|
George was reading the I Ching, the
Chinese book of changes, and decided to apply its principles
of change to his songwriting. At his parent's Lancashire
home, he picked a novel off the shelf with the intention of
writing a song based on the first words that he came across.
The words were 'gently weeps' and so George began to
write.
From the first demo (which was
recorded in July 1968 and appears in Anthology 3), an
outstanding acoustic version of the song, the number proved
to be almost magical. However, it was very hard for George
to achieve the same magic playing it with more
instruments.
For the first time, The Beatles
brought in an 8 track machine to record a song in Abbey
Road, and several tries were made to record the song. But a
crying guitar was not that easy to play. First he tried to
record a backwards solo, but the thing didn't quite work
out. In September that year, as Eric Clapton gave him a lift
from Surrey into London, he suggested Eric might want to
play a bit for The Beatles. Clapton didn't want to "because
no one plays with The Beatles". However, George finally
convinced him, and a Gibson Les Paul can be heard crying all
over the song. Finally, Chris Thomas was given the job to
give the guitar a flanging effect by playing around with an
oscillator.
|