The old adage is ‘a good song can stand on its own played on acoustic guitar’. But is it really that black and white? A specific chord voicing can make a significant contribution to the feel of a song.

For example, if the Beatles’ The Fool On the Hill started with a regular D major, rather than D6, it would definitely lose something. The common thread linking together all the examples in this lesson is that they are what we might call a ‘deluxe’ alternative to the regular major and minor chords we hear every day, particularly on acoustic guitar.

Another thing they all have in common is the use of open strings, even if that’s just a single string. Acoustic guitar chords always seem to jangle and jump out of the mix better when they feature open strings.

Finding voicings that do this in keys such as F and Bb can be a challenge, so the examples are aimed at some of these less obvious keys. Chords that stray from the mainstream can really make a big difference!

Example 1. Bm(add11)

This B minor omits the usual barre at the 2nd fret, so we get this nice ringing E at the top. If this were a Bm7, we’d call it a Bm11. However, there is no 7th (A), so we refer to this as a Bm(add11). It can go wherever a regular B minor goes if you fancy a change.

Example 2. F#m11

This F#m11 is another that would normally be a barre chord, but instead we’re making use of the open first and second strings to give us an 11th (B) and 7th (E) respectively.

The root note (F#) on the sixth string is optional, but it’s a nice finishing touch. Try using your thumb (Hendrix style) or a spare finger if you’re feeling nimble.

Example 3. C#m7

This C#m7 adopts similar thinking to Example 2, using the open first and second strings to add a jangly extension at the top. In this case we’re adding the 7th (B) on the second string and the minor 3rd (E) on the first. Moving this shape around the fretboard will also give a few more useful ideas.

Example 4. Bb6

This Bb6 isn’t the most jangly of the examples, but it does give us a nice alternative to the regular Bb. As in Example 3, you can move this shape around for some nice variations. You can also get a Bbm6 by shifting from the 3rd to the 2nd fret on the second string.

Example 5. Fsus2/C

F can sometimes sound a bit ‘blocky’ when used together with other open position chords. This version leaves the third string open for a sus2 voicing (over C).

This can be used instead of F major or F minor. You can also leave the first string open to add a major 7th. You could potentially add in the Root (F) at the 1st fret of the sixth string – if your thumb will comply!

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
  

Given that Paul Mescal is set to play a young Paul McCartney in the upcoming Beatles biopics, the actor had a lot of homework to do before the cameras started rolling.

The prep process included learning to play left-handed for accuracy – task that afforded him a guitar lesson the Beatle himself. But it turns out that he’d toiled away for so long that by the time the pair met up, the master-apprentice dynamic had been flipped on its head.

“He came into this office, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll show him how to do Blackbird,’” McCartney tells the BBC. “So I picked up the guitar and started playing, and he played along exactly! I think he knew it better than I did!”

Acclaimed director Sam Mendes (Skyfall, 1917, Jarhead) is spearheading four Beatles biopics, with each one focusing on a different Beatle and all releasing across 2028. It’s been reported that Mescal, who has already impressed GW with his guitar and vocal talents, is also singing his own vocals for the films.

He isn’t taking the gig lightly, and McCartney has recognized the work that’s gone on behind the scenes.

“It was amazing how studied and how well-educated he was about me,” the Beatle applauds. “So, thought, ‘OK, I’ll leave you to it.’”

McCartney, meanwhile, is set to release his latest solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, tomorrow (May 30). The music and memory of John Lennon was a key inspiration for the record, which looks to be a nostalgic late-career win for the legendary songwriter.

The Beatles films are set to drop amid a slew of music biopics, with an Ozzy film in the works, alongside the cinemized stories of B.B. King and Rosetta Tharpe.

These follow Greta Van Fleet starring in the recent Bruce Springsteen biopic, and Timothée Chalamet playing a score of top-of-the-line Gibsons while portraying Bob Dylan on the big screen – and the film’s producers had a clever way to make the guitars sound even more Dylan.

At 35, producer Andrew Watt has an enviable roster of clients-turned-collaborators, including the late Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, and Iggy Pop, just to name a select few.

But someone he never expected to reach out to use his services? Well, a Beatle – specifically, Paul McCartney.

“Just saying that sounds like a fake statement,” Watt tells The Telegraph. Or, as he aptly puts it, “I am the luckiest fucker to be in the room with people who changed my life before I ever met them.”

Indeed, right before Watt met McCartney, he instructed his assistant to do something a little bit different…

“I literally had to tell him to slap me. Paul McCartney was coming to my house in Beverly Hills to have tea… As a child, I knew every Beatles song, I studied every Beatles chord – I couldn’t really fathom that a Beatle was about to be in my kitchen.

“I needed a slap, right?” he quips.

The result of the Watt-McCartney collaboration is on full display on the Beatle’s upcoming album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. The two worked together for around five years, slotting in sessions around McCartney’s touring schedule.

“Working with Paul was like being a student at college, every day watching him bounce around the studio like a scientist in a laboratory,” describes Watt.

“Watching him go between each instrument, arrange background vocals, and see how he layers the harmony, how he records drums – he knows not to hit the cymbals as hard because he wants to compress the overhead mic to get his kit sound… I mean, it’s mastery on another level.”

Watt recalls recording the song Home to Us, a heartfelt duet between McCartney and Ringo Starr that's part of the new album, as a particularly moving experience.

“I will never forget looking across the sound booth in the studio and seeing Paul smiling, and I’m playing guitar to Ringo’s drums. I mean, that was probably the craziest moment in my life,” he concludes.

In a recent interview, McCartney explained how John Lennon is still inspiring his songwriting six decades on.

With Paul McCartney releasing his first solo album in over five years, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, and the Beatles’ four-film biopic’s main cast already announced, it seems only natural that the actor who’s transforming into Macca – Paul Mescal – had a chat with the legend about his songwriting process. And luckily for the rest of us, it was captured on camera.

“I teach some kids up in my old school in Liverpool, and that's like the first thing [they ask]. I don't know how to do this, which is not very inspiring. I haven’t got a formula,” McCartney tells Mescal.

“They used to ask me and John [Lennon], ‘How’d you do it? Who writes the music, who writes the words?’ I don’t know. To me, I think any story or song you’re gonna do, it’s gotta involve memory. With the Beatles, we always tried to write something different.”

Lennon still serves as a source of inspiration for McCartney – especially considering his upcoming album turns a lens inward and revisits the formative years that not only shaped his own life but the very foundation of the Beatles.

“I ran into this guy called John Lennon, and he was kind of fighting life,” he reminisces of his collaborator., whose first single, Love Me Do, was released in 1962.

“He'd had a lot of trouble. His dad had left home, his mom had got run over… so he was putting up a shield, so he's very witty, very biting. And then when it came to writing, that kind of relationship stayed there.

“So on this record, I might even refer to him in my mind, as if we're still writing together. I'll write something and go, ‘What's that? Is that any good?’”

“And you're talking to him?” inquires Mescal.

“Kind of,” the older Paul affirms. “In my mind. Sometimes I get away with it. Sometimes you say, ‘No, it's shit.’ Well, his spirit’s sort of still in me, and I’m very glad of that.”

The first Lennon-McCartney Beatles single, Love Me Do, was released in 1962. Their final collaboration, Now and Then, was released in November 2023.

The full conversation is available on Amazon Live and in the Amazon Music app.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane is out on May 29 via MPL/Capitol Records.

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.”

Few producers and engineers have had as much impact on rock ’n’ roll history as Eddie Kramer. His sonic fingerprints can be heard on career-defining records such as Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin II, Kiss’s Alive!, and Anthrax’s Among the Living.

Yet it’s perhaps his close collaboration with Jimi Hendrix that most pushed the envelope of the craft itself, including pioneering techniques such as stereo phasing/flanging, which created the characteristic whooshing psychedelic sound that’s quintessentially Hendrix.

“Experimenting with stereo, which I really, really got into on Axis: [Bold as Love, released in 1967] showed the next expanse of Jimi’s sound: phasing,” Kramer tells Rick Beato when reflecting on Hendrix’s ever-expanding palette of guitar sounds.

“I was very fortunate to have worked with the Beatles on two occasions. I did All You Need is Love and Baby, You’re a Rich Man. I think it was on the All You Need Is Love session. We asked – now he's dearly departed – George Chkiantz, a fantastic engineer, and we said, ‘George, how did you get that phasing sound for the Beatles?’”

Chkiantz was far from keen to spill his secrets. “He says, ‘Well, chaps, you know, if you look in the BBC Radiophonic Handbook, you’ll actually find it there.’ And we said, ‘Fuck you, George.’ I mean, come on, we’re just asking!”

Kramer knew that the Beatles had managed to get it in mono, and, spurred by the nonchalant reply, was determined to go one step further – and teamed up with Chkiantz himself to do so.

“George, God bless him, locked himself away in one of the small studios in the back with about four tape machines, and a week later he came out and said, ‘Eddie, I got it. I got the stereo phasing.’ ‘Great! Let’s try it with Hendrix.’”

That’s exactly what they did, testing it first on the coda of the freshly recorded Bold as Love.

“On the appointed day, we're putting the final touches to the mix. ‘Jimi, come in. We want to play you something.’”

As Kramer relates, the tape machines were rolling, and right as Mitch Mitchell launches into that massive, thundering drum break, the phasing kicks in – created by slightly delaying one signal against another – forever defining Hendrix’s psychedelic-infused sonic universe.

“Jimi's sitting behind me on the couch, and he hears this, and he loses his shit completely,” Kramer recalls.

“He falls on the floor in a fetal position and puts his hands on his ears. ‘Oh my god, oh my god, I can’t believe [it]! What is that? That was something in my dream. How did you do that? Play it again!’ So we play it again. Oh, he’s going crazy! [He says], ‘I want that shit on everything, man.’

“True story!” the producer concludes with a laugh. Watch the full interview above, or subscribe to Rick Beato’s channel for more.

Kramer spilled the beans on what went into working with Hendrix in a recent Guitar World interview, where he also detailed how they managed to achieve the “backwards guitar” on Are You Experienced.

In his 1995 Bass Player cover story, Paul McCartney said his prize period on bass guitar was around Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper, where he could put all his energy into the song and bassline, as opposed to his “okay” bass playing in Wings, due to his having numerous hats to wear, ranging from bandleader to business manager.

Guitarist Laurence Juber, whose career as a London and then Los Angeles session musician is separated by his two-year stint with Wings, begged to differ.

“Paul wrote a lot of great music and played a lot of terrific bass with Wings that is still under-appreciated,” said Juber in the October 2013 issue of Bass Player. “Some of it I don't think he even recognizes himself, yet.”

McCartney’s bassline for Silly Love Songs, which spent five weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. charts, is a case in point.

The track, from the album Wings at the Speed of Sound, was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in January and February 1976. Criticized and taunted by the music press and John Lennon alike for writing “lightweight” songs, McCartney wrote it as a biting response, later cutting a more techno-oriented version featuring Louis Johnson on bass for the 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street.

Based on his later studio experience with Wings, Juber confirmed that Paul played his flatwound-strung Rickenbacker 4001S with a heavy-gauge pick, likely both direct and through a miked Fender Bassman, with a Fairchild Compressor on all bass tracks.

