse. Ya see, The Place I Love was actually one of the reasons Dark Horse was rushed, not to mention one of the (alleged) causes of his infamous case of laryngitis.

He simply put so much of himself into the album – contributing 95 percent of the guitars, plus bass, harmonium, percussion, mandolin, Moog and backing vocals; assembling the band, which features usual Harrison suspects Klaus Voormann, Willie Weeks, Billy Preston and Jim Keltner; recording it at Friar Park, his home studio; and releasing it on Dark Horse Records, his own label.

He didn’t write any of the songs, but that doesn’t mean the album isn’t full of beautiful Badfinger- and late-Beatles-esque songplay, the spine-tingling highlight of which is probably the addictive China Light.

In terms of guitar, check out Somebody’s City; it’s interesting to hear Harrison employing his Strat and easily identifiable 1974 Dark Horse sound on someone else’s song.

It’s the sorta thing that makes you think he could’ve put out a flawless album in 1974 if he somehow could’ve combined the best parts of The Place I Love with the best parts of Dark Horse.

Anyway, for a few more “Wait! That’s George sounding exactly like George but playing on someone else’s song!” moments, check out Situation Vacant and the heart-melting slide on China Light, which – have you noticed? – we keep mentioning.

Around this same time, George also produced (and played on) Ravi Shankar’s Shankar Family & Friends, which only supports the case that he really was burning the candle at both ends in mid ’74. [DF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: China Light, Somebody’s City, Situation Vacant

George Harrison – Extra Texture (1975)

Harrison certainly wasn’t above revisiting his invariably profitable Beatle George persona should circumstances demand it, and considering the degree to which Dark Horse had stiffed in the marketplace, demand it they did.

So Harrison combined every ounce of his creative power and mercenary acumen and basically threw everything at Extra Texture, his final album for Apple.

Largely dispensing with the services of his Dark Horse band (built around a core of Billy Preston, Willie Weeks, Andy Newmark and Tom Scott), Harrison relied on David Foster, Gary Wright and Leon Russell (keys), Jim Keltner (drums), Jesse Ed Davis (guitar) and Hamburg chum Klaus Voormann for Extra Texture’s more commercial material.

Aside from freshening things up with a distinct whiff of Smokey Robinson-inspired soul, there’s significantly less spiritual yearning for universal karma and a lot more trad George.

Not taking any chances, lead single You was co-produced by Phil Spector, pivots on a dynamite hook and features that most simplistic of all Beatles stand-bys, a chorus that repeats the word “love” until every listener succumbs to the inevitable and gets their wallets out.

Sharing its feel and message of tolerance with Isn’t It a Pity, The Answer’s at the End echoes All Things Must Pass before This Guitar (Can’t Keep from Crying) mimics
While My Guitar Gently Weeps to demonstrate that the bad reviews Harrison’s ’74 tour garnered were so hurtful that even his guitar broke down.

Featuring excellent solos from Jesse Ed Davis, it’s the standout six-string-based element of a largely piano-centred record. It returned Harrison to the U.K. top 20. Mission accomplished. [IF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: You, The Answer’s at the End, Can’t Stop Thinking About You

George Harrison – Thirty Three & 1/3 (1976)

While primarily released on a slice of vinyl that revolved at 33 and 1/3 revolutions per minute, Harrison’s seventh solo album was also coincident with his having attained that particular age. It also marked something of a return to form.

Ill fortune might still have dogged his days outside the studio – hepatitis set in shortly after recording commenced, and during production his My Sweet Lord case was ultimately found in favor of the plaintiff – but, backed by a watertight band, his artistic output suffered no ill effects.

Urban country/funk-fuelled openerWoman Don’t You Cry for Me, with its roots that date back as far as Harrison’s ’69 slide epiphany, is a stormer; it perfectly suits its soul-centred ’76 zeitgeist, Harrison’s slide tessellating perfectly with Willie Weeks’ slapped bass, Alvin Taylor’s tight-but-loose drums and David Foster’s driving post-Superstition clavinet.

Dear One is a light (Hindu monk/yogi/guru) Paramahansa Yogananda-inspired near-solo ditty perked up significantly by Richard Tees’ keys.

This Song, written following a week in court trying to convince an NYC judge that My Sweet Lord wasn’t a mere cynical rip-off of the Chiffons’ He’s So Fine, is defined by its bittersweet plagiarism-based lyric, but it’s Billy Preston’s piano and Tom Scott’s sax solo that elevate it into the arena of the excellent.

Harrison was never more comfortable than as a member of a band, be it as a Beatle or a Traveling Wilbury, and on high-calibre compositions like See Yourself, the Eric Idle-sparked surrealism of Crackerbox Palace and It’s What You Value, the Thirty Three & 1/3 studio band sounds like a solid working unit rather than a cast of sessioneers putting in the hours. [IF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Crackerbox Palace, This Song, Woman Don’t You Cry for Me, True Love, Dear One

George Harrison – S/T (1979)

“Sky cleared up, day turned bright” an unusually optimistic Harrison sings on Blow Away, the first single from an eponymous effort that garnered unanimous critical approval.

George was evidently in the pink; he’d married Olivia Arias and become a first-time father, to Dhani, during the album’s gestation. Consequently, while contemporary opinion likened George Harrison positively to his All Things Must Pass solo zenith, it offered little darkness of which to beware.

Shot through with infectious optimism and featuring a politely insistent hook, a signature guitar intro from Eric Clapton and Stevie Winwood on synth (and backing vocals), Love Comes to Everyone (eventually covered by Clapton and Winwood in 2005) is a portent of the mega-commercial, coffee-table-smooth rock that came to dominate the coming decade.

Written in ’68 to debunk unfounded accusations thrown at the Maharishi by his fellow frontline Beatles and previously recorded during the fraught sessions for the White Album (it’s available on Anthology 3), Not Guilty takes on a keys-driven (Winwood again, with Neil Larsen) featherlight jazz inflection.

Here Comes the Moon, Soft-Hearted Hana and Your Love Is Forever boast McCartney levels of likeability, but it’s Blow Away – with its ample portions of inimitable slide and Beatles-era cheeriness – and a Phil Spector-mimicking Gary Wright co-write If You Believe (oddly reminiscent of contemporary ELO) that truly set a seal on the album’s well-deserved reputation as a mid-career Harrison essential.

That, again somewhat bafflingly, only managed to garner relatively modest chart action. [IF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Love Comes to Everyone, Blow Away, If You Believe, Dark Sweet Lady

The '80s comes for Harrison

George Harrison – Somewhere in England (1981)

After 1970’s invocation of My Sweet Lord, George Harrison never really stopped praying on his albums. Sometimes it was in the background. But when it found its way to the foreground, as on Life Itself, the standout track here, it could make even an atheist feel devout.

With its circular chord progression and gospel-like melody, the song yearns upward. And Harrison’s slide acts as a second voice, answering his lead with a sympathetic ache.

Harrison needed prayer power in 1981. He was at odds not only with a changing music scene, but Warner Bros., who rejected the first version of the album as “too laid back” (Blood from a Clone was Harrison’s bitter riposte). It was only when he lyrically tweaked the already-recorded All Those Years Ago to be a tribute to recently deceased John Lennon that they heard a hit.

It is a hooky tune, and features Ringo and Paul (not to mention Wings’ Linda McCartney and Denny Laine), but what remains puzzling is, after the ultra-tasteful slide licks throughout, Harrison then forfeits the solo to that wonky synth. Surely it deserves a Beatle-esque guitar break.

More satisfying is the rockabilly pluck of That Which I Have Lost and Save the World, which conjures up Savoy Truffle with jaunty fuzz and plaintive single-line work.

Of Harrison’s solo albums, this sounds the most dated and distant. That’s due to the excessive use of chorus effects, perfunctory songwriting and the inclusion of musty covers Baltimore Oriole and Hong Kong Blues. [BD]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Life Itself, All Those Years Ago, Save the World, That Which I Have Lost

George Harrison – Gone Troppo (1982)

“The say I’m not what I used to be / All the same I’m happier than a willow tree,” Harrison sings on Mystical One. In that one couplet, he addresses the two most common criticisms of his 10th studio album, which are – it’s his worst (it’s definitely not), and it’s his happiest (well, why begrudge the once-melancholy Beatle a breezy moment?)

If there’s anything detrimental here, it’s the sequence. The weaker material – the island-flavored Wake Up My Love, the silly ’50s doo-wopper I Really Love You – makes Side One feel slight. It’s rescued somewhat by the mostly instrumental Greece, with Harrison’s subtle gathering of volume swells, bell-like harmonics and dual slides rendering a dappled postcard.

The much weightier Side Two reminds us of how singular his songwriting could be. Mystical One features those deft, major-to-minor harmonic shifts that are instant George. Album standout Unknown Delight, an ode to his wife Olivia, feels like a sequel to Something; Harrison even briefly quotes a figure from it in his exquisite, shivery solo.

Circles, a meditative tune written in India in ’68, is rescued from oblivion and given a synth-heavy treatment; hey, at least those synths were played by Deep Purple’s mighty Jon Lord.

And let’s not forget that the whimsically catchy Dream Away was both the theme song for Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits and a prescription for creativity. “Measure the mystery and astound,” he sings. [BD]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Unknown Delight, Mystical One, Dream Away, Greece

Carl Perkins & Friends – Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session (1986)

Rock ’n’ roll pioneer Carl Perkins did a fine job when assembling the talent for the televised October 1985 concert that was meant to showcase his classic Fifties tunes, many of which were covered by the Beatles. You had your Clapton, your Dave Edmunds, your Ringo and your Rosanne Cash.

But Perkins’ biggest “get” was George Harrison, who was practically a recluse at that point. So Perkins was technically the star of the show, but Harrison was – you know what I’m sayin’ here – the star of the show.

The former Beatle, sporting a late-’50s Gretsch 6120 – and delay so thick and friendly that Cliff Gallup and Brian Setzer were probably salivating – bopped his way through Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby, which he and the Fabs recorded for Beatles for Sale. Your True Love, which the Beatles tackled during the Get Back sessions, is another winner.

