Guitar work Harrison's guitar work with the Beatles was varied and flexible. Although not fast or flashy, his lead guitar playing was solid and typified the more subdued lead guitar style of the early 1960s. His rhythm guitar playing was innovative; for example, he used a
capo to shorten the strings on an acoustic guitar, as on the
Rubber Soul (1965) album and "
Here Comes the Sun", to create a bright, sweet sound. In 1965, Harrison used an
expression pedal to control his guitar's volume on "
I Need You", creating a syncopated
flautando effect with the melody resolving its
dissonance through tonal displacements. He used the same volume-swell technique on "
Yes It Is", applying what Everett described as "ghostly articulation" to the song's
natural harmonics. In 1966, Harrison contributed innovative musical ideas to
Revolver. He played
backwards guitar on Lennon's composition "
I'm Only Sleeping" and a guitar
counter-melody on "
And Your Bird Can Sing" that moved in parallel octaves above McCartney's bass downbeats. His guitar playing on "
I Want to Tell You" exemplified the pairing of altered chordal colours with descending chromatic lines and his guitar part for
Sgt Peppers "
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" mirrors Lennon's vocal line in much the same way that a
sarangi player accompanies a
khyal singer in a Hindu
devotional song. Everett described Harrison's guitar solo from "
Old Brown Shoe" as "stinging [and] highly Claptonesque". He identified two of the composition's significant
motifs: a bluesy
trichord and a
diminished triad with roots in A and E. Huntley called the song "a sizzling rocker with a ferocious ... solo". In Greene's opinion, Harrison's demo for "Old Brown Shoe" contains "one of the most complex lead guitar solos on any Beatles song". Harrison's playing on
Abbey Road, and in particular on "Something", marked a significant moment in his development as a guitarist. The song's guitar solo shows a varied range of influences, incorporating the blues guitar style of Clapton and the styles of Indian
gamakas. According to author and musicologist
Kenneth Womack: Something' meanders toward the most unforgettable of Harrison's guitar solos ... A masterpiece in simplicity, [it] reaches toward the sublime". After
Delaney Bramlett inspired him to learn slide guitar, Harrison began to incorporate it into his solo work, which allowed him to mimic many traditional Indian instruments, including the sarangi and the
dilruba. Leng described Harrison's slide guitar solo on Lennon's "
How Do You Sleep?" as a departure for "the sweet soloist of 'Something, calling his playing "rightly famed ... one of Harrison's greatest guitar statements". Lennon commented: "That's the best he's ever fucking played in his life." A
Hawaiian influence is notable in much of Harrison's music, ranging from his slide guitar work on
Gone Troppo (1982) to his televised performance of the
Cab Calloway standard "
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" on
ukulele in 1992. Lavezzoli described Harrison's slide playing on the Grammy-winning instrumental "Marwa Blues" (2002) as demonstrating Hawaiian influences while comparing the melody to an Indian
sarod or
veena, calling it "yet another demonstration of Harrison's unique slide approach". Harrison was an admirer of
George Formby and a member of the Ukulele Society of Great Britain, and played a ukulele solo in the style of Formby at the end of "
Free as a Bird". He performed at a Formby convention in 1991, and served as the honorary president of the George Formby Appreciation Society. Harrison played bass guitar on a few tracks, including the Beatles songs "
She Said She Said", "
Golden Slumbers", "
Birthday" and "
Honey Pie". He also played bass on several solo recordings, including "
Faster", "
Wake Up My Love" and "
Bye Bye Love".
Sitar and Indian music from
Ravi Shankar (pictured in 1967). During the Beatles' American tour in August 1965, Harrison's friend
David Crosby of the Byrds introduced him to
Indian classical music and the work of
sitar maestro
Ravi Shankar. Harrison described Shankar as "the first person who ever impressed me in my life ... and he was the only person who didn't try to impress me." Harrison became fascinated with the sitar and immersed himself in
Indian music. According to Lavezzoli, Harrison's introduction of the instrument on the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood" "opened the floodgates for Indian instrumentation in rock music, triggering what Shankar called 'The Great Sitar Explosion' of 1966–67". Lavezzoli recognises Harrison as "the man most responsible for this phenomenon". In June 1966, Harrison met Shankar at the home of Mrs Angadi of the
Asian Music Circle, asked to be his student, and was accepted. Before this meeting, Harrison had recorded his
Revolver track "
Love You To", contributing a sitar part that Lavezzoli describes as an "astonishing improvement" over "Norwegian Wood" and "the most accomplished performance on sitar by any rock musician". On 6 July, Harrison travelled to India to buy a sitar from Rikhi Ram & Sons in New Delhi. In September, following the Beatles' final tour, he returned to India to study sitar for six weeks with Shankar. He initially stayed in Bombay until fans learned of his arrival, then moved to a houseboat on a remote lake in
Kashmir. During this visit, he also received tutelage from
Shambhu Das, Shankar's protégé. Harrison studied the instrument until 1968, when, following a discussion with Shankar about the need to find his "roots", an encounter with Clapton and
Jimi Hendrix at a hotel in New York convinced him to return to guitar playing. Harrison commented: "I decided ... I'm not going to be a great sitar player ... because I should have started at least fifteen years earlier." Harrison continued to use Indian instrumentation occasionally on his solo albums and remained strongly associated with the genre. Lavezzoli groups him with
Paul Simon and
Peter Gabriel as the three rock musicians who have given the most "mainstream exposure to non-Western musics, or the concept of '
world music.