Denny Laine and Jimmy McCulloch on guitars, and drummer Joe English on drums rounded out the rhythm section, with keyboards, vocals, a four-piece horn section, and strings all added later.

What stands out about Silly Love Songs as compared to McCartney's Beatle bass anthem, Come Together, where the one-bar bass figure snakes around the vocals, or his 1979 Wings bass tour de force, Goodnight Tonight, where the busy bassline answers and fills in between the sparse vocal line, is that the vocal and bassline run together in counterpoint.

That's a key aspect to Juber, who covered Silly Love Songs on solo guitar for his 2005 album, One Wing.

“Paul's gift for singing and playing a bassline in counterpoint is remarkable. One of my favorite Paul McCartney bass parts is on his first solo single, Another Day, where at times the bass and vocals move in parallel sevenths. When counterpoint is done well like that it can drift outside of strict church harmony, and that's where the personality really emerges.”

Silly Love Songs begins with eight bars of a simulated assembly line, perhaps a symbolic precursor to the driving, repetitive bassline and four-on-the-floor drum pulse that lie ahead. Four more bars of intro allude to the bassline shape, which takes its full four-bar form at the first verse.

Interestingly, McCartney’s vocal is a three-bar phrase, leaving the fourth bar open for bass; however, the bar 4 bassline is actually finishing a two-bar phrase that begins under the Fmaj 7 chord in bar 3.

Two key elements are McCartney's use of chromatic passing notes, which help the melodic flow of the line (a device he has always employed, as a fan of Tin Pan Alley songs), and his interesting application of short and long notes.

“Paul plays with a very hard touch onstage, but he has a real sensitivity to dynamics and note duration in the studio. Even though the basic sequence of C Em7 Fmaj7 repeats in both the verses and choruses, the ear doesn't tire of it because he doesn't use a heavier, final-sounding, dominant V chord cadence.”

For the first chorus, at 01:02, McCartney keeps the same driving bassline, while the vocals pare down to whole notes. His use of up-and-down strokes with a pick is revealed via his 16th-note pickup at 01:32.

The bridge arrives with a unison riff that answers the vocal before building over the last five bars. The horn soli gives way to the breakdown at 03:12. As the vocals get more contrapuntal, the bass builds to a root-5th-octave pattern.

The horn soli reprises at 03:42, leading into a more minimal breakdown at 04:13, without bass for a bit (listen around 04:43 for bass panned way left and in the distance). The buildup involves McCartney's Latin bass figure again and a trick horn soli that lasts only four bars.

Finally, the song returns to a verse at 05:22, ending exotically on the III minor chord – “the most bittersweet chord in the C major scale,” noted Juber.

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.

They may never have topped the charts, but they won fans in the Beatles, David Bowie, Barbra Streisand, Todd Rundgren and Lowell George. One thing’s for sure: San Francisco-via-Manila sisters June and Jean Millington were always destined to break the mold.

They co-founded one of the world’s first rock bands composed entirely of women and signed a multi-record deal with a major label – the Frank Sinatra-founded, Warner Records subsidiary Reprise Records – bringing their own unique brand of technical prowess and art-rock, blues-inflected, unmistakably rock-through-and-through sound to crowds in the States, Europe and beyond.

And it all started from what June calls “a handmade, small guitar from the southern Philippines,” which the pair’s mom got for them. “When we got here to the United States, hootenanny [an informal party or folk music concert, often featuring open-mic performances] was all the rage. Jean and I played a lot of those.”

As June describes it, guitar music also served another role: “[It was] our pathway into having friends and joining society here in America.

“Guys got into music or rock and roll for sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. We just wanted to make a friend. We loved playing music. I mean, we're Filipina. Filipinos are incredibly, incredibly musical, and it’s in our DNA for sure.”

A casual “Hey, you want to start a band?” from a drummer at another high school quickly snowballed into Jean and June’s mom taking them to a music store to get proper equipment – despite their dad’s initial hesitancy.

“My mom didn’t say anything, but she took me and Jean to a music store, and that’s when it all changed,” June recalls fondly. “She bought Jean an electric bass, an amp, me an electric guitar, and an amp. I had a small electric guitar I bought in a pawn shop with my dad, from Sears or something like that. But now, we got the real gear. I think we were copying the Beatles. We wanted their equipment.”

Fast-forward to the early ’70s, and what would become Fanny – composed of June on guitar, Jean on bass, keyboardist Nickey Barclay, and drummer Alice de Buhr – would end up recording at the Beatles’ very own Apple Studios in London, with their legendary engineer Geoff Emerick.

“We got down to work,” she continues matter-of-factly. “And although we were recording every day, when we had the time, we also flew over to Germany to record Beat-Club [a West German program that aired between 1965 and December 1972]. We did the BBC, we were playing gigs around London… Every single day was an intense schedule.

“We did it because, well, number one, we were young. I don’t think we got that much sleep, but we had worked so hard to get to that point.”

Active between 1969 and 1975, the band toured relentlessly, released five studio albums, and was admired by the crème de la crème of the industry. Yet, as sisters and co-founders, June and Jean Millington, tell Guitar World, it was a journey marked as much by misogyny as by sisterhood and musical innovation – decades ahead of its time.

“Do you remember the sneers we got from the boys?” June reminds her sister.

“For the longest time, we had to first prove that we could actually play,” Jean responds. “For the first 10 minutes people would not believe me. Then they understood that we actually play. But that went on for a long time.”

“Nuance is what we had,” the lead guitarist asserts. “Every gig we did was a success. We never failed. That was not an option because we knew we were holding up for future generations.”

In 1965, you started the Svelts, and the choice of who would play bass famously came down to a coin toss. Looking back, how significant was this small decision on your sound?

June: When you hear Jean’s bass parts, they’re totally amazing and electric. Bass is not something you should take up if you're not going to be serious about it, because it’s a very powerful instrument, and you have to simplify everything down, yet be complicated.

Jean: You tailor your parts. I did. And the other thing is, a lot of bass players don't sing. I was the lead singer of a lot of material, so to play bass and sing at the same time, you really have to split your brain. I mean, it’s so hard.

And how did the Svelts transform into Fanny?

June: Wild Honey [the band preceding Fanny] is actually the band that signed the deal with Reprise [the record label], and after we signed the deal, Addie [Lee] – she was the lead guitarist, I was rhythm and singer – she left the band, and I had to learn how to play lead in a year.

Jean: I have to say that for June, seeing her make the transition to being the lead guitar player within a year was really incredible. She sat in her room every day, playing with cassettes and learning how to play the guitar. Quite a phenomenal achievement!

June: Richard [Perry, the record producer who signed Fanny] told us he was getting us a deal in late ’68 when we went down to the Troubadour [the legendary LA venue], and we got to Fanny Hill, our house, in May of ’69. We were girls, we were going to move into that house and just start playing. We cleaned that whole house, and I wrote to my mom, saying, ‘Richard Perry is coming over tomorrow, and we’re having our first rehearsal together.’

What gear were you using at that time?

June: I think I had gotten my [Gibson ES-]355 by then. I exchanged whatever guitar I was playing with a guitar player in a band from San Jose. The 355, let's face it, is the original guitar sound of Fanny. I had a Fender amp. Jean, what bass did you have then? Because your final bass was under a chair at some recording studio…

Jean: I kicked something underneath, and it turned out to be my bass, the Precision I’ve had all this time. The Jazz Bass; that’s what I played for a long time, but when I got to the P-bass, I really just melded with that sound.

And did you have any pedals?

June: No… I mean, Jimi Hendrix was using a wah, but all that stuff [pedals] wasn’t even invented yet. We didn’t even have tuners. We just created our own sounds. And by the way, that 355 was a stereo guitar, and I am deaf in one ear. That’s why I’m always on the left side of the stage. I even tried to play it through two amps.

Then Richard [Perry] 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, and I went right out and told our roadies we had to create my rig to include playing through a Leslie. I had a pedal, and I could turn it on, and I could vary the speed. 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.

I had friends who were creating what we call the classic rock sound now, and those were Lowell George and Jeffrey [‘Skunk’] Baxter. They were literally creating those sounds, and I would hang out with them, or I’d go with Lowell, and he would check out everything. So we were in the right place at the right time. Moving to LA in ’69 was really incredible for a young band to get into the mix.

How did you maneuver being in such a male-dominated industry, especially at the time and at such a young age?

June: First of all, we stopped listening to people. We shouldn’t have read the reviews, because there was always so much condescension, but we literally stopped listening to what people were saying about us because it wasn't helping things.

I actually didn’t survive the terrible misogyny that was coming at us. It was so big and so strong that I finally broke, and I had to leave the band to learn how to become a real person. That was my intuitive feeling. I didn’t know how to grow up.

It was hard to leave Jean, and it was hard to leave the band. It was almost impossible. But my mom was afraid I was going to die because I couldn’t eat, and I couldn’t sleep. I think it was grief. We should have had at least four hits by the time Fanny Hill [1972] came out, and then we did that album with Todd [Rundgren, who produced 1973’s Mothers Pride].

So we did those four great albums, and we didn’t have a top 30 hit… top 40, but not top 30, and that doesn’t get us into the history books. What gets us into the history books is that we actually existed, and we were really good, and people can’t deny that now, but they ignored us for so long.

I stayed in the band longer than I should have because I was so wrecked. But that only shows how much Fanny really meant to me. People didn’t see that aspect. [Instead] it was like, “Oh, what does it feel like to be a girl and play bass? What do you eat? What's the makeup you use?” I mean, are you kidding me?

You were also working as session musicians and even recorded with Barbara Streisand at one point. How did that happen?

Jean: Richard produced Barbra Streisand, so that’s how we got the gig. Two songs were rock tunes. We learned them, and then she came in and sang over them. And the thing about Barbra Streisand, every time she sang, it was different. She was such an incredible vocalist. But she was very respectful of us. We had a good time together.

You've mentioned working with Richard, who obviously played a big role in your career. But you also recorded with Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick and Todd Rundgren. In what ways did the two influence your sound?

June: Well, Richard was developing his production chops when we got signed. We were learning how to record and figuring out how this whole thing was going to work. We would go into different studios in the middle of the night, when it was cheap, and we would record demos and work on songs. We did that for a year.

He was learning how to become a great producer while we were learning how to record and become a great band in the studio. To become studio savvy, you really gotta work on it. And also, in those days, I think it was still eight-tracks, so if we wanted to sing a backup part, we would have to learn how to position ourselves around one microphone to get the sound we wanted.

By the time we met the Beatles, I think they were thrilled to meet us. We didn’t meet them en masse at the same time, but it was clear that they really liked us, and they liked us in part because we were women who could play, and we knew what we could do well.

We recorded [1972’s Fanny Hill] at the studio at Apple [the studio that formed part of the British multimedia company Apple Corps Limited that the members of the Beatles established], and their engineer, Geoff Emerick, was ecstatic when he realized A) We could play; and B) We knew how to record.

So we were very skilled by 1971 – between 1965 when we started the Svelts, and December ’71 when we got to Apple in London – and Geoff Emerick realized, “Wow, these girls are really doing it.” He was so happy. He just broke out in a huge smile.

He was the only engineer I've ever seen who literally was so into it that he would run from station to station – setting up a mic for Alice [de Buhr, Fanny’s drummer], for example, to capture the cymbals and the toms. And then he would run to my station and do whatever he had to do. He’s the best engineer I’ve ever worked with.