Also right around this time, Harrison’s otherwise-lost cover of Bob Dylan’s I Don’t Want to Do It appeared on the soundtrack to Porky’s Revenge; two mixes were released, one of which highlights Jimmie Vaughan on guitar.

“[Harrison] was great,” Vaughan told us in 2011. “We were trying to be cool, like, I wanted to go ask him all these questions. I asked a couple, and then I kind of shut up because I didn’t want to be just another guy pestering him.” [DF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby, Your True Love, Glad All Over

George Harrison – Cloud Nine (1987)

In 1974, when John Lennon was a guest DJ on WNEW in NYC, one of the records he played was ELO’s Showdown. In a bit of cosmic foreshadowing, he said, “I call them Son of Beatles.”

Lennon didn’t live long enough to see that son grow up to become an honorary Beatle. Jeff Lynne would produce John’s fleshed-out demos turned Beatles tracks, Free As a Bird” and Real Love. But Harrison’s 11th album was where he first entered the story.

George was coming off a five-year hiatus, and he hired Lynne, who he’d never met, as creative co-pilot (“It’s handy to have someone to bounce ideas off of,” he said.)

It was a smart move. Harrison sounded refreshed, he had his first hit album in over a decade, and Got My Mind Set on You and the Beatles pastiche When We Was Fab were all over the radio and MTV.

But there was a trade-off. Any artist who works with Lynne – from Dave Edmunds to Ringo Starr to Bryan Adams – can end up sounding more like ELO than themselves. And Lynne’s sonic fingerprints are all over this record – the arid, bluesy Cloud 9, the celestial synths and Xanadu-like churn of This Is Love, the lush vocal stacks on Devil’s Radio.

The ELO-ness can be so distracting that it even (sometimes) overpowers the presence of starry guests Ringo, Elton John and Eric Clapton.

What’s more difficult to explain is how Lynne’s entrance marked a shift in George’s guitar playing. The previous decade and a half’s lyrical solos, the honeyed dual slide harmonies started to give way to a leaner, bluesier approach.

In a career that saw much stylistic evolution – from rockabilly picking to Indian sitar to psychedelic fuzz to lyrical slide – it’s still a mark of Harrison’s touch that the variation that began on Cloud Nine is immediately identifiable as him. [BD]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Fish on the Sand, Devil’s Radio, When We Was Fab, That’s What It Takes, This Is Love

Supergroups, solo highlights and the Beatles re-revisited

Traveling Wilburys – Vol. 1 (1988)

In early 1988, Warner Bros. asked Harrison to come up with a B-side for This Is Love, a single from Cloud Nine. At the time, he and Jeff Lynne were hanging out with Tom Petty and Roy Orbison at Bob Dylan’s studio in L.A.

So as long as he was surrounded by his pals, George thought, ‘Why not enlist their help?” They wrote and recorded Handle with Care in a day. Harrison knew it was too good to be a B-side. “The only thing I could think of was to do another nine and make an album,” he said.

So they did. Written and recorded in 10 days, the album captures an infectious live energy – friends having fun. Of course, with such distinctive singers, the emphasis naturally stays on the songs and the vocal round robins.

But amidst the lush acoustic strumming from all five, George steps out with a few tasteful lead moments – the Carl Perkins-style rockabilly licks on Rattled; the fuzzed, bleating slide on Margarita; the plaintive melodic twang on Congratulations.

Supergroup is a word that gets overused. And often, there’s a calculated impulse behind their formation. The Wilburys remain the most organic and musically joyous of them all (they even adopted cheeky fake names).

“If we had tried to plan it, or said, ‘Let’s get this band with these people in it,’ it would’ve never happened,” Harrison said. “The thing happened just by magic.” [BD]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Handle with Care, Rattled, Heading for the Light

George Harrison – The Best of Dark Horse (1989)

A greatest-hits compilation assembled by the artist instead of the label, this features familiar hits, plus deeper cuts such as Here Comes the Moon and That’s the Way It Goes. But the real attraction is the inclusion of three new tracks.

Poor Little Girl, with its catchy call-and-response chorus and pizzicato strings, is cut from the same cloth as Cloud Nine – George-meets-ELO. The minor-key Cockamamie Business is a takedown of showbiz corporate corruption (“Didn’t want to be a star, just wanted to play guitar”).

And then there’s the real jewel, Cheer Down (which first appeared on the Lethal Weapon 2 soundtrack). Co-written with Tom Petty, it shares a groove with I Won’t Back Down and pays tribute to Wilbury bandmate Roy Orbison with its swooping melodicism.

In the final minute-and-a-half, George cuts loose with a slide solo that folds in everything from early rock ’n’ roll double stops to Indian raga-style licks. It’s a tour-de-force and one of his all-time best guitar moments. [BD]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Cheer Down, Poor Little Girl, Cockamamie Business

Traveling Wilburys – Vol. 3 (1990)

Two months after the first Wilburys album was released, Roy Orbison died from a heart attack at 52. As a way to say things couldn’t be the same without him, the remaining members changed their nicknames and wrote a tribute to their departed Lefty in You Take My Breath Away.

This sequel favors rockabilly romps, like She’s My Baby (featuring Gary Moore at his blues-shreddy best), Where Were You Last Night? and Wilbury Twist. George gets some tasty licks in on Poor House, where his slide mimics a pedal steel, the 12-string chime of The Devil’s Been Busy and New Blue Moon, with its harmony slide echoing My Sweet Lord.

It’s not as winning as the debut, but 35 years on, it’s hard to disagree with Jeff Lynne’s assessment: “All these amazing characters in the wild, just shouting words and writing them down, strumming a few chords. It’s a rare experience. Even I just go, ‘Wow! What are all these guys doing together?!’” [BD]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: The Devil’s Been Busy, She’s My Baby, Where Were You Last Night?, Inside Out

George Harrison – Live in Japan (1992)

In late 1991, Harrison hitched a ride to Japan with Eric Clapton and his band, including guitarist Andy Fairweather Low and bassist Nathan East, resulting in Harrison’s first tour since 1974 – and his only live album besides The Concert for Bangladesh, which is more of a “George Harrison & Friends” thing anyway.

As we said a few pages ago, we’re here to talk about the studio albums; however, we simply can’t ignore…

• Harrison’s only official live performances of a slew of Beatles-era Harrisongs, including I Want to Tell You, If I Needed Someone and Old Brown Shoe. We even get the White Album’s Piggies, for Chrissakes.

• If you want to hear George playing slide guitar in a live situation, look no further. And we mean that literally; this is it – the only officially released live album featuring George Harrison on slide guitar. At least he made it count; check out Cloud 9 and Cheer Down.

That said, Harrison actually hired Fairweather Low to play some of the tour’s more intricate slide parts, which isn’t too difficult to fathom since Harrison was in frontman mode for most of the set.

“Though I don’t play slide and never did, I knew this was a life-changing moment – one of those moments where everything’s going to change if it happens,” Fairweather Low told us late last year.

“I thought, well, I’m either going to turn up at the rehearsal and they’re going to realize I’m an absolute no-go, or I can phone George and own up.” Let’s just say it turned out just fine.

• Is this the ultimate version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps? From a normal person’s POV, no; you’ll want to stick with the White Album track. But from the POV of someone who thinks Harrison – and not Clapton – should’ve played the solo in the first place, yes indeed.

While the Bangladesh version features some decent interplay between Clapton and Harrison, it’s kinda messy. 20 years later, they nailed it. [DF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Cloud 9, Cheer Down, I Want to Tell You, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Isn’t It a Pity, Dark Horse

Alvin Lee – Nineteen Ninety-Four (1994)

Harrison teamed up with his Thames Valley neighbor – former Ten Years After guitarist Alvin Lee – a few times (Lee plays on Harrison’s Ding Dong, Ding Dong and Splinter’s Gravy Train and Haven’t Got Time; Harrison plays on Lee’s On the Road to Freedom), but their mid-’90s hookup takes ye olde guitar-shaped cake.

First there’s the bizarrely delicious few seconds of Harrison playing slide on the intro to John Lennon’s bluesy Abbey Road standout, I Want You (She’s So Heavy). Then there’s The Bluest Blues, which is, hands down (whatever that means), one of Harrison’s best, most emotional slide guitar performances.

As GW wrote in 2017, “It’s a little crazy to hear Harrison playing blues slide guitar, but there it is. In his solo, which starts at 2:15, the former Beatle plays several throaty passages that recall his wicked playing on Lennon’s How Do You Sleep?” [DF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: The Bluest Blues, I Want You (She’s So Heavy)

The Beatles – Anthology-era recordings 1995 / 1996 / 2023

In the mid ’90s, George, Paul and Ringo were reunited with John’s voice, courtesy of a cassette’s worth of demos Lennon recorded in the late ’70s at the Dakota. The results were the Jeff Lynne co-produced Free As a Bird (1995) and its lesser-known follow-up, Real Love (1996). The beauty of both tracks is that they somehow manage to sound like true group recordings, with everyone getting a chance to shine – especially George.

His brazen Bird solo break – which glides on a jet stream of lush Abbey Road-esque Paul/George vocal harmonies – is a soaring slide masterpiece delivered with a touch of overdrive that finds him truly owning the moment.

He sounds a bit more like Beatle George on Real Love, having some fun – slide-free, with his custom Bernie Hamburger guitar – on the bouncy fills and bendy solo.

The Fab Three worked on another track back in the day – Now and Then – but Lennon’s voice was far too deeply intertwined with the tinny piano on the original demo (plus, rumor has it George was never a big Now and Then fan). Fast-forward nearly 30 years, and – lo and behold – the technology required to extricate Lennon’s voice from the demo suddenly exists.

As does – as of late 2023, 22 years after Harrison’s passing – Now and Then, aka “the last Beatles song.” In terms of the visual proof, George simply provides a bit of strumming on his (or Paul’s) Gibson acoustic. Sadly, he didn’t play the song’s slide solo (Paul did), and his spot-on intonation is, um, missed. [DF]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Free As a Bird, Real Love

George Harrison – Brainwashed (2002)

The first thing you hear is George saying, “Give me plenty of that guitar.” And sure enough, this is a roundup of his bountiful gifts as a player – from beautifully layered and precise rhythm feels (Any Road) and rockabilly-style licks (Vatican Blues) to lyrical slide playing (Stuck Inside a Cloud) and Indian-influenced meditations (the exquisite, Grammy-winning Marwa Blues).

