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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. |
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