Now, with Todd Rundgren, we recorded with him because we liked Hello It’s Me [the Rundgren-penned song that was released by his group, Nazz]. We loved that recording. I don’t know that that was actually the right decision, but we chose him, and we ended up with Mothers Pride. We all met at a place where we really wanted to show our art.

That was January ’73, and after we finished recording that album, we went straight on the road with Chicago for three weeks, and then the album came out, and it was just gig after gig after gig.

I left in October of that year, and we did a whole European tour that summer. Like I said, we never failed, but it was never enough. That's where it broke me. We were at the top of our game, and it was not enough.

David Bowie publicly championed Fanny. How did you end up meeting him?

June: Well, we met him in Liverpool – we played in Liverpool the same night, different gigs. We didn’t even know that he was in town.

Jean: In fact, he stayed in the same hotel.

June: I didn’t even really know who David Bowie was, although apparently he had sent us his first record as a fan and said, “I love you, and here's my first record.”

When we got to the hotel that night after the gig, the concierge said, “You have a note here from Mr. David Bowie. He would like to invite you to a party in his penthouse.” So we said, “Sure.” We got on the elevator up to the penthouse, it opened, and it was like a movie.

There was a party going on, and it was a really nice party. There were a lot of people there, but it wasn’t raucous. There weren’t people yelling and shouting and screaming and drinking too much. It was very convivial. And that's how we met David.

In 1975, you had Butter Boy, which hit No. 29, and that was toward the end of the band’s lifetime. How did it feel to finally have that hit just as you were about to go your separate ways?

June: Jean was sitting in my living room. The phone rang, and we picked it up, and it was a call for Jean from LA. I had just asked Jean, “So what’s happening with the band?” She said, “Oh, we have finally broken up. That’s it.”

Fanny is finally broken up, and then the phone rings. It was like a movie – telling her that she had a hit and she had to come back to LA because they could now make some money by going on the road. And about two weeks later, she called me up and asked me to play on that tour. So it was very interesting that it came back together. We had a great time playing, and it led to a lot of things, but it was almost comical.

You’ve obviously mentioned a lot of challenges that you faced. So, on the flipside, what were some of the biggest highlights?

June: Really, the most successful gig was the night we played the Troubadour [in Fall 1968], because no-one believed in us. The manager said to Jean, “You can only play for a few minutes.” So we played three songs, and at the end of those three songs, we never had an audience reaction like that before or since, because the entire audience jumped up on their tables.

They were banging their feet on the tables, going, “More and more and more,” clapping, screaming, going crazy. And that poor manager had to run up to Jean, and he said, “Yeah, would you play some more?” Jean looked down at him and said, “Well, you said five minutes….” I would hate to be that guy!

So it was really incredible. I looked over at Addie, who, at the time, was our lead player, and we didn't need to say a word – well, we couldn’t have said a word because the crowd was so noisy. But that, to me, was the apex of our career because of the audience reaction.

Now, if audiences would have kept doing that, and the radio stations had followed that feeling… That, to me, is the tragedy. They were just too ignorant, too much misogyny.

In 2018, you reunited and recorded Fanny Walked the Earth. What was it like to play as Fanny after so long?

June: For us the really big thing was that we felt like we were 17 again. We felt like we were playing in a club. It was basically that same orb of us on stage, our own world, our own way of playing.

You never know where the miracle is going to come from – the fact that the three of us [Jean, June, and Brie Howard-Darling, one of Fanny’s early-years drummers] got together to play again in our late 60s and early 70s.

There was only one Fanny, and it will never be replicated. We were our own creation. We created ourselves. We were not created by a company, a man, a group of men – nothing. We created ourselves, and went down to LA and kept creating ourselves, and in that way we succeeded, because we have something that people are freaking out over even now.

• June Millington's new record, Home to My Soul, is out now. In 2018, the newly reunited Fanny – rebranded as Fanny Walked the Earth – released a self-titled album, available on streaming services.

The moment Paul McCartney was reunited with his beloved Höfner 500/1 bass 50 years after it was stolen was captured on camera by the BBC as part of a new 90-minute documentary that charts the hunt to get it back.

McCartney’s iconic violin bass, which he bought during the Beatles’ Hamburg residency for £30, became an extension of him and is his most iconic instrument. It can be heard on early Beatles hits, including She Loves You, and survived the end of the Beatles, staying with him as he set to work with Wings.

It was during a recording session in October 1972 that it was stolen out of the back of a van, leaving recording engineer Ian Horne with the difficult task of telling McCartney that his cherished four–string was gone.

What happened to it remained unknown for another 50 years, until the Lost Bass Project was formed to hunt it down. The media attention it got led to its discovery in an English attic a year later, along with some much-needed answers.

The BBC has now turned the story into a new feature-length documentary, featuring interviews with McCartney, his close friend Klaus Voormann, and Elvis Costello, as well as roadies, journalists, and others who helped with its search.

Vitally, it captures the moment the bass returns home to Sir Paul. “50 years since you last played that,” the video is captioned.

There’s a satisfying click as the hard case is opened up, sounding like only an ancient case can, before McCartney claps joyously and shouts, “Wow! Here it is.”

The bass had received some TLC before returning to McCartney for good, with a semi-retired, UK-based craftsman, Martin Harrison, duly called upon.

“It was unplayable,” a post on McCartney’s website reads. “It was a real mess. The neck had cracked and split, it had the wrong machine heads, and the pickups didn't work. So, we set about restoring it. Working with Höfner, we had to decide whether to restore it to its brand-new condition or to its ‘used’ condition from 1972, when it was stolen.

“There’s a great photo of Paul from the 1960s, where he’s in the studio, and you can see the bass in its repaired condition with the red sunburst-style spray, and Paul said, ‘I like that. I think we should leave it as it is, and just get it working.’”

That’s exactly what they did, and there’s a real joy in McCartney’s eyes as he runs his hands up and down its fretboard for the first time in over half a century.

Harrison dropped a handwritten note into the case, too: “Many times I've had the pleasure of putting music back into old, broken instruments,” it says. “It's been an absolute joy to do that with your bass.”

The bass eventually made its grand return to the stage with a little help from Ronnie Wood and Ringo Starr, while Bass Player has met up with the man who reunited McCartney with the instrument. Now, she’s definitely not leaving home.

Much has been written about the disappearance and remarkable recovery of Paul McCartney’s storied Höfner 500/1 violin bass.

Now, Wings' former sound engineer Ian Horne has looked back on the day it first went missing, saying it “felt like the worst moment of my life.”

Beatles fans know all too well why the bass was such a treasured item. Bought for a humble £30 in Hamburg during the band's famed residency in the city, it was used to within an inch of its life, played for hundreds of gigs and on early '60s hits such as She Loves You.

It was later semi-retired to be a back-up bass, but it remained in the not-too-distant background, coming with McCartney as he formed Wings in light of the Fab Four's breakup.

It famously went missing after it was stolen out the back of a van in 1972, and its whereabouts remained a mystery until, 50 years later, the Lost Bass Project successfully tracked it down in 2024. Miraculously, it was found in an English attic.

It was a wonderful, happy ending, and the bass marked its live return alongside Ronnie Wood in late ‘24. But half a century earlier, it was a horror story for Horne. Equipment, after a tiring studio session, was stored in a three-ton truck with a roller shutter at the rear. It was there from which it was plucked.

Speaking to RadioTimes about that fateful day in October 1972, he says: “It felt like the worst moment of my life. I walked up to the truck, saw the padlock on the ground, and my heart sank.

“When I pushed the shutter up, I saw straight away that it was gone,” he continues. “The bass wasn’t there. There were lots of nice people in the hippie culture, but there were some dodgy people about as well.”

Horne says he and fellow Wings crew member Trevor Jones knocked on the doors of nearby residents “in a sort of threatening manner” as they hunted for, at best, the bass, at worst, a nugget of information. But it was to no avail.

“I realized I had to go and tell Paul in person,” Horne remembers. “I just came out with it: ‘I’ve got some bad news, Paul. Our truck was broken into, and the bass was stolen.’

“I expected him to go ballistic,” he says. “But Paul was lovely about it. He said, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got another one.’”

Not only that, but McCartney was apparently eager for the story of the instrument's theft not to leak, fearing it would damage Horne's professional reputation. It could explain why there was little fanfare about its quiet disappearance at the time.

McCartney has since met with the man who reunited him with the bass, while Höfner's own future is set for a restructure after it filed for bankruptcy in December.

A news story about a long-lost Höfner bass first appeared in the pages of Bass Guitar Magazine in December 2019, in which Höfner themselves explained: “In the spring of 1961, a young man walked into a music shop in Hamburg, Germany, and purchased his first bass guitar, a Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass.

“He would use this bass to record his band’s first two albums and several number-one hits at Abbey Road recording studios. A young man’s dream came true... He is, of course, Paul McCartney of the Beatles.

“The bass was relegated to backup duties in October 1963 and was last used by McCartney in 1969 during the Let It Be recordings. Then it vanished.

“This is the most important missing guitar in the world. It’s the bass you hear on Please Please Me, She Loves You, Twist and Shout, and many other hits. As his first bass, it has enormous sentimental value to Paul McCartney.”

A search to find the bass was led by Höfner’s then Media and Marketing Manager, Nick Wass, who launched the #tracethebass campaign to locate and return the iconic instrument. A global appeal followed in 2023, backed by former BBC journalist Scott Jones and television producer Naomi Jones.

“I thought there was maybe a 5 per cent chance that we’d find it,” says Wass. “The bass had been missing for 50 years, with no sightings and no solid leads.

“I spoke to Keith Smith, Paul McCartney’s technical manager, and he thought it had been thrown in a skip years ago. So I wasn’t hopeful, but I kept going. I thought there was always a chance.

“There were all sorts of rumors floating around the music world – someone claimed that a former roadie for the Who, now living in Massachusetts, had taken it. John McVie from Fleetwood Mac was another name that was touted as having got hold of the bass, but there was nothing credible.”

“It just went off into the universe and it left us thinking, where did it go?” says McCartney in a new BBC documentary about the instrument – McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass. “But there must be an answer…”

The breakthrough finally came after a newspaper article was syndicated worldwide, leading to an unprecedented number of calls and emails with tips about the bass guitar’s possible whereabouts.

“Suddenly it was everywhere,” says Wass. “The L.A. Times, New York Times, Daily Indian Herald, – you name it. Then we heard from Ian Horne, a former roadie for Paul. He was there when the bass was stolen on 10th October 1972. That was huge – we finally knew exactly when it had been taken.

“I then remembered an earlier email from an ambulance worker called Steve Glenister, who’d heard a story about the bass ending up in a pub in Ladbroke Grove. At the time, I dismissed it – but when Ian also mentioned Ladbroke Grove and a specific street, Cambridge Gardens, the pieces started to fit.”

What happened next?

We dug deeper. My colleague Naomi checked the electoral register from 1972 and found that Steve Glenister’s parents had lived at 100 Cambridge Gardens, a big Georgian house that had been split into apartments. Hawkwind also lived there for a while, as did another band called the Pink Fairies.

I contacted Steve again and told him what we’d found. Eventually, he admitted that it was his dad who had stolen the bass and given it to the landlord of his favourite pub, the Admiral Blake in Ladbroke Grove.