Released a year after he passed in 2001, his final album had songs that stretched back over a personally challenging decade. Harrison endured financial problems and court cases (over HandMade Films), three different cancer diagnoses and courses of treatments and, horrifically, an attempted murder by an intruder in his home. Through it all, this project was a place of calm and sanity to which he returned.

Toward the end of the ’90s, his health declining, Harrison realized he might not live to see its completion. So he left extensive – and poetic – notes for his son Dhani and Jeff Lynne to finish it.

“Sort out middle of Brainwashed; cut down yew trees at back of lodge,” went a typical entry. With that in mind, the pair worked during the year after he passed to provide what Dhani called “a cradle for George’s voice and guitar.”

That sensitive approach keeps the focus on the songs, which encompass all the many sides of George – Buddhist, cosmic consciousness traveler, black-humored curmudgeon, gardener, guitarist, former Beatle – while he considers this world and the next.

As he sings on Rising Sun – Until the ghost of memory trapped in my body, mind / Came out of hiding to become alive. Another way of saying – George is forever. [BD]

HARRISON HIGHLIGHTS: Any Road, Stuck Inside a Cloud, Marwa Blues, Rising Sun, Brainwashed

Re-emerging from a five-year hiatus in 1987 with the Cloud Nine album, George Harrison found his greatest commercial success in over a decade.

Guitar-wise, though, Harrison really stood out at the time – a man still wowing with his rich, slide-powered melodies and storytelling touch when the shred hurricane was at its most powerful. Hell, look at Cloud Nine's cover – he's beaming, with a patterned, button-down shirt and his trusty '57 Gretsch 6128 Duo Jet in hand. Not a flame in sight!

Obviously, a Beatle – much less the most influential of the lot when it comes to the guitar – was never going to have to respond to trends, but the topic of Harrison's soloing strategies nonetheless came up when he sat down for an interview with Guitar World in 1988.

Harrison said that while he was happy to improvise (“If I want to play, as long as I know where the notes are that I can use, I can improvise around those notes and I've got a good sense of rhythm,” he told us) when needed, when it came to laying something down in the studio, he was far more comfortable charting out a path in advance.

“These players who wheel their equipment into studios and play a lot of sessions will either read a part or play spontaneously,” Harrison said. “I need more time than that.”

“There was a period when a lot of people started asking me to play slide guitar for them on their records, and I can do it, but I need time. I need to work out what I'm gonna do, and then I have to work out how to play it.”

Now, there was, Harrison said, an exception to this – and it's one of the greatest solos he ever set to tape; the one found on his ballad, Something.

“Now that,” the Beatle said of the titanic Abbey Road track, “is an example of that kind of thing where I find roughly where I can go.

“In those days, I don't know if that was an eight-track or whatever, but I remember specifically that it wasn't a clean empty track to put that solo on. Ringo was overdubbing something, and Paul was overdubbing something at the same time I was doing my solo. So in order for me to practice, I'd say, ‘Let's do it again, and again.’ But they'd have to do their bits, too.”

Though the Fab Four were on the verge of dissolution by this point, elements of their musical camaraderie, especially when greatness was at hand, still existed.

“Even in those days, there were times when we were also very cooperative, and we'd do that to help each other,” Harrison said. “And I think also I sort of smoked something, and I didn't really know what I was doing.

“I did that solo a number of times, and then we left and went on holiday, came back, put the tape back up, and I was very pleasantly surprised, because I did hit some right notes, and it did have a certain spontaneity to it.”

So there you have it, kids. Smoke something, don't know what you're doing, and you, too, will create something as magical as the Beatles.

(For legal and practical reasons, kids, this is a joke).

Andy Fairweather Low has recalled how an impromptu jam with Jimi Hendrix – during which the legendary electric guitar great played bass guitar – later resulted in an invitation to record with him on a classic track.

The Welsh rhythm guitarist was a founding member of Amen Corner, and later became the go-to gun-for-hire for numerous big artists, including George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Joe Satriani. But it was during his Amen days that Low first crossed paths with Hendrix, who was famously never one to shy away from an opportunity to jam.

“He’d been on [British TV show] Top Of The Pops, so the word is out,” Low says in the new issue of Guitarist when asked about his relationship with Hendrix. “Amen Corner had a residency at the Speakeasy, and one night Jimi is there and wants to play. So he borrows Clive [Taylor]’s bass, flips it upside down, and we do Otis Redding’s I Can’t Turn You Loose.”

Just one jam, though, was never going to quench the virtuoso’s thirst.

“Next night, he wanted to play guitar, so he took Neil [Jones]’s guitar, flipped it upside down, I took the bass,” Low recounts. “So, it was Dennis [Bryon, drums], me and Hendrix. I have to say it was three o’ clock in the morning and I wasn’t very good! You gotta learn somewhere, though, eh?”

Low’s bass-playing talents might not have been quite up to scratch, but it still seems he left an impression on his jam mate, and they’d soon cross paths again.

“Then it’s 1969,” Low picks up the story. “I’m in New York and I get a phone call. 'Jimi’s in the studio. Would you come down and do some vocals?’ He’s recutting Stone Free. So we go down, Roger Chapman [of Family] is also there, so we did it.”

Stone Free, a counterculture anthem, was first released as a B-side to Hey Joe in 1966, but it was re-recorded and re-released three years later in the US with Low and Chapman's backing vocals. However, Hendrix biographer Keith Shadwick called the rendition “disciplined but spiritless” in his book, Jimi Hendrix: Musician – and it seems that Low would tend to agree with him.

“It’s not a good version,” Low accepts. “There’s only one version of Stone Free.”

Hendrix’s impromptu jams over the years have become the stuff of legend. Speaking to Rick Beato in late 2023, Andy Summers recounted his “outrageous” jam with Hendrix and Mitch Mitchell, while Jimi’s jam sessions with Jonny Winter and Stephen Stills were released in 2018.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitarist, which also features chats with Yvette Young, Adrian Smith, and Richie Kotzen.

Low’s interview with Guitarist also revealed that he was the seventh choice guitarist for Harrison's band for a tour of Japan in 1991, behind Gary Moore and Alvin Lee.

Andy Fairweather Low’s resumé reads like a who’s who list of guitar greats. Over the course of his prolific career the revered rhythm guitarist has played alongside some of the greatest names in guitar music, from Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix to Joe Satriani and Roger Waters.

One of Low’s most notable gigs, though, came in 1991, when he was recruited by George Harrison to join the Beatle for a solo tour in Japan.

However, as it turns out Low’s wasn’t the first name on Harrison’s list. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t even the second, or third name on the list: there were six potential candidates on the list ahead of Low when Harrison started selecting his band lineup – and Gary Moore and Alvin Lee were ahead of him.

When asked about his time touring with Harrison in the new issue of Guitarist, Low recalls, “Eric [Clapton] had said, ‘Look, I’ll put my band together and we’ll back you.’

“We were having a meal in Japan and George gets up and says, ‘Andy was not the first choice. There were seven guitarists and he was the seventh choice.’ Because Gary Moore was one, Alvin Lee was another, and eventually it came to me.”

As for why Low eventually got the call, Low goes on to explain that the pair had met backstage at a Ry Cooder concert, leading the Beatle to assume he played slide guitar – a quality that Harrison was evidently looking for in his guitarist.

“George and I had met at Ry Cooder shows backstage, so he’d assumed I played slide. Anyway, the first song we played when I went over was Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth).

“I knew it inside out because I loved [Living] In The Material World. But I said, ‘George, I’m the rhythm player, you play the slide. It doesn’t make any sense.’ Well, I learned the solo, but, believe me, there’s so many nights I didn’t sleep!”

Indeed, Low may not have been Harrison’s first choice (or second, or third, or fourth…) but he did end up being the ideal man for the job. As Low concludes, “George said, ‘He wasn’t the first choice, but he was the right choice.’”

It’s an interesting sliding doors moment, and one that begs the question, what would have happened had Harrison ended up recruiting Gary Moore for his tour, or Alvin Lee? Moreover, who were the four other players that came ahead of Low on the list of potential hired guns?

Harrison and Moore were, of course, close friends who played together on a number of occasions. In 1992, for example, they played While My Guitar Gently Weeps at the Royal Albert Hall. Before that, in 1990, Moore played on the Traveling Wilburys' 1990 album, Vol. 3.

As for Low, the seasoned session hand previously spoke of his time touring with Harrison in a recent interview with Guitar World, during which he recalled how he was forced to play slide even though he’d never played slide before.

He said at the time, “Clapton’s manager says, ‘George Harrison wants you to do the tour and play all the slide parts – he doesn’t want to do it.’

“Though I don't play slide and never did, I knew this was a life-changing moment – one of those moments where everything's going to change if it happens.”

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitarist, which features interviews with Andy Fairweather Low, Yvette Young, and Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen.

A new George Harrison tribute album that was recorded using some of the late guitar great’s own Beatles electric guitars and acoustic guitars has been released.

Compiled by gypsy jazz virtuoso Robin Nolan, For the Love of George comprises reinterpretations of 10 classic Harrison and Beatles songs, as well as a new original track that was crafted from chords the Beatles legend once drafted on an envelope before his passing.

As Nolan explains, it was during a trip to Friar Park – Harrison’s home – to celebrate the birthday of George’s widow, Olivia, that the idea of recording a fully fledged tribute album with genuine Beatles guitars first came to mind.

"I was at Friar Park playing for Olivia's birthday,” he recalls. “We were all talking and then George's Ramirez acoustic guitar appeared and I played And I Love Her on it. It was a massive thrill to play the song on the same guitar George originally recorded it on with Olivia and everyone watching.”

Nolan had toyed with the idea of a Harrison tribute album in the past, but his visit to Friar Park – and the experience of playing the Ramirez – all-but-confirmed the project.

“I had already been thinking about how cool it would be to do an album of George's songs, but then to actually be playing one of his songs on that guitar, that’s another level,” Nolan goes on. “That's another layer of awesomeness. So that was where the inspiration for the album was born.”

