George Harrison - Blues Rock Guitarist

I love this track but I think the lead guitar part sounds a bit clumsy

 

He was never a blues guitar player. Not even remotely. He played rock'n'roll guitar filtered through Chuck Berry, Scotty Moore and Carl Perkins before developing a style of his own (of sorts) much later in his career.

 

One word: Skiffle.

People need to look it up before they say that the Beatles 'didn't play no blues'. That's all they played as formative school kids before they 'went electric', and played quite a bit after they went electric. But it wasn't all 'straight blues'; it was blues and its variants and offshoots.

Did they simply 'want to play the blues' for the rest of their career?… We all know the answer to that one.

 

The Beatles couldnt play the blues to save their lives, George included.

 

Well said. George was a wonderful player, but I never a "blues" guy.

 

Nope. See the absolutely painful "12-Bar Original."

 

I'm the biggest Beatle fan boy in my fairly wide circle of friends, and I live in the city that none other than Paul McCartney said to me personally is the home of the blues. I have never once considered George, whose work I love, a blues guitarist.

 

He could play like Hendrix....but he didn' feel like it!


I love The Beatles but I don't get this need to make them more than what they were. What they were is plenty good enough.

 

Blind Lemon Harrison!!!

Arnie

 

More of a rockabilly player, he had an endearing loosness to his style.

 

I used to vacillate between thinking GH was a merely an adequate guitar player and really good one. It seemed that even from song to song, from the first album to the last, there were passages that were brilliant to some that sounded awkward. How could this be? This article explains it quite well.

http://pitchfork.com/features/overt...e-metaphysical-loneliness-of-george-harrison/

Quote, "So if you are looking for someone to explain the near-mystical quality of George Harrison’s guitar playing—or at least grapple poetically with its spirit—Dhani is your best bet. “My father once said to me, ‘I play the notes you never hear,’” he remembers. “He focused on touch and control partly because he never thought he was any good, really. He knew he was good at smaller things: not hitting any off notes, not making strings buzz, not playing anything that would jar you. ‘Everyone else has played all the other bullsh8,’ he would say. ‘I just play what's left'.’'.

It was a conscious effort to not sound like anyone else. Judging by a lot of the comments in this thread, he succeeded immensely.
There is another thread asking which Beatles songs were based/derived from another artist or group. Its obvious that the relationship on some songs is so oblique to the original that you'd have to take the word of JL, GH, PM, or RS that this was so. On others it is more easily obvious. GH was successful in obscuring the blues base of his playing. What, I suspect, handicapped his 'jamming' ability was this obstinacy of not sounding like anyone else.

 

Well, I can agree with a lot of this. But he emerged much earlier than the jammers and soloists. He was part of an ensemble and had a very specific role in the group. Also, he was not playing by and large on his own songs, which limited his role even more. One of the reasons his solos sometimes sound sluggish is I think he was playing them in a rockabilly way. In rockabilly, timing is very important and chordal solos sometimes more than single notes (e.g. on Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby), there is that 'stop and start'. I'll try to think of more great blues-based playing and give examples.

 

I just read this after penning my last note above but when I said "stop and start" I could have said looseness, exactly. You hear it in the solos proper (many) and as part of playing leads or fills throughout the song. Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby is a good example, he owns the song yet in a different way than a Claptonesque workout. Interesting by the way to listen to Perkins's original. Perkins does not play throughout the song (not filling I mean) and the actually solo is almost a Townshend-like power chord riffing more than anything specifically rockabilly!

 

That's kind of condescending, IMO. Clapton was a great blues guitarist, but there were plenty of areas where George knew more than him, and many other great guitarists have given George a lot of praise as well. The quote was referring to George, and I don't think Clapton literally meant George could do what Hendrix did, but that he was capable of much more than he let on.

 

If we are going to do this right
the Beatles must get credit for birthing the blues
going down to the crossroads
poor Liverpudlian sharecroppers toiling all day
then crossing the Mersey delta to play all night in the jukes:
Lil Blind Ringo, Hambone John, Honeyboy Paul, and Sleepy George

 

Sometimes I'm amazed at how hard-core fans, from their point of view, succesfully can turn every musical aspect from the sixties until today's music, in The Beatles' favour and believe that they are sole reason for everything.
'Harrison could play like any guitarist, including Clapton and Hendrix'. I'm amazed.

 

But why? The board has pretty much rejected the claim that Harrison was some kind of an under-appreciated expert blues player. You said so yourself a lot of his playing was "blues-based" that's a far cry from someone using the blues full time and becoming an expert in the field like Clapton or Green did. You seem quite pleased ignoring everyone's logical responses to your claim.

 

I was quoting something CLAPTON said, not me. It was an example that he thought highly of George, not that George could literally do anything they could do.

 

I understand. Clapton obviously had a lot of love and respect for his friend.

 

Really?? George Harrison, Blues Guitarist? It’s one thing for George to throw a few bluesy licks into some songs here and there, but as a blues guitarist he’s not even in the same solar system as greats like B.B.King, Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughn…pick your favorite.
Deep breath. Relax. Accept the fact that the Beatles were not and are not the end-all and be-all of music. They did not invent everything. They were not adept at everything. Rinse. Lather. Arrive without traveling.

 

I think George was one of the very best at structuring a solo that would compliment the song. As far as being what we generally consider when we think of "blues rock "guitar players...not so much. He was a great guitar part arranger.You can't really play a Beatles song in a band and change the guitar solo much because it's an integral part of the whole.

I was surprised when the Early Takes Vol.1 was released and I heard the early take of " Woman Don't You Cry For Me". That style of acoustic country blues playing sounded more like a Stones Beggars Banquet outtake if Mick was singing it, rather than something George would play , "For You Blue" not withstanding.

 

George could ABSOLUTELY play like Hendrix if he wanted to.


Janie Hendrix that is.

 

It is amazing. George was not a virtuoso guitarist. The idea that he was somehow "holding back" and purposely playing "understated" even though he could unleash a fury of blistering, dynamic leads like Hendrix or Blackmore or any other iconic guitarist is a bit silly.

 

George was well ahead of the pack of guys he's compared with - the Claptons, Jimi/mys, and Jeffs. Why is he always compared to the best of the best?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-...etailpage&x-yt-cl=85027636&v=hOlH5LhCPuI#t=84

 

I respect your opinion but I don't hear anything "brilliant" playing in those parts. They are pretty standard pentatonic fills. George was a brilliant player overall but I think he lacked one thing that really separated him from other players and that was his vibrato. I will admit one thing though, he could get a nasty tone when he wanted to.