Were you able to trace the landlord?

Yes. The landlord was a man called Ronald Guest. Ron had three children: Graham, Hayden, and Elaine. Graham, the oldest, was given the bass to play and used it until he went to university. The bass was then passed on to Hayden.

The family later moved to another pub in Wembley, and then to a pub in Wellingborough. At some point, the bass remained with their mum, Mary Guest, Ron’s wife. After Ron died, Hayden retrieved the bass from her.

Hayden eventually married Catherine Murphy, and they moved down to Hastings. It was Cathy who saw the news article about the missing bass. She went up into the attic and soon realized that she might just have Paul McCartney’s missing bass.

She only lived about eight miles from Paul McCartney’s house in Sussex, so she took some pictures over there. Paul wasn’t there – he was in L.A. rehearsing – but the people at the house contacted his technical manager, Keith Smith. Keith showed Paul some pictures the next morning, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’

In the end, Paul knew it was back before I did. I got a call one evening, about 8 o’clock. I was watching Netflix when the phone rang. It was Paul McCartney. That’s when I knew we’d found it.

When were you able to see the bass in person?

I drove from Bavaria to England to examine it. There was no doubt – it was the bass. But I had to produce a formal report for legal purposes.

Holding it was quite something. This was the instrument Paul had started with. After five years of searching, there it was in front of me.

What condition was it in?

Somebody had strung it right-handed and put big, thick strings on it – probably taken from a Precision bass or something. Those strings are no good for a short-scale Höfner. And, of course, the strings didn’t fit the nut either. It looked like someone had taken a hammer and chisel to widen the nut slots.

It had been strung up in the case like that for fifty years, which meant the neck had started to come out of the scarf joint. The bridge was also in awful shape and impossible to intonate.

None of the pickups worked, so we had to replace the bobbins with a vintage set. It’s all been put back together as close to the original as possible – except for the tuners, which weren’t original anyway. They had been replaced around May 1963 with a set of Waverley tuners.

Whoever had done that had bought a set of tuners intended for a six-a-side guitar, like a Fender Strat, whereas a Höfner has a two-a-side headstock. That meant two of the tuners on the Höfner were upside down.

Subsequently, I think it was on their last British tour in December ’65 or January ’66, one of those tuners broke and was replaced with one from George’s Gretsch.

So the Höfner ended up with three Waverley tuners and one from the Gretsch. They had all rusted, so we found a set of original ’61 tuners and put those on.

Has anyone put a value on the bass?

I spoke to one of the bigger papers early on, and I foolishly said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe $10 million.’ Every newspaper article since has been quoting that figure, but really it’s priceless. It’s like the Mona Lisa – it’ll never be for sale.

How would you sum up McCartney’s relationship with Höfner?

I feel like he was born with a Höfner bass. He was 18 or 19 when he bought that first one in Steinways Music in Hamburg, and it just became a part of him.

I know he didn’t play it with Wings, but it wasn’t a happy time when the Beatles split. He didn’t want to be a Beatle anymore, and holding the Höfner made him a Beatle. But he picked it up again in the late ’80s, and he hasn’t put it down since.

• McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass is available on BBC Two and iPlayer from April 11 and in selected cinemas on April 2 and 4.

Paul McCartney has announced his first solo album in five years, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – which was inspired by a mysterious guitar chord and a cup of tea with Andrew Watt.

Super-producer Watt, who has slowly been adding a who’s who of music royalty to his resumé, has worked with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Ozzy Osbourne over the past few years.

Now, he’s added the legendary Beatle to his list of A-list credits, and it turns out he had a formative influence on his new record's creation.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane promises to be an introspective collection of “rare and revealing memories never-before-shared” by Macca, as well as some newly inspired love songs. It will see McCartney revisit some milestone moments, charting both the story of his life and the foundation of modern popular music.

It’s been dubbed Macca’s most personal record to date – and its origins can be traced back to a mysterious guitar chord he stumbled upon while having a cup of tea with Watt.

According to a press release, The Boys of Dungeon Lane was first discussed five years ago when McCartney and Watt met for an exchange of ideas. Macca was playing the guitar at the time, and was mystified by a new chord shape.

“While playing around on the guitar during the meeting, Paul happened upon a chord that even he – the world’s most successful living songwriter – didn’t recognize,” a blurb for the record says.

“Undeterred and driven by his experimental nature, Paul carried on changing one note, then another, until he had a three-chord sequence – which Watt suggested they should record.”

From that chord came the album’s opening track, As You Lie There, which has yet to receive a release.

A lead single has been shared, though, in the form of Days We Left Behind – a floating acoustic guitar piece that opens with a delicate fingerpicking pattern that channels a Blackbird feel, before blooming into a more fleshed out piano ballad.

“This is very much a memory song for me,” McCartney says of the single. “The album title, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, comes from a lyric in this track. I was thinking just that, about the days I left behind and I do often wonder if I’m just writing about the past but then I think how can you write about anything else? It’s just a lot of memories of Liverpool.

“It involves a bit in the middle about John and Forthlin Road which is the street I used to live in. Dungeon Lane is near there. I used to live in a place called Speke which is quite working class. We didn’t have much at all but it didn’t matter because all the people were great and you didn’t notice you didn’t have much.”

The record was pieced together over a five-year period in between legs of a global tour and a packed schedule, alternating between Los Angeles and Sussex, England. The result is said to be an eclectic collection that offers everything from Wings-style rock to Beatles-style harmonies and everything in between.

The Boys of Dungeon Lane is available to pre-order now ahead of its arrival on May 29.

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.

“The Gretsch is pretty special,” Amelia Walker of Christie’s reflects of John Lennon’s 1963 6120 Chet Atkins, now sold at auction for $1,270,000.

“But both this guitar and the Model 1996 Rickenbacker are incredible because of the provenance. In both instances, how these came into The Jim Irsay Collection is the most perfect sort of backstory you could ever want.

“The Rickenbacker was given to Ringo by John [in 1968], and then Ringo sold it over four decades later at auction at Julien’s [in 2015], which is where Jim Irsay bought it.

“The Gretsch was given by John Lennon to his cousin David Birch, who wanted a guitar for his own band. David kept it for almost 50 years and then sold it privately to Jim Irsay. So you don’t really get any better than that.

“And the fact that we can obviously photo-match the Gretsch because of the unique grain pattern in the headstock and on the back of the neck, as well, means that you know that absolutely everything checks out.”

“The amazing photos that were taken at the Paperback Writer/Rain session by Leslie Bryce for The Beatles Book [aka The Beatles Monthly] publications present this really great series of shots of John with the guitar – both on his own, next to the amp fiddling around, and then with the other members of the band as they were literally recording the song.”

• “Lot after lot we felt like we were making history”: World record for most expensive guitar shattered three times in one night as Jim Irsay auction sees David Gilmour's Black Strat fetch $14.5m
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

“Nothing’s changed on it,” says Christie’s Amelia Walker of the glowing NOS look of John Lennon’s 1964 Rickenbacker Model 1996. “The Rickenbacker wasn’t used for a huge amount of time – it was a sort of replacement while his black 325 was being mended – but it’s got such a distinct look because it was one of the English [Rose-Morris] models with the f-hole like a violin,” she adds.

The guitar has now sold for $1,270,000 as part of the mammoth Jim Irsay Collection auction. But it had a long history leading up to the sale. Guitar historian Tony Bacon picks up the story here.

“In 1964, Rickenbacker began exporting guitars to the British distribution company Rose-Morris. Rickenbacker had produced some of its short-scale 300-series guitars with an f-hole, unlike those with the regular sealed top. Rose-Morris liked the f-hole and asked for it on the bigger-body guitars it bought, too, instead of Rickenbacker’s regular slash-shape soundhole,” Tony explains.

“The firm had its own model-number system and catalogued its Rickenbacker line accordingly – 1993 (Rickenbacker’s 330/12), 1995 (615), 1996 (325), 1997 (335), and 1998 (345) – but stopped Ricky imports a few years later as sales faltered.

“John Lennon had played a couple of American originals of Rickenbacker’s 325 model since his band’s early days, and it was his second 325 that suffered an unfortunate accident at a Beatles Christmas ’64 residency at Hammersmith Odeon [which ran from 24 December 1964 to 16 January 1965], resulting in a crack from the nut and around the back of the headstock,” Tony continues.

“Rose-Morris came to the rescue, happy to provide one of its ‘British’ model 1996 versions of the 325, finished as standard in fireglo red-sunburst, rather than John’s preferred black.

“He used it for the remaining shows, but soon had his regular 325 back in a reasonably playable condition, ready for the band’s first sessions of 1965 at Abbey Road. He later gave the 1996 to Ringo Starr [in 1968], who sold it at auction in 2015.”

“The Rickenbacker doesn’t necessarily have any key recordings associated with it,” Amelia Walker adds. “It was basically used [as a replacement] at Hammersmith during the Beatles’ Christmas Show in 1964 [to 1965]. And then after that it was kept in Lennon’s attic studio at Kenwood.

“You can see the guitar in photographs right by his Farfisa and the Brenell tape machines that he had up in the attic. It’s right there, so you can assume that it may have figured in compositions or on demos, but I don’t think it was used on any [official] recordings.”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. 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.

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.

Back in the ’60s, guitarists Valerie Gell and Pamela Birch, bassist Mary McGlory, and drummer Sylvia Saunders – known collectively as the Liverbirds – rivaled peers such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones with their unique brand of Merseybeat and rock ’n’ roll.

“We were the very first all-female band to play at The Cavern [the legendary venue in Liverpool],” McGlory told Guitar World in a 2024 interview.

“And we didn't know how the female audience was gonna react to us because we thought maybe they might think, ‘Oh my gosh, they're gonna take our boyfriends away from us,’ or, you know, the groupies might suppose, ‘Oh, they're gonna get the first choice of the bands.’ And then we started playing, the girls started screaming just the way they did for the boys.”

The band toured relentlessly all over Europe – gaining a residency at Hamburg's famed Star-Club – and wrapped up a tour in Japan before they broke up in 1968. However, according to McGlory – and even the history books – the Liverbirds never quite reached the level of fame, and, more importantly, the recognition that they worked so hard for.

“I met Charlie Watts [Stones drummer] about 10 years ago,” recalled McGlory. “We played with the Rolling Stones when we were still in England. And when he found out who I was, he said, ‘You know, Mary, Bill Wyman and I, we always said, we wonder what happened to them fantastic girls. We never heard of them again in England.’

“So you know, even people like The Stones, or later on The Kinks. They all really liked us and thought that we had something special. And we've only just realized ourselves now how special we were because we had no other girls who we could look up to and say, ‘Well, let's try and be like them.’ We had to be like ourselves.”

Fast forward a couple of decades, and the Liverbirds’ legacy is now being celebrated. Aside from the McGlory’s book, The Liverbirds: Our Life in Britain's First Female Rock 'n' Roll Band, released in 2024, Liverpool finally embraced the band with the staging of a musical, Girls Don’t Play Guitars – a reference to John Lennon’s initial reaction to the band.

“We realized when the musical was on in Liverpool, how many young girls came up to us when we were signing autographs at the end, and said, ‘I'm gonna go home now and get a guitar. I've never even realized it. But it's right. We girls have to start doing this,” concludes McGlory.