As for the title track, For the Love of George came about after Olivia sent Nolan a picture of an envelope, upon which George wrote some chords before he died. There wasn’t too much to go on, but upon Olivia’s request, Nolan took a look – and ended up turning the note into a full song.

“I stared at the envelope and studied the chords intently that George had written all those years ago and started to feel the magic,” he reflects. “It was like unraveling a mystery, trying to imagine what George might have meant.

“After I’d figured out the chords a melody came to me. In my mind I could hear George humming a tune that sounded really beautiful. That’s when it all came together. The title track of this album For the Love of George.

“I was really excited so I recorded a simple version on my phone and sent it to Olivia wondering what she might think. She responded, ‘Wow it sounds so much like George!’

“And, of course, it does sound like George, because there's a few chord changes in there which are really unique to him, and then the melody I wrote is so inspired by him.”

To record the track, Nolan used all three of Harrison’s old guitars that were utilized across the rest of the album: the iconic 12-string Rickenbacker from A Hard Day’s Night, the Gibson J-160 that featured on numerous Beatles albums, and the aforementioned Ramirez classical acoustic, which can be heard on And I Love Her.

These guitars were used to record gypsy jazz renditions of tracks such as Wah-Wah, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, All Things Must Pass, Dark Sweet Lady and more.

For the Love of George is available now via Dark Horse Records.

What more can you write about the late George Harrison, who would've turned 82 on February 25?

People have been writing about the Beatles – pretty much nonstop – since 1963, when Peter Lorre, Andrés Segovia, John Coltrane, Stan Laurel and Bud Abbott still walked the earth.

Well, to answer my own question, it might actually be a story like our April 2025 cover feature – a story where all of Harrison’s albums (including everything by the Beatles) are laid out, side by side, in chronological order, along with some of his most important side trips and guest appearances, making it all seem like one huge body of work, which – guess what! – it is.

It’s a feature in which – for better or worse – oddities like Wonderwall Music, Encouraging Words and Is This What You Want? are given the same space and word count as major players like Abbey Road, Revolver and All Things Must Pass.

But perhaps the cherry on top is our new interview with George’s son, Dhani Harrison – he of thenewno2, Fistful of Mercy and solo fame – who sheds some light on another major player in George Land, 1973's Living in the Material World, home of some of the elder Harrison's finest guitar work and compositions.

On that note, here's what we've got in this issue!

>>> Extra Texture: An album-by-album guide to George Harrison's greatest songs, guitar solos, milestones and innovations – by Neville Marten, Damian Fanelli, Bill DeMain and Ian Fortnam.

>>> George's Other Masterpiece: Dhani Harrison dissects the making of his father's 1973 album, Living in the Material World, and everything that went into producing the new 50th-anniversary Material World box set.

>>> Wonderwall to Be Here: A new interview with frequent George Harrison collaborator John Barham. Plus...

>>> Dream Theater: Forty years into their career, the prog-metal masters have received a vital transfusion via the return of original drummer Mike Portnoy. John Petrucci takes you inside the reunion and the band's new album.

>>> Spiritbox: Spiritbox guitarist Mike Stringer dispels the illusion of the Canadian band's "overnight success."

>>> Warren Haynes: From an incomplete Gregg Allman track to appearances by former ABB bandmate Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes' new album is packed with serious Allman Brothers Band mojo.

>>> Buck Dharma: A new interview with the Blue Öyster Cult guitarist. And yeah, we ask him about cowbells.

>>> 60 Years of Peavey: Peavey CEO Courtland Gray looks back on the company's most beloved products, including gear designed with Eddie Van Halen.

This issue – aka the shockingly breathtaking April 2025 issue of Guitar World – is available right here, right now!

Hold on, now! There's also this other stuff...

>>> Paul Gilbert's life in three guitars: The Mr. Big co-founder and Racer X whiz reveals the three guitars that have meant to most to him.

>>> Cobra Kai's guitar guys: The guys behind the music heard in the popular Netflix series that stars William Zabka, the guy who plays Chas Osborne in Back to School.

>>> Billy Zoom: The X guitarist discusses the making of a true lost classic, 1982's Under the Big Black Sun.

Plus new interviews with Jinjer's Roman Ibramkhalilov, Steve Hackett, Yasmin Williams, Neon Nightmare's Nate Garrett, the guys from Spiral XP and Billy Idol man Steve Stevens, who revisits a classic Guitar World cover from 1986.

Gear-wise, we explore the history and allure of the B.C. Rich Mockingbird, and we review all this cool stuff:

>>> Orange Dual Baby 100 and Gain Baby 100 amps
>>> Cort G250 SE guitar
>>> Mooer Ocean Machine II
>>> Bare Knuckle Pickups PolyPaf Humbuckers
>>> D'Angelico Premier SS guitar

We have new columns by Joe Bonamassa, Jared James Nichols, Jim Oblon and Andy Wood, plus transcriptions of Dogs of War by Mötley Crüe, Holy Diver by Killswitch Engage and Bridge of Sighs by Robin Trower.

Clandestine meetings, dramatic TV pleas, ransom demands, hurried getaway drives across the Mexican border...

It sounds like a thriller – a setup for the likes of Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, or Liam Neeson to Kool-Aid Man through the door, guns blazing, ready to re-possess what was unjustly taken.

Minus the action movie heroes and firearms (at least as far as we know), this was the exact scenario that no less than George Harrison found himself in when trying to get back his “Lucy” Gibson Les Paul, which was stolen from the Beatle in 1973 when he was living in Los Angeles.

Why go to such great lengths, you ask? Well, this wasn't just any ol' Les Paul.

Given to Harrison by his buddy Eric Clapton, “Lucy” had been used by the latter for his lead break on the Harrison-penned Beatles masterpiece, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, widely regarded as one of the greatest guitar solos of all time.

Harrison also went on to use the cherry red-finished guitar on other tracks on the Beatles' landmark White Album, and on Abbey Road.

Before it ended up in Harrison's, or Clapton's, hands, “Lucy” is said to have been owned by Rick Derringer, and the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian before him.

By the time Clapton bought it, the Les Paul had ended up at a New York City guitar store. When exactly Clapton bought it isn't certain (Clapton himself, in an interview about Gibson's 2013, ultra-limited edition re-creation of “Lucy,” wasn't entirely sure of the timeline), but by late 1968, the guitar was firmly in Harrison's possession.

It would remain so – contributing to the Beatles repertoire and subsequently Harrison's enormously successful early solo career – until April 13, 1973, when the guitar was swiped from his Beverly Hills home.

From there, the guitar was, reportedly, quickly sold to a shop, Whalin Sound City, that just as quickly sold it on to a Mexican musician named Miguel Ochoa.

Many years later, in 1988 – as Harrison re-emerged from a five-year hiatus with Cloud Nine, his biggest solo album in well over a decade – the Beatle sat down with Guitar World for a wide-ranging interview, which covered, among many other topics, the theft of the cherry red Les Paul.

We'll let Harrison take it from here.

“I called him [Ochoa] up,” Harrison told GW. “I said, ‘That's my guitar. I want it back, and I'll give you your money back.’ He said, ‘How do I know it's really you?’ I said, ‘Okay, I'll meet you.’

“A meeting was arranged, but the guy just took off, jumped in a car, and drove to Guadalajara and kidnapped my guitar!”

As if that wasn't surreal enough already, Harrison's close friend Ravi Shankar, the sitar master who taught Harrison the instrument for a time, just so happened to be in Guadalajara for a TV appearance.

Harrison recalled, “It was just after the Bangladesh concerts [two benefit concerts Harrison organized and headlined at New York City's Madison Square Garden in 1971 after the country was devastated by a massive cyclone] and Ravi went on TV saying, ‘He's very upset because his guitar's been stolen and it's in Guadalajara!’ Then he read the guy's name on TV!”

Even a public call-out didn't bring the ordeal to a swift conclusion.

“In the end it became a bit of a ripoff,” Harrison explained to GW. “I had to pay this guy to keep flying to Guadalajara doing deals with the other guy and I ended up having to go out and find a Les Paul of the same period and swap it for mine.

“I finally got it back, but it was a really good guitar, and also it had that personal thing, because it was the Guitar Gently Weeps guitar that Eric played, and I used it on the White Album and Abbey Road.”

And so, after many headaches, “Lucy” returned to Harrison's hands. It remains in possession of the late guitarist's family.

But what, you might be wondering, was the guitar that Harrison traded for “Lucy”?

Well, that guitar has an interesting story of its own..

Purchased from legendary vintage dealer Norman Harris, of Norman’s Rare Guitars, the guitar that got “Lucy” back was a Sunburst 1958 Les Paul.

Sold by Ochoa a decade after the “Lucy” dust-up, the so-called “ransom” Les Paul changed hands a number of times, before ending up on the auction block in 2022.

With the help of its colorful backstory, the guitar was sold for $312,500. We can assume no private flights to Guadalajara were necessary...

Vintage guitar expert Norman Harris of Norman’s Rare Guitars fame has bought and sold countless six-strings over the course of his celebrated career, ranging from oddball rarities to instruments steeped in history – but, it turns out, there was one ultra-valuable electric guitar that got away from him.

Harris first started selling vintage instruments in the 1960s, and he has counted some of the biggest players in the world as loyal customers over the years. In 2023, for example, he struck a deal with Joe Bonamassa for “one of the most important guitars I’ve ever sold”.

Indeed, Harris and his legendary store were recently the topic of a brand-new Netflix documentary, in which some of those stars – including Slash, Richie Sambora, Post Malone, and more – all feature.

But when Harris sat down with Gibson TV a few years ago, he revealed one of his biggest-ever career mistakes – and it was one of the first he made after entering the business.

“The first really big star that I ever dealt with was George Harrison,” Harris reveals in a recently resurfaced clip.

“He had asked me, when he was looking for sunburst Les Pauls, ‘You know my Gretsch Country Gentleman?’ – probably the most famous guitar of all time – ‘I'm thinking maybe I'll trade you that or something.’

“I was not thinking,” he continues. “I'm looking at George and I said, ‘Who's going to believe that I've got George's guitar?’ They're going to say, ‘Yeah, and you’ve got Napoleon’s suit also.’