Another pioneering band that famously rubbed shoulders with the Beatles – and even recorded with their engineer at Apple Studios – was the ’70s band Fanny, led by sisters June and Jean Millington.

Fanny were one of the first rock bands comprised only of women to achieve both critical and commercial success during the ’70s – with two of their singles landing on the Billboard Hot 100.

The band, led by sisters June and Jean Millington, carved a unique path for themselves and a repertoire that would nowadays be referred to as “art-rock”.

They toured heavily and released five studio albums between 1970 and 1974, all while gaining the respect of their peers and challenging gatekeepers.

“For the longest time, we had first to prove that we could actually play,” bassist Jean tells Guitar World in a new interview.

“The first 10 minutes [of the shows], people were not believing [us] – after a while, they understood that we actually play. But that went on for a long time – having to prove that we could really play.”

Eventually, Fanny more than proved their worth. So much so that the biggest band on the planet were itching to pay their respects.

“By the time we met the Beatles, I think they were thrilled to meet us,” says lead guitarist June. “We didn't meet them en masse at one time, but it was clear that they really liked us. They liked us in part because we were women who could play, and we knew what we could do well.

“We recorded at the studio at Apple [Studios], and their engineer, Geoff Emerick, was ecstatic when he realized a) we could play and b) we knew how to record.”

Following up landmark Beatles records Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road, Emerick would end up engineering the band's third studio album, Fanny Hill – the band's most commercially successful record, and a clear sign of the four-piece's evolution as a powerhouse live band.

“We were recording every day,” June recalls. “When we had the time to, we also flew over to Germany to record Beat Club [the West German music programme that ran from 1965 to 1972]. We did the BBC.

“We were playing gigs around London, so every single day it was an intense schedule, but we did it, because, number one, we were young, but we [also] had worked so hard to get to that point, to prove to the world that we could play."

In the face of sexist skepticism, Fanny's June Millington fought hard to carve a unique six-string path – inspiring countless players, including a certain David Bowie, in the process.

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

Fanny weren't the only all-female rock band the Beatles crossed paths with back in the day. The Fab Four were also contemporaries of another pioneering group much closer to home: Merseyside’s Liverbirds.

Back in 1998, on the eve of the release of the extensive John Lennon Anthology box set – which featured four discs of previously unreleased material – Guitar World gathered a number of the Beatle's closest collaborators, including Yoko Ono, to discuss the ups and downs of his solo career.

The ups were legion, of course – the raw fury of John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band; Imagine, whose piano-led, plea-to-humanity title track became arguably as synonymous with the man as any of the songs he penned for the Beatles; Double Fantasy, a thoroughly contemporary, and later incredibly bittersweet, document of a man who had finally found peace.

But there were, by the admissions of their own creators, some lower ebbs – the inconsistent, in some cases very-poorly-aged, Sometime in New York City comes to mind.

Then there was Rock 'n' Roll, the 1975 covers album Lennon recorded under threat of a lawsuit, while in the midst of his infamous “Lost Weekend”, a period of separation from his beloved Yoko Ono.

Said legal threat came from Morris Levy, Chuck Berry's music publisher, over Lennon's lifting of a line from Chuck Berry's You Can't Catch Me on the Beatles' Come Together. If Lennon recorded an album with a few other songs Levy controlled the publishing for, the latter suggested, there'd be no lawsuit.

It was under those less than creatively inspirational circumstances, in 1973, that Lennon gathered a who's who of West Coast session greats at A&M Studios in Hollywood.

“The sessions could have been absolutely brilliant,” drummer Jim Keltner told Guitar World, “but toward the end of each evening, it would just waste away because of the drinking and the drugs all of us were taking, including Phil [Spector, the album's producer]. By the end of the night, John would be singing all slow and slurry.

“Just Because [the album's closing track] is a perfect example of that. It started off early in the evening with a really great tempo, great feel, good vocal. And by the time it was done, it was just a real parody of a drunken John Lennon with a bunch of drunk musicians all playing live.”

The drinking was even worse outside the confines of the studio.

One of the session aces employed on Rock 'n' Roll was the late guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, who more than enjoyed the rampant hijinks.

“Jesse was John's partner in crime, only because Jesse was an unmarried guy who loved trouble,” Keltner recalled to GW. “He was crazy himself. He would always volunteer to be with John, like, ‘I'll take care of him; don't worry.’ Because, amazingly enough, John didn't have a bodyguard in LA – unlike Phil.

“But this one evening Jesse drafted me to help him with John, saying, ‘Get in the car with us. You take one side and I'll take the other.’ Because John was starting to freak out.”

Booze and cars – never a good mix.

“He was so drunk that he was yelling and screaming at everybody,” Keltner said. “He was yelling, ‘Yoko!’ at the top of his lungs. Somebody put May [Pang, Lennon's then-girlfriend] in John's lawyer's car. And I was in the back of this Cadillac with John in the middle and Jesse on the other side, and we were trying to hold him down. Because he was trying to kick the windows out of the car.

“He had these big cowboy boots on. John was very strong when he was drunk. He shoved me down to the floor of the car and was pulling my hair and just kicking the windows. He was shoving and hitting Jesse. And the whole time he's yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘Yoko! I want Yoko!’ And screaming, ‘You know who the fuck I am?’ He was just out of it completely.”

Though that particular episode luckily ended without further harm, the album's recording was made even more tumultuous by Phil Spector. The great producer's mental health was already precipitously declining, and with it came the rise of his well-documented obsession with firearms. Of course, that combination would later end in tragedy.

“We got kicked out of the Record Plant [Studios, where the sessions had moved] because Phil shot his gun off in the canteen,” Keltner said. “He shot his gun at the floor and it ricocheted up into the ceiling. Gary Kellgren and Chris Stone, the studio owners, both decided that was that. We were outta there.”

This behavior, coupled with Spector's famously controlling nature behind the boards, soured his relationship with Lennon, and the troubled LA sessions collapsed entirely.

As if the album's gestation wasn't crazy enough as is, Spector then absconded with the tapes – it would be months before Lennon could get them back.

Yoko Ono, with whom Lennon was still in touch, had felt from the outset that the project wasn't in her husband's best interest, a viewpoint he would, understandably, come to share.

“I told John it wouldn't work,” Ono told Guitar World. “He said when he was in LA, ‘I think I'm gonna do this thing with Phil.’ I said, ‘John, I don't think you should do that.’ He said, ‘Don't worry about it, don't worry.’ But I just knew it wasn't going to work. And of course he called me later and said, ‘Yeah, you were right – again.’”

By late 1974, Lennon had returned to New York, straightened himself out, and gotten another original album (Walls and Bridges) out of his system. With the threat of a lawsuit still hanging over his head, though, he got another set of crack, first-call players together (including some, like Keltner and Davis, who had played with him during the album's shambolic early sessions the previous year) and had another go at a host of the '50s-era standards he and his Beatles bandmates had cut their teeth on.

For all the tumult, Rock 'n' Roll proved to be mildly successful, though it would be the penultimate solo album Lennon released during his lifetime.

Most importantly, though, it helped pave the way for Lennon's reunion with Ono. He would remain in New York City for the rest of his life, settling comfortably into the role of a dutiful husband and father to his son Sean – born later in 1975 – before he met his tragic end on December 8, 1980.

Looking back on Rock 'n' Roll in a Rolling Stone interview in 1975, Lennon said, “It started in ’73 with Phil and fell apart. I ended up as part of mad drunk scenes in Los Angeles and I finally finished it off on me own. And there was still problems with it up to the minute it came out. I can’t begin to say, it’s just barmy; there’s a jinx on that album.”

Performing alongside Paul McCartney must feel nothing short of surreal for those who've been lucky enough to experience it. Johnny Marr knows that feeling first-hand – and he recently recalled what he learned from his “mind-blowing” jamming sessions with Macca.

“If you take a band like the Beatles – they always come to mind because they’re the yardstick everyone thinks about,” he says on The Overlap podcast.

“Ringo is so important to the sound. If it was anyone else it would be a completely different band. But, pretty lowkey, George Harrison – speaking as a guitar player – [he was] one of the greatest guitar players ever.

“Paul McCartney, on the other hand – and speaking as a musician – I had a mind-blowing experience playing with Paul McCartney when I was younger.”

Marr goes on to say Macca is equivalent to having “two guys” in a band, “Because he’s so melodic, he’s so attitude-y, and just [has] amazing musicality.”

The guitarist notes that, perhaps nowadays, McCartney's legendary status beyond the musical sphere makes it easy to forget his bass chops.

“You forget, actually, about what their craft is,” he asserts. “And Paul McCartney reinvented a way of playing the bass. You think of him as a songwriter and a singer really, but as a bass guitar player, it’s next-level, really.

“I think that was really deliberate. I think he took great pride in being... he wanted to be the best bass player in the world.”

The Beatles as a whole revolutionized music, but as Marr notes, Macca's bass chops were equally evolutionary, helping to transform the traditionally 'background' instrument into a melodic force that could carry hit after hit.

Post-Smiths, Marr developed a reputation as a gun for hire, which included a brief period during which he jammed with the Beatles bassist.

“I didn’t do a recording session with him as such, but we did get together for a good long eight-or-nine-hour day, and just played and played and played very intensely, really loudly,” he told The Autojubilator in a 2013 interview.

“Which was pretty great, obviously. I remember everything about it. We played I Saw Her Standing There, Twenty Flight Rock, Tutti Frutti. I got him to play Things We Said Today, and I think we played some Wings stuff. C-Moon, I remember. That was fun. He and I were singing harmonies on I Saw Her Standing There – that was a pretty good moment, too. I was only 23, maybe 24.”

Marr recently launched his latest signature Jaguar with Fender, and shared what he hopes this new version communicates to the next generation of guitarists.

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.

As an on-the-road project, Sting guitarist Dominic Miller decided to sit down with fourteen of the Beatles' most beloved tunes and write his own solo guitar arrangements, which he eventually compiled into a songbook, The Beatles arranged by Dominic Miller: Guitar Solo Songbook, which he rolled out last year.

“Some people go to museums, or they go hiking and stuff [while on tour],” Miller explains in an interview with Rick Beato.

“I like to sit in my hotel room and just noodle with the guitar. I've been playing a lot of classical pieces forever, and I thought I want to do pieces that are a little bit less academic than that. I want to do tunes that I really like.

“So I chose, for some reason, to attack my favorite Beatles songs and make them for solo guitar in the way that a classical guitarist would do.”

And, according to Miller, the classical music comparison extends to the Beatles' choice of harmonies, which he deems “indestructible.”

“So there's a neighbor of ours about three or four doors down who's probably a piano teacher, and they're teaching this kid to play Bach, but it's the most beautiful thing I could ever hear. So I look forward to that moment when they have their lesson, and I hear Bach played badly with no real tempo, but that's the most beautiful thing that you can hear.

“And I think it's the same for the Beatles,” he asserts. “If someone were to play Michelle or Yesterday badly, the magic would still come through. So that was the biggest discovery for me – how indestructible this harmony is.”

As he sums it up, “Like Bach, I think [the] Beatles [are] one of the only composers that you can play badly, and it still sounds good.”

And Sting’s two cents on the matter? “As Sting has often said, actually – and we talk about this sometimes – is that the Beatles, by doing those songs and coming up with those compositions, they kind of gave a license for everyone else to have a go.

“These guys from Liverpool, if they can do it, everyone should try, and so it opened the floodgates for a lot of songwriters to have an attempt at writing songs, which had never really happened before in England, like pop songs – verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge.”

Last year, Miller revealed that he finds everything in the Police’s catalog “playable” – but pinpointed a song that he says is the band’s most challenging to nail.

Paul McCartney has expressed his dismay at the financial troubles that are rocking Höfner. The future of the German company is under threat, after it was revealed that it had filed for preliminary insolvency proceedings at the Fürth Local Court, in Germany.

McCartney has been playing Höfners since since 1961. He picked up a 500/1 violin-style bass guitar for around 50 bucks when the Beatles were workshopping their sound night after night in Hamburg.

It was on a Höfner that McCartney made his name – on The Ed Sullivan Show, on tracks such as She Loves You, I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Love Me Do.

“It is very sad to see Höfner go out of business. They have been making instruments for over 100 years, and I bought my first Höfner bass in the sixties,” writes McCartney on Instagram.

“I have loved it ever since. It’s a wonderful instrument to play: lightweight, and it encourages me to play quite freely. It also offers pleasing variations in tone that I enjoy. So, commiserations to everyone at Höfner, and thank you for all your help over the years.”

Talk of Höfner going out of business might yet be premature. These are bleak times for the fortunes of the company, no question. But these preliminary insolvency proceedings do not necessarily mean the company will go to the wall.

As yet, Höfner has made no statement clarifying its position, but under preliminary insolvency proceedings the company is free to continue operations under the court’s supervision.

The filing states that “preliminary insolvency proceedings will be ordered on December 10, 2025, at 5:05pm” to safeguard the debtor’s assets from “adverse changes”.

There are not many more details, although No Treble reports that a former Höfner employee has said the company’s financial woes are longstanding.

Höfner makes a range of stringed instruments. There are cellos, ukuleles, violins, violas, classical guitars, acoustic and electric guitars in its lineup, along with a range of accessories and spares.

But when you designed the bass guitar that one of the Fab Four used, that’s what people will know you for – that’s how you will be remembered.

It works both ways. McCartney will always be remembered as the moptop with the Violin Bass – which was why, when he formed Wings in 1971, he decided to use a Rickenbacker.

Speaking to Bass Player in 2021, he said it new band, new look. So why not switch things up.

“Maybe it was a combination of things,” said McCartney. “I knew I was known for the violin shape. It’s like Charlie Chaplin, you know? The little walking cane, the moustache, and a bowler hat, and he’s Charlie. If he comes on with a bandanna and he’s shaved and he’s on a bike, it’s like, ‘Who’s that?’ So I think there may have been an element of that was what I looked like, kind of a trademark.”

Guitar World has approached Höfner for comment

Höfner, the German instrument maker whose iconic Violin Bass was famously played by Paul McCartney, has reportedly filed for bankruptcy.

The news comes from No Treble, which cites court documents from the Fürth District Court in Bavaria in its report. The filing states that “preliminary insolvency proceedings will be ordered on December 10, 2025, at 5:05pm” to safeguard the debtor’s assets from “adverse changes”.

No Treble also reports that, according to a longtime former employee, the company has been facing financial issues for some time. One Dr. Hubert Ampferl has been appointed as an insolvency administrator, tasked with tackling the debts by finding investors.

Höfner previously experienced a restructure back in 1994, when it became part of the Boosey & Hawkes Group. It was also sold to Music Group in 2003, and a year later to Klaus Schöller.

The company itself was established in 1887 by Karl Höfner, and celebrated its 135th anniversary in 2022. Originally a violin maker by trade, it began manufacturing its first guitars during the 1930s, and developed the Violin Bass – the model with which it’s most synonymous – in the ’50s.

In 1961, a Höfner 500/1 Violin Bass was purchased by Paul McCartney, who famously used the instrument as his number one bass all the way throughout his career, including with the Beatles and in his later work. McCartney became synonymous with the Violin Bass (he had four in his collection) and cemented its place as a stalwart in British rock music.

That particular Violin Bass mysteriously disappeared and went missing for over 50 years. In 2023, it was found and reunited with McCartney thanks to the efforts of the Lost Bass Project.

Miraculously, five decades after it had been stolen from the back of a van in October 1972, it turned up in the home of an individual living on the south coast of England. Almost a year ago to this day, McCartney played the long-lost bass on stage for the first time since it went missing. A documentary is currently in the works.

Höfner has been contacted for comment.

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.

A new study of the web’s most popular guitar tabs has sought to find out which artists are shaping the playing journeys of modern guitarists – and both legacy and contemporary acts rank highly.

UK gear retailer guitarguitar has done the exhausting number crunching, analyzing the 5,000 most-viewed tabs and chord sheets on Ultimate Guitar. From this, 3,424 songs from 1,340 artists were put under the microscope, with page views tallied to determine the players and bands that are most popular with guitarists.

Chart-smashing loop pedal aficionado Ed Sheeran has topped the artist rankings, beating The Beatles and Taylor Swift, who came second and third, respectively.

In a breakdown of songs, Sheeran's 2017 track Perfect was noted as the fourth most in-demand song to learn. Jeff Buckley’s perpetually covered Hallelujah, Oasis' Wonderwall – no doubt buoyed by the band's blockbuster reunion – and Jason Mraz's I'm Yours all ranked higher in terms of the most viewed songs, but the Sheeran's overall influence was enough to see him crowned as the most popular player overall.

Interestingly, Elvis Presley's Can't Help Falling in Love rounds out the top five songs. That means there's no place for Seven Nation Army, Come As You Are, and Stairway to Heaven, which were crowned as the most Googled guitar riffs in a 2024 study. Only Stairway (12) features in the top 20 most-viewed tabs.

Sheeran’s catalog-wide tally of 229.5 million tab views trumps his closest competitors, the Beatles (226.1 million), Taylor Swift (167.8 million) – who recently broke Michael Jackson's 36-year-old sales record – and Metallica (125.9 million).

Other interesting results include Adele, an artist whose music is more regularly associated with piano and orchestral arrangements rather than the guitar, ranking sixth – while Bruno Mars' guitar-less piano ballad When I Was Your Man helped the singer to a ninth-placed finish.

Metallica are the only metal band in the top 20, with Radiohead, Pink Floyd, and Coldplay also making notable appearances.

“It’s no surprise to see artists like Ed Sheeran, The Beatles, and Taylor Swift leading the list, with their timeless songs that translate beautifully to guitar,” says Adam Speck, Marketing Director at guitarguitar.

“From classic ballads like Let It Be to modern favourites like Perfect, these are the tracks people dream of being able to pick up and play. What’s really encouraging is that so many of these songs are completely achievable for beginners with a bit of practice.”

In related Sheeran news, he recently surprised a school with a visit as he donated a score of Lowden acoustic guitars to its students.

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.

The release of the Beatles’ album Help! in August 1965 marked a significant shift in the group’s sound. Their fifth LP release, it would also be their second film soundtrack, following A Hard Day’s Night from July 1964.

The band had met folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan while in America that same year, and been bowled over by the compositions on his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. In conversation (and after Dylan had introduced them to marijuana), the singer advised John and Paul to “stop writing for the meat market” and come up with more thought-provoking lyrics.

This would contribute to making Help! a more acoustic-led affair, with songs that shifted away from the ‘boy and girl, you and me’ hit-making formula of She Loves You, From Me To You and I Want To Hold Your Hand.

To this end, Lennon acquired his Framus Hootenanny 12-string guitar on the band’s return to London. The unspecified shop paired it with an Australian-made Maton case that can clearly be seen in photos from the Help! film set.

The Beatles already owned US-made acoustics – John and Paul had Gibson J-160Es and Paul had his Epiphone Texan. And at the height of Beatlemania Lennon was clearly flush enough to go this route again, or indeed that of Martin, but he obviously bonded with the German-built Framus.

It’s said he particularly liked its sound and how it blended with Harrison’s Gibson. Also, with its adjustable bridge, perhaps the guitar was easier to manage than fixed-bridge models with ’60s-style actions and the hefty strings of the day.

Let’s also not forget that Framus was already a popular marque with UK groups. For instance, McCartney’s own first instrument was a Framus Zenith, Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones famously used a Star bass, and The Animals, The Herd and others also favoured the brand.

Both Lennon and Harrison played the Hootenanny on the Help! album: John and George on Lennon’s Dylan-influenced You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, and Lennon using it to drive the wistful It’s Only Love and the title track itself. You can also see John miming to the former track in the film, and noodling on the instrument in stills from the movie.

The guitar carried over to the following album, Rubber Soul, too. Lennon played it, capo’d at the 7th fret, on his soulful ballad Girl, while Harrison provided rhythm back-up on McCartney’s uptempo I’ve Just Seen A Face and John’s Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).

These were the last Beatles songs on which the Framus would be heard, since at the end of 1965 John presented the Hootenanny to Gordon Waller of Peter And Gordon. McCartney had penned hits for the duo (the other half of which, Peter, was the brother of McCartney’s then girlfriend, Jane Asher), including Nobody I Know and A World Without Love.

Waller later gave the guitar to his manager. He stashed it away in his attic, where it stayed for decades until being discovered, still in its ‘original’ Maton case.

When the decision to sell the 12-string was made, Julien’s in New York proved to be the preferred auction house. Julien’s liaised with Andy Babiuk, author of the well-respected reference work Beatles Gear, to verify this was John’s instrument.

Babiuk confirmed that Framus 5/024 Hootenanny, serial #51083, is indeed John Lennon’s guitar. His detective work focused on comparable darker patches in the wood grain in the soundhole rosette, specific features on the guitar’s top, plus likenesses in the swirl of the mock tortoiseshell pickguard.

As the Framus was in poor condition after years in an attic where huge temperature fluctuations can occur, Julien’s had to make a decision about restoring the instrument to playing status or leaving it as an unplayable museum piece. Deciding to restore, Julien’s enlisted Ryan Schuermann of LA Guitar Repair to undertake the work.

Among other things, Schuermann reset the guitar’s neck, repaired the top, steam/heat-treated the warped bridge, and dressed its corroded frets. Julien’s says it not only looks wonderful and plays fantastically well, but emits the exact tone heard on all those unforgettable numbers.

While several less auspicious Beatles instruments had previously been sold, including Harrison’s Grazioso/Futurama and Maton Mastersound, and the fretless Bartell on which he played the solo in Happiness Is A Warm Gun, the release of something so well documented on both record and film was obviously going to cause a stir.

On sale day, 29 May 2024, an unspecified buyer dipped into their pocket for an amount of $2,857,500 – so far a record for any guitar previously owned by a Beatle. With McCartney’s ‘lost and found’ Höfner bass estimated to be worth £10 million, we shudder to think what his Yesterday Epiphone Texan, John’s Get Back Casino or George’s ‘Rocky’ Strat might one day fetch.

Of course, there have been attainable reissues of all these models. And now that Framus has reintroduced the Hootenanny, you can grab a significant piece of Beatles history for a more manageable price.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Of all the storied guitar stores that once lined 48th Street in New York City, none had quite the pedigree of Manny's Music.

To list all of the store's notable clientele over the decades before its closure in 2009 would be a fruitless exercise – suffice to say, even the biggest of rock's big names walked through its doors at one point or another. And we do mean the biggest.