“I just figured people would call me a liar so I didn't take that guitar – and that guitar I think may be the most valuable guitar [in history]. I mean, the Beatles meant so much to so many people.”

It's an understandable reaction considering his relative inexperience in trading gear at that point, but there's no arguing that, in hindsight, Harris missed out big time there.

Harrison's Gretsch Country Gentleman is an especially mythical instrument, and was believed to have been smashed to bits in December 1965.

As the story goes, Beatles chauffeur Alf Bicknell had been tasked with transporting the band from London to Glasgow, and with the four Beatles and their road manager, Neil Aspinall, all coming along for the ride, room was at a premium. So, the Country Gent and a Rickenbacker were reportedly strapped to the back of the car.

After around 40 miles, a truck signalled for Bicknell to pull over, as the Gretsch was apparently missing. They found the guitar some 12 miles back, and it was in a sorry state.

“The guitar and its case were smashed to bits,” Bicknell once said. “We never even bothered to pick it up.”

But, as YouTuber Nick Martellaro recently mused, new evidence – arriving after Paul McCartney's long-lost Höfner violin bass miraculously returned after 50 years in obscurity – seems to suggest that the guitar that was smashed to bits on the fateful night was actually another of Harrison's Gretsch guitars.

That begs the question, is the Gretsch still at large today? And if it is, where is it? At this point in time, there is no resolute answer. But, had a young Harris been a little more shrewd so early on in his gear-flogging career, that instrument may have had a very different fate.

SNL50: The Anniversary Special delivered on its promise of a star-studded event, featuring Jack White ripping a slide guitar solo on Neil Young's iconic Rockin’ in the Free World, Adam Sandler whipping out his acoustic guitar to pay homage to 50 years of SNL, Bonnie Raitt teaming up with Coldplay's Chris Martin, Brittany Howard and Miley Cyrus offering their take on Nothing Compares 2 U, and Paul McCartney closing the show with Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight, and The End from The Beatles' 1969 album Abbey Road.

Perhaps one of the most surprising link-ups, however, was Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter's interpretation of Simon & Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound. Wielding a black version of his Martin signature OM-42PS acoustic, Simon noted, “I sang this song with George Harrison on Saturday Night Live in 1976”, to which Carpenter quipped, “I was not born then… and neither were my parents.”

“Well, I'm glad they'll get the chance to hear it tonight,” he added before the two launched into a harmony-rich duet – complemented by his fingerstyle playing. The performance harkened back to the original, in which he and Harrison wielded a Guild F-30R Special and a Martin D-35S, respectively, and joined forces on both vocals and guitar for a mesmerizing rendition of Homeward Bound as well as Here Comes The Sun.

Simon's appearance marked a rare live outing for the veteran artist, who has largely retired from performing due to severe hearing loss. Meanwhile, Carpenter recently picked up the Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Pop Solo Performance awards at this year's Grammys.

Beyond the former and current SNL cast members featured in the special, the star-studded musical lineup included Bad Bunny, Eddie Vedder, The B-52s, Backstreet Boys, Devo, Lady Gaga, T-Pain, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, The Roots, Jelly Roll, Brandi Carlile, Mumford & Sons, Jerry Douglas, Snoop Dogg, Arcade Fire, David Byrne, St. Vincent, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Robyn, and Cher.

It was also the second time in two weeks that Nirvana reunited, this time teaming up with Post Malone to deliver an angsty rendition of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Steve Lukather never holds back. His honesty and humor are always present in his interviews – which is why a recent AI-generated article has him looking to set the record straight.

“I read an interview I never did, which was culled by AI from several different articles,” Luke tells Guitar World. “The shittiest part was some fucking horrible clickbait thing saying I think all modern guitar players rely too much on technology. I never fucking said that.

“I want people to know that’s not how I feel. Some of the greatest guitar players of all time have come as of late. I’m a fan; I’m not an asshole. When I read that fucking clickbait thing, I was mortified.”

He emphasizes: “I have nothing but respect for my fellow guitar players, whatever the level of technique. The competition is staggering – that AI headline was bullshit.”

Are there any young players who have caught your eye recently?

“Tim Henson’s originality is insane. I would never have approached the guitar the way he does in a million years. And I love the fact that women have stepped up. It’s either you’re good at the guitar, or you’re not; sex has nothing to do with it. It’s exciting to see.

“Kids today start out learning Eruption as their first song – the first thing I ever learned how to play was an E chord! There’s quite a bit of difference in the entry-level of being a musician now, as opposed to 1964 when I was a single-digit kid who could play some Beatles songs.”

There seems to be a rise in reverence for session players like yourself. Why do you think that is?

“Man, we walked in every day, and we didn’t know what we were gonna do. They’d throw up a chart with some letter on it, a few rhythmic notations like a little road map, and we said, ‘Let’s play something.’ There was no rehearsal, no demos, just, ‘What are we doing today?’

“It was a very exciting time in my life, and we were all hungry to do that. We were studying this stuff in high school. People are not made of ones and zeros – we’re flesh and blood who sat in a wooden room doing takes until we got something.

“If we did an overdub, we had to do it in one or two takes because there was no room to do it any other way. It was the old school; maybe the young kids are hearing that when they come to see it live. If I make a mistake, it’s loud and wrong – and I do make them every night!”

Was there ever a time in the studio where you made a mistake with the solo but it ended up on the record?

“Yes! Hold the Line is a great example – that solo up until the three-part harmony at the end was one take. Where it goes into the three-part harmony is where I dicked it. There’s a room full of people and here’s the new kid in the band; there’s all this pressure on me. I ripped the first part of the solo normally, then I made a mistake and went, ‘Ah, fuck…’ But everybody was like, ‘That’s great, keep going!’

What's your favorite Toto solo?

“There’s weird solos I’ve done that aren’t famous. I try not repeat myself, which is hard when you’ve done this for as long as I have. I don’t like playing the same licks for every solo.

“But there’s a song called 21st Century Blues on our last full-length album, Toto XIV, and it was a nice homage to Larry Carlton. I used to write Steely Dan-influenced songs for every one of my solo records because that was a big part of my life. I was heavily influenced by that level of quality, musicianship and craftsmanship.”

You’re heavily influenced by The Beatles too. What’s the most misunderstood element of Beatles guitar playing?

“That’s it’s not guitar playing, man – it’s composition. It’s the composition within the composition. Paul played a lot of the solos, which used to piss George off, but the thing is John, George, and Paul always found something incredibly memorable or hookish to play.

“As a session player, I remember referring to Beatles things when I was searching for parts on other songs. I’d go, ‘I need that sound from Fixing a Hole; that might work here.’ The Beatles were always in the room. Every record I ever made, somebody would say, ‘Give me a little Beatlesy thing, man.’

“Nobody walks away from a Beatles record going, ‘That’s the greatest guitar solo I’ve ever heard.’ You might walk away going, ‘That’s the most perfect guitar solo I’ve ever heard.’ But you’re not walking away ablaze by technique; you know what I mean?”

What was it like playing alongside George Harrison in the early ‘90s?

“I actually got to do it a couple of times. I met George a few days before we were doing a tribute to [Toto drummer] Jeff Porcaro after he tragically passed. I said, ‘Hey, man, I just wanted to say hi and thank you for my career.’ He turned out to be the nicest, funniest guy I’d ever hung out with.

“I know I was cracking him up, and we hit it off. I said, ‘You want to come down to the show? I’ll leave a couple of tickets for you,’ never in a million years thinking he’d take them. So, we’re sitting in the dressing room. The last thing we were going to do was A Little Help from My Friends – the Joe Cocker version, ironically – and I’m at the piano getting the vocal parts down.

“Somebody goes, ‘There’s somebody here to see you.’ I say, ‘Dude, right now? Really?’ They go, ‘I think you want to see him. This guy’s from Liverpool.’ I went, ‘No fucking way.’ The door opens up and George is standing there.

“There were a lot of famous people in the room, but when a Beatle walks into a room, it’s a different vibe, man. It’s a different air. So I gave him my Les Paul – which, just by him holding it, increased its value by a million dollars! I know this because there’s pictures of George is playing it and I got it appraised. Not that I’d ever sell it. My son Trev, a great guitar player, will get it.”

Did you feel some of that same aura while working with Paul?

“Not the same aura – they’re all so unique people. The greatest people, man. You think the most famous people in the world would be assholes, but it’s not the case. They’ve got really great souls, man, and they’re fun to be around. The first time I got to play with Paul was when we did Thriller with Michael Jackson – I was thrilled to be there.”

What was that like?

“It was all cut live. Paul and Michael were in the studio singing live. So I was able to ask every geeky fucking Beatles question about the recordings while we were there for two weeks, having lunch and hanging out. They were just the nicest people.”

Speaking of Michael, Steve Stevens recently told Guitar World that Michael Jackson’s feedback to both him and Eddie Van Halen was that he ‘liked the high notes’. Did Michael give you similar instruction?

“I wasn’t doing solos, I was going parts, so it’s a different vibe. We were working on the middle section of Beat It, and we’d be going at it for 30 minutes, and I said, ‘We’ve got to change it up,’ so that was my addition to it. Michael liked that. The only way I could tell what was happening with Michael and Quincy Jones was when Michael started dancing!”

So most of his communication was non-verbal in your case?

“It was a pocket thing – if I was in the pocket, it was swinging, and he started dancing, and that was the take. If he was looking at me funny… it had to be how he wanted it to feel. But with the solos and the high notes, I could see how he would say that!”

This past fall, you played a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing on Jeff Beck’s Strat. What was that like?

“Surreal – so much so that it threw me off completely. I played that guitar at his house many years ago, so you have to look at this from my point of view: here I am at the Hollywood Bowl in front of 16,000 people in my hometown, standing on the stage where Jeff Beck stood, where The Beatles stood, and where Jimi Hendrix stood, probably playing Little Wing too.

“This was toward the end of the set. I think Billy Gibbons had Jeff’s guitar then John Mayer had it [Joe Perry also planned to use Beck's Strat on Aerosmith’s cancelled tour - Ed], and they wanted me to do it. The whole moment freaked me out. You kind of get a brain fart from just being emotional about the actual reality of it.