One day in the mid-’60s, with Beatlemania still raging, the Fab Four (sans George Harrison) strode into Manny's. It was a busy day, though, and they weren't about to get special treatment.

Speaking to Guitar World back in 1980, the shop's longtime owner, Henry Goldrich, recounted, “It must have been in the mid-’60s that they came in the store, and we were just too busy to take care of them. We asked if they would come back but they said they would wait and they sat in the back and amused themselves for about a half-hour until we could get a salesman free.”

As one might expect, the boys were looking for a guitar – though Goldrich, frustratingly, couldn't recall the make or model when telling GW the story. Either way, it's one hell of an anecdote.

“They wanted a guitar for one of their albums,” Goldrich – who passed away in 2021 at the age of 88 – recalled. “So we called up the guy who owned the company, I can't remember the name, and told him what they wanted.

“The guy said, ‘I can't give them a guitar but we'll sell it to them for cost.’ So [John] Lennon says to me, ‘Tell him we'll put it on our next album cover.’ I tell him and the guy says, ‘Nope, I'm sorry.’ And they didn't end up using the guitar after all.

“Oh, and by the way,” the store's manager concluded, “the album they were talking about turned out to be Sgt. Pepper's.”

Though its physical location was closed in 2009, the Manny's trademark was owned by Sam Ash Music Store until that brand closed its own stores last year. Sam Ash then sold the Manny's trademark to Vista Musical Instruments, which subsequently opened a digital store under the Manny's name.

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.

The story of Paul McCartney’s stolen Höfner 500/1 bass guitar is to be told in an all-new feature length documentary.

With a working title of The Beatle and the Bass, the film unpacks the mystery of what happened to Macca’s bass after it was stolen out of a van in London in 1972.

It had remained missing and of sight for 50 years until Höfner launched a global appeal in 2023, putting the investigative journalists Scott and Naomi Jones on the tail of the four-string. The Lost Bass Project was born. And the Lost Bass Project delivered the goods; they found it.

The bass turned up in an attic in Suffolk, England, in late 2023. A few months later the bass was back in McCartney’s hands, and made its return to the stage at the final show in his Got Back 2024 Tour, when he performed Get Back with Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood accompanying him on a Gibson Les Paul Custom.

In a quote from the documentary, McCartney explains why all this matters. This is a story of cosmic justice, musical history, and reconnecting with the instrument that helped him and the Fab Four make their name

“I think anything that’s nicked, you want back, especially if it has sentimental value,” says McCartney. “It just went off into the universe and it left us thinking, where did it go? There must be an answer…”

McCartney was just a teenager when he bought the Höfner in 1961. The Beatles were in Hamburg, and when he saw it, he knew it was the one. It felt right. McCartney has long credited it with shaping how he played the bass.

“The Höfner is so light, it encouraged me to play with a light touch and be more adventurous with it,” he told Bass Player in 2005. “I’d play it more like a guitar, whereas my big, heavy Wal five-string led me to play more solid, deep bass. So looking back, the Höfner was a key to my style.”

You can hear what he means on the Beatles’ Lovely Rita, from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, where his wayfaring bassline takes up the octave, adding musical information and melody as it goes, before coming back down to take care of the low end.

“It’s just something I love to do and recognize as a sort of signature of mine,” he said. “The slides and slurs are from playing guitar and using some of that approach on my Höfner.”

The Beatle and the Bass is being produced Passion Pictures, the same production team behind the award-winning Christopher Reeve documentary, Super/Man, and was commissioned by BBC Arts.

Ceire Clark, VP of non-scripted acquisitions at Fremantle, who’s distributing the film, says the film will take us on a “global journey” and explain why McCartney's Höfner 500/1 is considered to be “the most important bass guitar in history”. It is a must-watch for Beatlemanics; Macca plays a starring role.

“The documentary offers a fresh perspective on music history, with access to McCartney himself and those who witnessed The Beatles’ rise from the very beginning,” says Clark. “At Fremantle, we’re proud to be part of a project that celebrates the enduring power of music and storytelling to connect people around the world.”

Of course, we know how the story is going to end. What we don’t know is exactly where this bass has been all this time. It is said to have had a number of owners after a thief snatched it in Notting Hill. It was reportedly sold to a pub landlord for a paltry sum – “not much money plus a few free pints” – and somehow ended up in the possession of Cathy Guest, an English mother of two whose late husband had inherited it from his brother.

McCartney was so happy to be reunited with it that he reportedly gave Guest a six-figure reward. We’d have been happy with a few pints with Macca. For the record, some estimate its value to be in excess of $12.5m.

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.

In 1989, Robbie McIntosh formally joined Paul McCartney’s live band, having worked on a number of sessions for the Beatle’s solo record, Flowers in the Dirt.

Though that first session would have been memorable by the very nature of the fact McIntosh was playing with one of the Fab Four, it was made even more special when McCartney ended up giving him a guitar lesson.

And it wasn’t any old guitar lesson, either: Macca showed McIntosh how to play his iconic Blackbird acoustic guitar riff properly, after the former Pretenders guitarist spent years navigating the fretboard-twister incorrectly.

As McIntosh recalls in a new interview with dopeYEAH, “The first session I did, he [McCartney] knew I was a fan. I remember talking about Blackbird, because I learned to play it when I was probably 12 and taught myself to play it.

“There’s one bit where it climbs up [the neck] and I used to play it with a bit of a stretch. I could play it, and it sounded fine, but he went, ‘Oh, no, I play it like this.’ I thought, ‘Of course that’s an easier way to play it.’”

Using a Brian May BMG Red Special, McIntosh demonstrates the difference between how he used to play Blackbird, and how McCartney taught him. For the short chromatic run that moves up from C to E, McIntosh used to stretch across with his pinky finger to fret the melody notes exclusively on the B string.

McCartney, on the other hand, told him he was making it needlessly difficult for himself. Rather, the Beatle revealed he could simply incorporate the high E string, too, and remove the need for unnecessary reaches.

As McIntosh himself explains, it was a far more intuitive way to tackle the song, and it’s the way that most players who have ever searched up the Blackbird tab online will no doubt be familiar with.

Still, it was valuable insight for a self-taught Blackbird fan, and something that would end up coming full circle a few years later.

McIntosh adds, “When we did the Unplugged record for MTV, he did Blackbird but he got me to play it with him. That was fantastic. He could have played it on his own but it was one of the first things we ever talked about when I worked with him. He said, ‘Let’s play it together.’”

Speaking of his time in McCartney’s band last year, McIntosh discussed his favorite songs he’d played with Guitar World, saying, “The Abbey Road medley was fantastic. And we did Sgt. Pepper. I’d grown up with The Beatles so I was familiar with their stuff. We did a lot of stuff from Flowers in the Dirt and Band on the Run. I’d suggest things like Fixing a Hole, and we did Let Me Roll It and All My Loving.”

An English guitarist has unwittingly bought John Lennon’s old Fender Deluxe guitar amp for less than $4,000, after the historic combo ended up on Facebook Marketplace.

Father of two James Tyler, 45, of Brighton, England, works in the Hi-Fi industry and was perusing the social media giant’s listings when he came across a mid-’60s blackface Fender Deluxe combo for a not-too-shabby price.

The seller, who is believed to be the amp’s second owner after John Lennon first parted with it in the early ’70s, had hinted at its illustrious past during the trade, but Taylor “didn’t pay it much mind” until after the sale.

By 1968, the Beatles were the biggest band in the world. Around that time, Fender gifted the band three pieces of gear – a Fender VI, a silver-panel Deluxe Reverb, and a black-panel Deluxe – for use during the White Album sessions at Abbey Road and Trident Studios (as per Andy Babiuk’s book, Beatles Gear).

As per Manchester Evening News, Taylor suspects the amp he bought from Facebook Marketplace is the same one that was used during these sessions.

As the story goes, Lennon later gifted the combo to guitarist Rod Lynton as a thank you for playing acoustic guitar on his 1971 solo album, Imagine. Lynton – who wrote a letter of authenticity to vouch for its provenance – is then believed to have sold it to the seller from whom Taylor bought it.

“They told me it might have been gifted to someone by John Lennon, but I have heard these stories before,” Taylor tells the Manchester Evening News.

“I bought the amp because I wanted the amp,” he adds, “and I didn't pay John Lennon sort of money for it.”

After Taylor acquired the amp, a research deep dive led him to his discovery. “I realized I had something very exciting on my hands,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting it at all.

“It plays and sounds fantastic. I had used it in my own band practices prior to authentication. I might have been a bit more cautious had I realized the historical importance.”

Considering John Lennon’s recently re-discovered Please Please Me Vox amp sold for £151,200 (approx. $203,000) when it went to auction last year, it’s understandable that the idea of selling the amp is tempting.

“It would be scary for me to have something so valuable in the house,” he concludes. “There are many parts of me that wish I could hold onto it, but it is a risk to keep in a house with toddlers rushing around.

“I could probably use the money from selling it to get myself a mortgage and get on the property ladder.”

Taylor is now reportedly looking for additional help to authenticate the amp, and to confirm whether his suspicions that his new Fender Deluxe was the one used during the White Album sessions.

Elsewhere, Lennon's $2.8m Hootenanny 12-string acoustic has been revived with permission from the late guitarist's estate, and Paul McCartney brought his Höfner violin bass, lost for 50 years, back to the stage for a spot alongside Ronnie Wood.

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.

Session bassist Will Lee has been singing even longer than he has been playing bass guitar. Still, the 1998 formation of the New York City Beatles cover band the Fab Faux presented Lee with a new challenge: singing and playing Paul McCartney's brilliant melodies and basslines live.

“Generally, when it comes to singing and playing bass, my first thought is always, ‘Can we overdub?!’” Lee tells Bass Player. “I have difficulty putting 100 per cent into both at the same time. I'll often find my singing momentarily distracted by a groove or my bass playing briefly lapsing during an expressive vocal passage.

“But what gives me an advantage with the Fab Faux is the music is so deeply ingrained. Plus, I spend a lot of time working out the songs and the moves.”

“With McCartney there are two periods: The early albums, where the band would recreate what they did live – and the post-'65 overdub era, where they would save Paul a track and his bass would be one of the last things to go on a song.

“What makes some songs like Day Tripper, Nowhere Man, Getting Better, and Oh! Darling tricky are the continual bassline variations. Virtually every time Paul gets to the chorus sections he plays them differently.”

The foundation of Oh! Darling is Paul McCartney's loping, heavily ornamented bassline, modeled after Fats Domino's left-hand piano on Blueberry Hill.

According to Mark Lewisohn's The Beatles Recording Sessions, McCartney laid down a guide vocal when the basic rhythm tracks were cut on April 20,1969.

Though McCartney didn't achieve a satisfactory lead vocal overdub until three months later, there are audible clues on the final mix that he was singing while he recorded his bass track. Notice the missed downbeat and a mid-measure clam in bar 13 (D# instead of D over Bm) and the late entrance at 01:29.

In addition, the bass and vocal are cleverly integrated. When the vocal gets busy, the playing gets sparse and vice versa.

McCartney establishes the song's lazy, 12/8-shuffle feel in bar 1. In the first four bars he plays each chord's root on beat one, a motif into beat three, and fills on beat four. His subtle yet effective phrasing include slides and hammer-ons that originate from various intervals below their targets.