“All these synapses in my brain hit at once, and it was just a very overwhelming emotion. I’m going to get to play it again in London, I think, in a couple of weeks. I’m not gonna do that song, but I’ll use that guitar to do something else.”

What stuck out most about Jeff’s guitar?

“The reason it sounds so great is because of Jeff Beck, not because of the guitar. It’s a nice Strat, but if you put the thing in the stand, does it make any noise? No. Somebody’s gotta pick it up and play it. Believe me, you put 10 guys out with the same guitar and have them play the same blues lick, and it’s going to sound 10 different ways.

“So you realize that the magic that’s in that guitar is his sweat and his notes. It actually felt like a living thing. Sounds cheesy, right? Jeff was a very important person to me. We were friends and worked together on tours; he was my hero. Who’s the best in the whole world, man? You can’t say; it’s impossible. But who’s in the top five? Certainly Jeff Beck.”

Is it surreal to watch Jeff Beck’s guitars and gear being auctioned off?

“Yeah, especially since I played a lot of those guitars through the years. But I think it’s great for his wife Sandra – you know, she’s gonna get sorted out. Nobody was playing them and she wanted people who would actually play them. That’s why she wanted to take this particular Strat and pass it around to get other people’s love for it.

“I was honored to be one of those guys – and I get to do it again. I’m excited about that, even though I’m a Music Man guy through and through. In fact, I’ve got a new version coming out, the L5. But I’ll cherish the moment. We’re human beings; it’s very emotional for me.”

Can you give any insight into the upcoming L5?

“I always like to have new inspiration sonically and physically. There’s some different pickups in there that are really cool. And it’s got a relic’d thing that I wanted to try that. But I’m not reinventing the wheel; it’s pretty much the same guitar, but we try different little things.”

• Lukather is currently touring Europe with Toto.

Steve Lukather has had the good fortune of playing alongside three of the Beatles – and could even go so far as to call them friends.

He has been a longterm member of Ringo Starr‘s All-Starr Band and recorded and hung out with Paul McCartney during the making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. However, the Toto man and session ace says it was a 1992 meeting with George Harrison that was the most rewarding for him.

“I had met George a few days before we were doing a tribute to [Toto drummer] Jeff Porcaro after he tragically passed,” Lukather tells GW in a new interview. “I said, ‘Hey, man, I just wanted to say hi and thank you for my career.’ He turned out to be the nicest, funniest guy I’d ever hung out with.”

Having hit it off, Lukather – who grew up idolizing Harrison’s playing and writing – tentatively suggested that he come down to the Porcaro tribute show.

“[I said] ‘I’ll leave a couple of tickets for you,’ never in a million years thinking he’d take them,” says Luke. “Sure enough, the last thing we were going to do was A Little Help from My Friends, which was the Joe Cocker version, ironically!

“So, we’re all sitting in the dressing room getting the vocal parts down, and somebody goes, ‘There’s somebody here to see you.’ I said, ‘Dude, right now? Really!?’ They go, ‘No, I think you want to see them – this guy’s from Liverpool…’ I went, ‘No fucking way.’

“The door opens up, and George is standing there. There were a lot of famous people in the room, but when a Beatle walks in, it’s got a different vibe, man.”

Lukather is not joking when he says there were famous people in the room. Eddie Van Halen was at the gig, as was Don Henley, David Crosby and a significant chunk of Steeley Dan, but none of these names fazed Lukather.

Harrison, though, knocked him out, though. And not just because he showed up unannounced, but because The Beatle then hopped onstage to play in the Porcaro tribute, literally rubbing shoulders Eddie Van Halen and Lukather in the process.

“I gave him my Les Paul [to use], which, just by him holding it, increased its value by, like, a million dollars,” recalls Lukather, referring to his 1959 Gibson Les Paul, one of the famed ’Bursts. “I know this because I got my guitar appraised, because there are pictures of me and George, and George is playing that guitar.”

But while a ’Burst used on big-name sessions, and documented in the hands of a Beatle, would fetch a hugely tempting price, Lukather maintains it can't compete with the emotional value of the instrument.

“I’m never gonna sell that,” says the guitarist. “My son Trev [Lukather], a great guitar player, will get it.”

Lucky Luke, indeed… Keep an eye out for Steve Lukather’s full interview on the site soon.

After bursting onto the British music scene in 1967 as frontman for Welsh pop-rockers Amen Corner, guitarist Andy Fairweather Low later built up an extraordinary list of credits as guitarist, singer, and collaborator with Eric Clapton, Roger Waters, George Harrison, Joe Satriani, David Gilmour, Bob Dylan, and many others.

Until now, Fairweather Low has largely gone unrecognized in the blues world. But his new album, The Invisible Bluesman, showcases his unique voice and guitar mastery in a collection of material recorded since he left Clapton’s band.

The title The Invisible Bluesman is apt – you’ve toiled away for decades in the shadows. Why was it time to take front-and-center position?

“It was Malcolm Mills’s idea, the guy who owns [the record label] The Last Music Company. He said, ‘I've seen your show and I think we need to put this blues thing out there. There’s an audience out there and they’re not getting it.’ He came up with the title and I went, ‘that's exactly how I feel!’

“I’ve played with Gatemouth Brown, BB King, Otis Rush, Jimmie Vaughan… the list goes on – but it seems to mean absolutely nothing. When I did a big show at New Year’s last year, it was advertised as ‘Andy Fairweather Low, lead singer with Amen Corner’. Now, I’m not disowning it, but I’m 76 years old. Give me a break!”

And it’s your final album, too?

“My previous album, Flang Dang, did absolutely nothing. And I loved that album; I played everything on it except the drums. I think this is probably my last self-penned album. I don't see the point anymore, unless something breaks.

“But a blues album, a soul album, or a gospel album? You never know. I’m just going to play live and enjoy it. I’ve already got a tour next year happening for two months playing to about 300 to 400 people nightly, and it’s already 90 percent sold out. I’ll see how life on the road feels in 2025.”

You came to work with George Harrison through a mutual love of Ry Cooder’s guitar playing.

“We’d met a couple of times at different Ry Cooder gigs and just said ‘hello,’ nothing more. Then I got a call from Roger Forrester, who was Eric’s manager, and he says, ‘George wants you do the tour of Japan, and play all the intricate slide parts; he doesn't want to do them.’

“I don’t play slide – but I knew this was a life-changing moment. I thought, ‘I’m either going to turn up at the rehearsal and they’ll realize I’m an absolute no-go. Or I can phone George and own up. So, I asked Roger to get me George’s number, and I rang him.

“I told George, ‘I know we met at a Ry Cooder concert, and I’m a big fan of Ry, too, but I’m never going to play slide. I'm having enough trouble with my fingers without putting a metal or glass bar in the way. I’ll stick to what I do.’

“But George said, ‘Everybody seems to like you, so why don’t you just come up?’ And I did, and we got on really well. After we talked for a while and laughed a lot, he said, ‘Let's play Give Me Love.’

“Well, I knew that inside out because Living in the Material World is one of my all-time favorite albums. I can sing all the harmonies on that song, and sing the slide solo – but I couldn’t play it. Eventually I had to learn to play it, because he wouldn’t.”

And he didn’t change his mind?

“No. I said, ‘George, I’m the rhythm player. You’re the slide player.’ But he wouldn't have it. It was the same with Eric – I had to play the front of Tears in Heaven, and other hits of his. Riffs and licks which everybody know, and they’ll go, ‘That didn't sound like it.’ So there was always a fabulous pressure on all those gigs.

“When I was with Eric we did a tour of America doing stadiums as a double header with Elton John. I was in the car with him and he put on Jimmy Rogers’ Chicago Bound – which is to me, the book on how to play the blues. Everybody is playing at the top of their game and it was all captured in one go.

“Eric’s taste in music is unbelievable; all kinds of music. He’s got a fabulous knowledge. And as a guitar player, I never felt good enough. But all he wants you to do is to be the best you can be. He’s fabulous at that.”

What’s your current guitar and amp setup?

“When it comes to guitars, it’s mainly a Knight Arena which was made by Gordon and Robert Wells. I use a Cornell amp, made by Denis Cornell from Southend. I wanted him to make me an ‘inefficient amplifier,’ which is against all of the ethos of an amplifier maker.

“But after a lot of trials he made me an amp with a volume knob, a tone knob, and a bit of vibrato. And that is it. No graphic equalizers, no presence, no nothing. And the amp just growls.”

During a period in the late 80s, you were mostly playing Strats fitted with Lace Sensor pickups, then you moved on to humbuckers.

“On one of the tours with Eric, I had these Strats with the Lace Sensors, but I eventually ripped them all out – I couldn’t get on with them. I first put in two humbuckers and eventually ended up with one. I like humbuckers because it helps keep everything simple.

“I’ll plug the guitar in, turn it up maybe to four or five, and if it growls then I’m there tone wise. And though you can do all the fine bits with nice pretty notes and all, it’s got to have that growl.”

Playing rhythm guitar is so underrated. Do you think people misunderstand its importance?

“I was lucky that I never had the facility to be a lead guitar player, but I loved being a rhythm player. I was lucky in that I wasn’t good enough to be a lead guitar player – and I didn’t want to be.

“I realized that when I saw Eric Clapton in 1966 at the Flamingo Club with John Mayall; I knew I couldn’t do that. I can do the lick, and I can play the front of My Sweet Lord and Tears in Heaven – but I can’t take the solo.”

You played rhythm on Joe Satriani’s 1995 self-titled album. What do you recall of that session?

“I remember Joe’s first interview after we’d done the album, where the interviewer started with, ‘Why Andy Fairweather Low?’ And that’s exactly the question I would’ve asked, too! I know what I do and I know what Joe does.

“I’m three feet away from Joe doing these songs, but I can’t think as fast as he can play. I did bring lots of different guitar tones, rhythm tones, whatever – I had a fabulous Supro with a lap steel pickup, and Fender made me an Esquire, so I could add things.

“And Joe, God, he was fabulous. We spent three weeks, and made a live album. And I think to myself, ‘Why me? The singer with Amen Corner is playing with Joe Satriani!’ He was so kind and tolerant, and I’m forever grateful to him, too.”