McCartney's approach differs substantially in the second verse. He nails a root-5 power chord on the downbeat, plays the next bar's motif above the F# root, and fills with eighth-notes throughout.

The bridge begins with McCartney pumping the IV's root (D) into a chromatic climb and subsequent drop to F, one of the song's two non-diatonic chords. Next, it's back to A for a slow walk and descending hammer-laden fill at 01:23.

The vocal rhythms also get busier. The first trouble spot occurs at the end of bar 18 at 01:16. The vocal begins after beat four on the 16th-note upbeat immediately following the second eighth-note. This means you're singing between played notes. Isolate this beat and drill it using bar 19's downbeat as a target. When this vocal passage recurs at 01:29, the bassline precedes it.

In the third verse, McCartney plays beat-four approach fills throughout: low grace-hammers at 01:49, a half-step hammer-on and chromatic descent at 01:53, and Hendrix-y phrasing at 01:57.

That's some heavy analysis for a doo-wop tune. But before you cry “overkill,” consider this: singing and playing at the same time requires developing a whole new set of chops. Some claim it's a matter of independence, but it makes sense to view singing and playing as a process of integration.

“The key to playing and singing is preparation and focus,” says Lee. “Learn and practice each part separately until they become second nature, and then combine them slowly. Then when you get everything up to speed and you're performing, relax, have fun, and stay focused on both parts.”

• Abbey Road is out now via Capitol.
• The Fab Faux play three dates this summer. See The Fab Faux for dates and ticket details.

Three-quarters of the way through Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is one of Paul McCartney's most underrated gems, Lovely Rita. On a record with so many high-points, what makes this tune stand out?

The bassline has a lot to do with it – it’s boldly up-front in the mix, and the bouncy feel and linear melodicism, accented by a few unconventional, ear-catching licks, make it the perfect foil to the playful lyric. In particular, McCartney steers the mood of the tune with his use of both staccato and legato feels, octaves and upper-register passages.

“It’s just something I love to do and recognize as a sort of signature of mine,” McCartney told Bass Player in 2005.

“I’ll always go up the octave and just slur into high notes for a few little runs, and then come back down and nail the bass part. I always try it, though sometimes it’s not appropriate.

“The slides and slurs are from playing guitar and using some of that approach on my Höfner. Because it is so light, it encouraged me to play with a light touch and be more adventurous with it. I’d play it more like a guitar, whereas my big, heavy Wal 5-string led me to play more solid, deep bass. So looking back, the Höfner was a key to my style.”

After a four-bar guitar intro, McCartney dives right into Lovely Rita with a sliding lick based on the triads of the chords, immediately establishing the bassline as a key element. One reason this works so well is the simplicity of the other tracks: the guitar and piano are just banging out the chords, and Ringo's drums plod steadily along.

Once the main lyric enters, McCartney shifts to simpler eighth-notes, finally settling into a walking line that continues through most of the rest of the song. Notice how he moves from one chord to the next in a scalar fashion at 00:25; this gives the bass a seamless, flowing quality, one of the positive characteristics of a traditional walking bassline.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Lovely Rita is the way McCartney moves between staccato and legato feels. While most walking lines are legato, this one begins decidedly staccato – bringing to mind the sound of swing-era basslines, when bass players used gut strings and no amplification.

One listen to the album's previous track, the soft-shoe When I’m Sixty-Four, confirms McCartney's penchant for old-fashioned musical styles.

Bars 13 (00:33) and 16 (00:42) sound significantly different, even though the notes are identical. Had McCartney played the whole song staccato, by this point it might have begun to grow tiresome.

Similar variations occur in the second verse, but they come much more quickly; by slipping back and forth between long and short notes, McCartney keeps the song sounding remarkably fresh.

Lovely Rita climaxes halfway through the last chorus, starting at 02:00. After a neat crescendo that ends on a staccato eighth-note, McCartney reprises the opening lick as the vocal rises to an exciting new level, providing a satisfying sense of return and closure.

There's a critical difference between the end and the beginning, though: the notes on the ‘and’ of beats one and three are now staccato, making the lick even more bouncy than before.

The tune ends with an odd breakdown section, roughly over an A chord, in which McCartney plays a weird, offbeat, minor-key ostinato in 16th-notes. And the last note is most unusual – there aren't a lot of songs where the bass ends up on the 4th of the last chord!

For more on Macca’s relationship with the violin bass, check out our history of Paul McCartney and the Höfner 500/1 bass guitar.

Brian Ray has spent the last two decades as Paul McCartney’s right-hand man, dividing his duties between guitar and bass depending on what the Beatle plays for each song. However, to land the gig back in 2002, he had to go through a rather public audition in front of millions of spectators.

Irish stadium rockers U2 were booked for the Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show at the 73,000-capacity Louisiana Superdome, but McCartney – who would take the spot in Florida three years later – was tasked with the pregame festivities. It was Ray’s first show with the band and one hell of a trial by fire.

“It was kind of crazy,” Ray says in the new issue of Guitar World. “I had done an album with Shakira [2001’s Laundry Service] and was asked to go on tour with her. I told her people what I needed for a salary, which they agreed to, but then I said I required Business Class travel because there would be a lot of long flights.

“This became a problem, and they got somebody else. I was kind of kicking myself over that because I would have had years of work.”

Fortunately, greener pastures were up ahead. He continues, “A little later, my friend Abe Laboriel Jr. came to my birthday party. We had worked together in France doing Johnny Hallyday and Mylene Farmer, but now Abe was playing with Paul McCartney.

“I asked him if they were playing any shows, and he said they were thinking of doing a song at the Super Bowl before the National Anthem. So I asked, 'Who's going to play guitar when Paul plays bass, and who's going to play bass when Paul plays guitar?' Abe said, ‘Actually, we're looking for a guitar player who plays a little bass.’

“I said, ‘I'd love a shot at that.’ Abe put my name forward, and sure enough I got a call from David Kahne, who had produced a lot of Paul's stuff. I went to meet David and hung out with him. I played some guitar and bass, and he said, ‘I've got a good feeling about this. I'll put your name forward.’”

The caveat, however, was that getting the gig was not a surefire thing. Kahne told him there were four other guys in the running, and that the final decision was ultimately out of his hands.

“I thanked him and split,” Ray remembers. “The next day I got a call: ‘Can you be on a plane tomorrow to go to New Orleans to play one song with Paul McCartney?’”

With that call, his luck – and indeed his life – changed. “Playing Freedom at the Super Bowl was my audition,” he adds. No pressure at all.

The fact that, over two decades later, Ray is now part of the furniture in McCartney’s band says everything about how his very public audition went. What happened next showed the softer, more paternal side of the Liverpudlian legend.

“Later that night, everybody went back to the hotel bar. Paul was telling stories for a couple of hours,” Ray recalls. “But after a while he said, ‘Thank you, guys. It's time for bed.’ He hugged a bunch of people and started out, but before he left he came up to me and said, ‘Goodnight, Brian. Welcome aboard. Stick with Rusty [Anderson, guitarist] – he'll show you the ropes.’”

Ray says he “raced home and prepared for five weeks straight” ahead of the upcoming tour. But it wasn’t his guitar playing he was concerned about. For the first time in his life, what he could do on a bass felt paramount.

“I [only] played bass on demos, so getting ready to play in Paul's band was challenging. Thankfully, Paul's basslines, while they're iconic and memorable and musical, they're not really technically challenging. They're just so good. Because they're so listenable, they're easy to understand. Let's face it – they're in our bloodstreams. Even if you're not a bass player, you know these parts. They're in your head.”

Brian Ray’s full interview features in the new issue of Guitar World. The magazine, which features Angus Young on the cover, also celebrates 45 years of Back In Black, and much more. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

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.

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.

The name Hans Zimmer immediately evokes tales of grandeur encapsulated in film scores. From The Lion King to Interstellar and, most recently, the Dune series, Zimmer is one of the best-known – and well-respected – contemporary composers.

However, in a recent Rick Beato interview, the movie soundtrack extraordinaire has proved that he's just like the rest of us – he also struggles with what often feels like an insurmountable challenge: stage fright. But he manages to (pun very much intended) get by with a little help from his friends.

“Just before I did the very first show, I had a phone call from Paul McCartney, and he wanted me to come in and work with him,” he tells Beato.

“And I said, ‘I want to go and do this show, go and play with my band, but I have really bad stage fright. So you might be just saving me here by offering me a project I can't say no to.’ He said, ‘Oh, stage fright. I had terrible stage fright.’”

Macca went on to reveal that after not playing a show for three years, he did a performance in Paris where he experienced massive performance anxiety – and only got through it thanks to his audience.

“I don't know which song it was but he was playing the bridge when he was supposed to play the second verse,” Zimmer continues.

“But he knew that his band was going to be knowing that he was making a mistake and they were going to go to the bridge when it was supposed to be the bridge, as opposed to going to the chorus. But no, they went to the chorus.

“So he just went, ‘Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.’ And the audience went wild, and they just loved it. And afterwards, [English singer and television presenter who was also friends with the Beatles] Cilla Black said to him, ‘Paul, that was amazing. Do you do that every night?’”

So, what was McCartney's nugget of wisdom on stage fright? “He really sort of helped me by going, ‘They're on your side. Just talk to them, show your vulnerability. Show who you are.’ And I think that was the best advice I got, and that wasn't a bad chap to get good advice from, right?”

In recent Hans Zimmer news, the composer also recalled showing Jeff Beck a thing or two on guitar when the two linked up to work together in the ’90s.

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

Grace Bowers is showing no signs of slowing down. Peter Frampton recently named her as one of his favorite rising guitar stars, calling her “a wonderful, wonderful talent” – now, Bowers has continued to build her already hefty résumé by playing alongside the veteran electric guitar legend himself, as well as Phish's Trey Anastasio, at the Love Rocks NYC benefit concert at The Beacon Theater on March 6.

The three guitarists joined forces for a heartfelt rendition of The Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps – which, as one might expect from such a powerful trio, was anything but short on guitar solos.

“[I'm] a huge, huge fan of both of them. One is a lady that is going to be on your mind for the rest of the weekend because she is an incredible player, [and] one of the up-and-coming phenomenal players. I've known her for a while now, and her name is Grace Bowers,” Frampton says in a fan-recorded video.

“This gentleman that I've always wanted to meet and play with, he has an album called Hampton Comes Alive,” Frampton continues, referring to Phish's live album, whose title is a play on 1976's Frampton Comes Alive! “Please welcome Trey Anastasio.”

What followed was a 10-minute-plus guitar extravaganza of the Beatles classic, which Anastasio and Frampton kicked off with an improvised duet before Bowers joined in.

Armed with her trusty Gibson SG, she delivered a masterclass in soloing, visibly impressing both Anastasio and Frampton. From their end, Anastasio and Frampton showcased their staying power, taking turns flexing their unique approach to solos – Anastasio on his Languedoc and Frampton on his Phenix Les Paul – before culminating in a soaring crescendo that saw all three guitarists bursting into a jam.

Frampton's performance in New York follows his recent appearance at NAMM, where he continued to open up about his decision to tour despite his inclusion body myositis (IBM) diagnosis back in 2015.

However, in order to do so, Frampton revealed to Guitar World the ways he has evolved his playing to overcome the challenges posed by the condition.

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).