• The Invisible Bluesman is set for release on February 7 via The Last Music Company.

An official trailer has been released for the upcoming Norman's Rare Guitars documentary, which will be streaming on Netflix next week.

It was announced the feature-length film would be released by the streaming giant last week but no release date was slated. Now it’s been confirmed that the film, five years in the making, is set to be available to watch from December 31.

The legendary guitar store, owned by vintage guitar expert Norman Harris, has developed a larger-than-life reputation, and has become one of the most famous vintage and rare guitar gear retailers in the world.

For Harris, though, that was never part of the plan: as he can be heard saying in the trailer: “I never thought about opening a store in my life. It was really a plan B.”

The store opened in 1975 and over the years has been frequented by a who's who of legendary electric guitar players, from Eddie Van Halen and George Harrison to Joe Bonamassa, Slash, and Machine Gun Kelly, as the store continues to inspire generations of players.

As Bonamassa says in the trailer, “The instruments that he’s sold have been used to make music that’s changed the landscape of rock ’n’ roll.”

Indeed, the reputation of Norman’s Rare Guitars extends beyond just four walls lined with drool-inducing vintage gear. As Bonamassa expands, Norm’s stock has frequently made its way onto the big screen – and smaller ones, too – and has helped shape some of Hollywood’s most famous guitar moments.

“Norm is not just guitar collecting,” says Bonamassa, “it's Hollywood; everything from The Last Waltz to Spinal Tap.”

The trailer reveals just some of the all-star names who will star in the film, with Bonamassa guesting alongside the likes of Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman, the late Taylor Hawkins, actors/musicians Kiefer Sutherland, Malcolm McDowell, and former manager Mark Agnesi, who now works at Gibson.

Smartly, Harris has ensured the store has shifted in harmony with the ever-changing landscape of the industry. His YouTube channel boasts over 600,000 subscribers, with its ‘Guitar of the Day’ series demoing rare gems and jams with big-name players.

The documentary also takes a future-minded turn, as Norm’s daughter, Sarah Edwards, opens up on her struggles to get her father to retire, admitting: “He doesn’t have an identity without that store.”

The documentary drops on Netflix on December 31, with Norman’s Rare Guitars saying it “will be available on other streaming platforms in the coming months”.

As one of the guitar world’s most prolific rhythm guitar players, Andy Fairweather Low has amassed a serious list of collaborators across his career, including high-profile stints with Eric Clapton, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Bob Dylan and many more.

He also once toured with George Harrison, having been personally scouted and recruited by the legendary Beatle himself. There was a slight catch when Harrison sought the hugely prolific guitar player, though: he wanted him to play slide guitar... and Fairweather Low had never played slide before.

As he recalls in a new interview with Guitar World, the Amen Corner frontman once found himself operating in similar circles to Harrison, with whom he shared a mutual love of Ry Cooder’s virtuosic slide guitar playing.

This loose connection meant the pair found themselves bumping into each other at Cooder concerts, and before long Harrison’s reps were reaching out to the seasoned session hand with a proposition: a tour in Japan, which took place in 1991.

“We’d met a couple of times backstage at different Ry Cooder gigs and just said hello to each other and nothing more,” Fairweather Low remembers. “Then I got a phone call from Roger Forrester, who was Eric's manager at the time, and he says, ‘George wants you to come and do the tour to Japan to play all the intricate slide parts because that’s what he wants you to do. He doesn’t want to do it.’”

This request slightly baffled Fairweather Low: he considered himself a rhythm guitar player, and as such, lead slide lines weren’t exactly his forté. That didn’t phase Harrison in the slightest, though.

“Though I don't play slide and never did, I knew this was a life-changing moment – one of those moments where everything's going to change if it happens,” he goes on. “I thought, well, I’m either going to turn up at the rehearsal and they’re going to realise I’m an absolute no-go, or I can phone George and own up.

“So, I asked Roger to get me George’s number, and I rang him. I told George, ‘I know we met at the Ry Cooder concert, and I’m a big fan of Ry, too, but I’m never going to do that [play slide]. I’m having enough trouble with my fingers without putting a metal or glass bar in the way. I’ll stick to what I do.’

“But George said, ‘I tell you what, everybody seems to like you, so why don’t you just come up?’”

The meeting was a success, and both players hit it off, but when Fairweather Low once again raised the subject of the slides, Harrison simply wouldn’t budge.

He continues, “I said, ‘George, I’m the rhythm guitar player. You are the slide player. And not only that, you’re going to sing as well, so, that frees you up for just playing the slide and not strumming.’ But he wouldn't have it, so I had to play that.”

The full interview with Andy Fairweather Low will be published on GuitarWorld.com later this month.

The Beatles have been the subject of some high-profile documentaries recently. In 2022, we had Peter Jackson’s Get Back epic, which charted the Fab Four’s journey in the lead up to recording their last-ever studio album.

This year, we have Beatles ’64 – a hugely anticipated film produced by generational filmmaker and award-winning director Martin Scorsese, which tells the story of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison’s seminal appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. And, thanks to this Disney+ Black Friday steaming deal, you can watch the doc – and a ream of other Disney titles – from as little as $2.99 per month.

Few gigs are as famed as the Beatles’ New York turn from 1964, which was eternalized on The Ed Sullivan show. The first of three performances in February that year was viewed by 73 million viewers – making it the most-watched event of its time – and is considered to be the catalyst and cultural watershed moment that triggered Beatles hysteria (or ‘Beatlemania’) in the US.

Beatles ’64 – which is available exclusively on Disney+ – throws viewers into this formative time of the Beatles career, documenting the aftermath and cultural impact of the band's historic trip to New York for the gig.

Directed by David Tedeschi and produced by Scorses, Beatles ’64 is currently receiving rave reviews – it is sitting with 97% on Rotten Tomatoes – and should be considered essential viewing for all Fab Four fans.

For Black Friday, Disney+ is offering some bundle deals for new subscribers, the best of which lets you get both Disney+ and Hulu (both with ads) for just $2.99 a month for a full year. That represents a huge saving over the regular rate of $10.99 a month. To put that into perspective, this bundle will help you save a grand total of $96 over the course of 12 months.

Once signed up, you also have access to the rest of the Disney+ catalog, meaning for just $2,99 a month (that’s less than a cup of coffee) you’ll never be short of Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, or Pixar titles to choose from.

For more Cyber Weekend discounts, be sure to keep it locked to our Black Friday guitar deals page, where we'll be showcasing the very best deals from across the internet.

George Harrison’s Futurama has just become the most expensive Beatles electric guitar to ever sell at auction, selling for $1.27 million as part of Julien’s hotly anticipated Played, Worn and Torn auction event.

The record-breaking sale sees the Futurama absolutely shatter its pre-auction upper estimate of $800,000, with the oddball electric trumping the likes of Eric Clapton’s ‘Blackie’, Bob Dylan’s Newport Fender Strat, and David Gilmour’s Martin D-35 to also become one of the most expensive guitars ever sold at auction.

In fact, it comes in as the joint-11th most expensive auction guitar, sitting alongside Eric Clapton’s 1964 ‘The Fool’ Gibson SG, which sold for $1.27 million last year. It also comes ahead of Rory Gallagher’s 1961 Strat, and Duane Allman’s 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop.

The Futurama was eventually snapped up after 16 bids, and while it becomes the most expensive electric formerly owned by a Beatle to sell at auction, it isn’t actually the priciest Beatles guitar sale we’ve ever seen.

That mantle still goes to John Lennon’s 12-string Help! Framus, which sold for $2,857,500 after it was discovered in an attic early last year.

Nevertheless, it’s still a hugely significant sale, and one that Julien’s had largely pre-empted in the lead-up to the event.

“George Harrison’s Futurama guitar was The Beatles’ north star and one of his most loved instruments in his collection of legendary and prized guitars,” said Martin Nolan, Executive Director/Co-Founder of Julien’s Auctions, at the time of the guitar’s unveiling.

“This mythic guitar aptly named Futurama was played during the early Beatles’ countless ground breaking performances from their halcyon nights at the Cavern Club in Liverpool to their famous Hamburg Days where they honed their sound and style and the future of Beatlemania literally took off.”

As alluded to by Nolan above, the Futurama played a pivotal role in Harrison’s early years, and featured heavily during some of the Beatles’ first and most formative gigs.

Harrison bought the quasi-Strat replica in the late 1950s from Hessy’s Music Centre in Liverpool, UK, owing to an absence of Fender Strats in the UK market at the time.

Before the arrival of Harrison’s Gretsch Duo Jet in 1962, it became the Beatle’s main guitar, and was used for over 300 shows at the legendary Cavern Club and during the Fab Four’s historic Hamburg tours in the early 1960s.

“George Harrison’s iconic Futurama guitar, one of the most important guitars in rock and roll history and formative to The Beatles’ sound, has made history at today’s auction,” Nolan said after the auction.

“We’re beyond thrilled to add this Harrison guitar to the Julien’s Auctions’ million-dollar club, which already includes guitars from John Lennon, Eric Clapton, and Kurt Cobain.”

It’s a huge reversal of fortunes for the Futurama, which notably failed to sell after it didn’t meet its reserve price when it was put up for auction by Bonhams in 2019.

Visit Julien’s for more info on the Futurama.

Last month, Ritchie Blackmore started his new ‘Tales from the Tavern’ YouTube series, which finds the Deep Purple electric guitar legend look back over his storied career by sharing anecdotes of his most notable career milestones.

In the most recent episode, Blackmore has recalled the time he played alongside George Harrison in the mid 1980s, after the Beatle had spontaneously joined Deep Purple onstage in Australia to jam Little Richard’s Lucille.

In true Blackmore fashion, the guitar star couldn’t help retell the tale with a bit of his famous British humor, joking Harrison had once asked him to join the Beatles.

“I’d never heard of them, and I knew they were going nowhere, so I said, ‘No, absolutely not,’” he quips.

As for the time he actually met Harrison, Blackmore recalls, “The truth is, he was friends with Jon Lord and Ian Paice – he lived just down the road.

“He was over in Australia when we were there as Deep Purple, and he said to me very politely, ‘Can I get up on stage with you and use your guitar?’ I said, ‘Of course.’ I was flattered.

“Sure enough, we all got up on stage and we did the old rock 'n' roll number Lucille by Little Richard. We had a good time.”

To add to the recollection, Blackmore also shares footage from the gig, which took place in Sydney, Australia, in December 1984. In the grainy clip, Blackmore and Harrison can (just about) be seen riffing through Lucille, with the rest of Deep Purple in tow.

Fortunately, footage from that evening (albeit equally grainy) survives of the entire eight-minute jam.

“He was a very nice man, very serious, and very complimentary,” Blackmore adds. “It was very overwhelming to play with a Beatle. There will never be another band like the Beatles.”

The tale of the two guitar heroes joining forces to jam Little Richard has been told before, with Harrison once recalling how he was only vaguely aware of Deep Purple during their 1970s heyday.

“I never knew their music, but I’d heard this one thing, about Smoke On The Water or something like that,” the guitarist said in an old interview (via Louder). “But I’d never actually seen them… I’d heard they were in the Guinness Book Of Records for being the loudest group in the world.”

In an earlier episode of Tales from the Tavern, Blackmore recalled the time he disturbed Eric Clapton by cranking Marshalls in a hotel at 3am.

George Harrison’s historic Futurama – which he played extensively across more than 324 Beatles performances – is going up for auction for a second time.

Julien’s Auctions announced the sale during an official unveiling event today (Thursday 3 October) in Liverpool, during which it called the oddball electric guitar “one of the holy grails of historic Beatles guitars”.

Indeed, the Resonet Futurama’s pedigree and significance in the annals of Beatles history is well-known. Harrison first bought the sunburst six-string from Hessy’s Music Centre in Liverpool (the same retailer where John Lennon bought his first Vox amp) in the late 1950s.

It quickly became one of Harrison’s main guitars, before the arrival of his Gretsch Duo Jet in 1962 eventually relegated the Futurama from his starting lineup.

After that, it was passed on to a new custodian, but by the time the Futurama changed hands, it had already been used in over 300 shows, including some of the Beatles’ legendary early Cavern Club gigs.

Not only that, it had also been used by Harrison alongside Paul McCartney and co. for the Fab Four’s Hamburg tour at the start of the ’60s. During that first visit to Hamburg, the band played 106 nights – and Harrison used the Futurama for all of them.

The Futurama would also return to Hamburg for the band’s final visit to the city in 1962, and featured across a number of high-profile homecoming shows in Liverpool during the start of the decade.

As well as a prolific live instrument, the Futurama was also a key studio tool, and was used to help track The Beatles’ first official recordings for Polydor between 1959 and 1961. Namely, it can be heard on Ain’t She Sweet and Cry For a Shadow.

“George Harrison’s Futurama guitar was The Beatles’ north star and one of his most loved instruments in his collection of legendary and prized guitars,” says Martin Nolan, Executive Director/Co-Founder of Julien’s Auctions.

“This mythic guitar aptly named Futurama was played during the early Beatles’ countless ground breaking performances from their halcyon nights at the Cavern Club in Liverpool to their famous Hamburg Days where they honed their sound and style and the future of Beatlemania literally took off.”

As mentioned, the guitar itself is a quasi Strat replica, with a quirky double-cut design and a sunburst colorway that is paired with a maple neck and fretboard.

“If I’d had my way, the Strat would have been my first guitar,” Harrison himself once said of the Futurama. “I’d seen Buddy Holly’s Strat … on the Chirping Crickets cover, and tried to find one, but in Liverpool, in those days, the only thing I could find resembling a Strat was a Futurama.

“It was very difficult to play, had an action about half an inch off the fingerboard, but nevertheless it did look kind of futuristic.”

However, as Julien's co-founder and Executive Director Martin Nolan notes, the fact it was such a difficult instrument to handle meant it actually had a profound impact on Harrison's playing.

“It did shape him as a guitarist,” Nolan tells Guitar World. “It wasn't an easy guitar to play, and once he cracked it – once he could play that – he pretty much could pick up any other guitar that was even less 'futuristic' and play.

“They played 100-and-something shows in Hamburg in 1960 and another 92 in 1961, and then they were back in ’62 – and you're playing that guitar!”

In the mid-1960s, the Futurama was donated to Beat Instrumental Magazine, and ended up staying with the publications editor, Sean O’Mahoney. In 2019, it went up for auction at Bonhams, but failed to meet its reserve price. Phil Hylander of Seven Decades ended up purchasing the guitar outright.

Julien’s is expecting better fortunes this time around, though, having set an estimated sale window of $600,000–$800,000.

It's the second high-profile Beatles auction that Julien's has overseen this year. Back in April, it announced the discovery of John Lennon's Help! Framus 12-string, which ended up becoming one of the most expensive guitars to ever sell at auction.

Even in the Beatles' ever-ubiquitous catalog, Hey Jude occupies a special place.

Written by Paul McCartney as a pick-me-up for John Lennon's son, Julian, in the wake of his parents' divorce, Hey Jude has racked up – in less than a decade on Spotify – over 600 million streams, and is ranked #13 on Billboard's list of the Greatest Hot 100 Songs of All Time, the Fab Four's highest entry on the list.

With the exception of Let it Be, McCartney has played Hey Jude at more of his solo shows than any other song, its infectious sing-along chorus even serving as the climax of his performance at the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.

There's a lot more in the way of staggering numbers, but you get the point – it's a song that perfectly embodied the idealistic side of the '60s, a balm of musical unity in the face of a year scarred by protests, assassinations, and war.

Though Hey Jude will ultimately always be associated with its uplifting message, and those sunny “na-na-na-na”s, the sessions that produced it nonetheless bore witness to elements of the creative tension that in just two years' time would unspool the most successful band in music history.

Speaking to Guitar World in 1997, McCartney recalled that George Harrison – looking for a way to contribute to the song – suggested answering each of McCartney's lines with an electric guitar phrase, an addition McCartney saw as unnecessary.

Though he ultimately held firm in his conviction, McCartney tried to be as delicate as possible in expressing those convictions.

“I remember telling George not to play guitar on Hey Jude. He wanted to echo riffs after the vocal phrases, which I didn't think was appropriate,” he told Guitar World. “He didn't see it like that, and it was a bit of a number for me to have to dare to tell George Harrison – who's one of the greats, I think – not to play guitar. It was like an insult.”

Speaking to Howard Stern about the conflict over the song in 2018, McCartney elaborated, “the rule in the Beatles was, if it was your song, you were allowed to call it – you were the boss of the song.

“I tried to be nice, I said, ‘No, George, I really don't hear it, I don't think that's gonna work.’ I think he was a bit miffed.”

The disagreement – occurring in the midst of the sessions for what would become “the White Album” – added to Harrison's increasing frustration with Lennon and especially McCartney, who he felt weren't taking his ideas, or songs, seriously. An increase in similar incidents over the course of the White Album sessions would lead Harrison, McCartney, and Lennon increasingly down their own artistic paths.

Famously, when the Beatles' main songwriting duo expressed indifference – around that time – towards a new composition of his, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Harrison took matters into his own hands, recruiting Eric Clapton for an uncredited solo that's widely regarded as one of the greatest of all time.

Using the same “boss of the song” rule, Harrison talked a reluctant Clapton into lending his talents to what was originally a delicate, folky number.

“I said [to Clapton], ‘Well, damn it, it's my song and I'd like you to come down.’ Which he did,” Harrison told Guitar World in 1997. “And,” he added with a laugh, “everybody behaved, and the song came together quite nicely.”

Even if you know hardly anything about the frenzied years of Beatlemania, you probably have at least a vague image in your head of tens of thousands of screaming fans – overwhelming the sound of the Fab Four's live performances.

Technology, in every facet of life, has obviously advanced light years in the six decades since, and the world of onstage guitar amplification is no exception.

There was no such thing as an arena or stadium touring circuit when the Beatles took over America in the mid-'60s, and the band's onstage guitar amp rig was laughably inadequate in the face of the sheer volume of the hysteria that greeted them wherever they played.

In a 1997 interview with Guitar World, George Harrison reflected wryly on the band's live situation, remarking, “We used 30-watt [Vox] amps until we got those really big 100-watt amps at Shea Stadium. And nothing was even mic'd up through the P.A. – they just had to listen to our amps and the two vocal mics. Sometimes we'd just play rubbish.

“At Shea, John was playing that little Vox organ with his elbow and we were laughing hysterically instead of singing the backup vocals. I couldn't hear a thing.”

In the same interview, Ringo Starr echoed Harrison's sentiment, joking, “After a while, we figured we could probably go out there and just fart, and still get the same manic response.

“It must have looked like miming because nobody could hear anything, including us. That doesn't help you as a musician. I couldn't do any fills or we'd lose track of the song. I used to lean over and try to read Paul's lips to keep track of where we were at.”

Though they changed things up in the studio later in their career, the Fab Four have long been associated with Vox amps. John Lennon, for one, began his relationship with the company with his purchase of a Vox AC15 Twin in 1962 (that particular amp, incidentally, was reportedly rediscovered this year.)

The AC15 was likely just fine for the notoriously cramped confines of Liverpool's appropriately-named Cavern Club, where the nascent Fab Four frequently plied their trade at the time, but Vox would swap out Lennon's AC15 for the more powerful AC30 as the band began landing their first hits in early 1963.

Vox would gamely race to keep up with the Beatles' rapidly evolving needs in the following years, giving them first the AC50 and subsequently the aforementioned AC100 (nicknamed the Super Beatle, and also used by Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love). But the technology of the time still wasn't nearly enough to meet their unprecedented needs.

The inability of the band to get their music across – and even hear themselves and each other – through the sea of screams was the most significant factor in their decision to stop touring in 1966.

“I remember many times just sitting outside concert halls waiting for the police to escort us in and thinking, ‘Jesus Christ, I really don't want to go through this,’” Paul McCartney told Guitar World in 1997.

“‘We've done enough, let's take the money and run. Let's go down to [English seaside resort] Brighton, or something.’ If we could have gotten away with it, we would have.”