Songwriting Harrison wrote his first song, "Don't Bother Me", while sick in a hotel bed in Bournemouth during August 1963, as "an exercise to see if I
could write a song", as he remembered. His songwriting ability improved throughout the Beatles' career, but his material did not earn full respect from Lennon, McCartney and producer
George Martin until near the group's break-up. In 1969, McCartney told Lennon: "Until this year, our songs have been better than George's. Now this year his songs are at least as good as ours". Harrison often had difficulty getting the band to record his songs. Most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contain at least two Harrison compositions; three of his songs appear on
Revolver, "the album on which Harrison came of age as a songwriter", according to Inglis. Harrison wrote the
chord progression of "Don't Bother Me" almost exclusively in the
Dorian mode, demonstrating an interest in exotic tones that eventually culminated in his embrace of Indian music. The latter proved a strong influence on his songwriting and contributed to his innovation within the Beatles. According to
Mikal Gilmore of
Rolling Stone, "Harrison's openness to new sounds and textures cleared new paths for his rock and roll compositions. His use of dissonance on ... 'Taxman' and 'I Want to Tell You' was revolutionary in popular music – and perhaps more originally creative than the avant-garde mannerisms that Lennon and McCartney borrowed from the music of
Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Luciano Berio,
Edgard Varèse and
Igor Stravinsky ...". Of the 1967 Harrison song "Within You Without You", author Gerry Farrell said that Harrison had created a "new form", calling the composition "a quintessential fusion of pop and Indian music". Lennon called the song one of Harrison's best: "His mind and his music are clear. There is his innate talent, he brought that sound together." In his next fully Indian-styled song, "The Inner Light", Harrison embraced the
Karnatak discipline of Indian music, rather than the
Hindustani style he had used in "Love You To" and "Within You Without You". Writing in 1997, Farrell commented: "It is a mark of Harrison's sincere involvement with Indian music that, nearly thirty years on, the Beatles' 'Indian' songs remain the most imaginative and successful examples of this type of fusion – for example, '
Blue Jay Way' and 'The Inner Light'." Beatles biographer Bob Spitz described "Something" as a masterpiece, and "an intensely stirring romantic ballad that would challenge 'Yesterday' and 'Michelle' as one of the most recognizable songs they ever produced". Inglis considered
Abbey Road a turning point in Harrison's development as a songwriter and musician. He described Harrison's two contributions to the LP, "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", as "exquisite", declaring them equal to any previous Beatles songs.
Collaborations From 1968 onwards, Harrison collaborated with other musicians; he brought in
Eric Clapton to play lead guitar on "
While My Guitar Gently Weeps" for the 1968 Beatles'
White Album, and collaborated with
John Barham on his 1968 debut solo album,
Wonderwall Music, which included contributions from Clapton again, as well as
Peter Tork from
the Monkees. He played on tracks by
Dave Mason,
Nicky Hopkins,
Alvin Lee,
Ronnie Wood, Billy Preston and
Tom Scott. Harrison co-wrote songs and music with Dylan, Clapton, Preston, Doris Troy, David Bromberg, Gary Wright, Wood, Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty, among others. Harrison's music projects during the final years of the Beatles included producing Apple Records artists
Doris Troy,
Jackie Lomax and Billy Preston. Harrison co-wrote the song "
Badge" with Clapton, which was included on
Cream's 1969 album,
Goodbye. Harrison played rhythm guitar on the track, using the pseudonym "L'Angelo Misterioso" for contractual reasons. In May 1970, he played guitar on several songs during a recording session for Dylan's album
New Morning. Between 1971 and 1973, he co-wrote or produced three top ten hits for Starr: "
It Don't Come Easy", "
Back Off Boogaloo" and "
Photograph". Aside from "How Do You Sleep?", his contributions to Lennon's 1971 album
Imagine included a slide guitar solo on "
Gimme Some Truth" and
dobro on "
Crippled Inside". Also that year, he produced and played slide guitar on Badfinger's top ten hit "
Day After Day", and a dobro on Preston's "
I Wrote a Simple Song". He worked with
Harry Nilsson on "
You're Breakin' My Heart" (1972) and with
Cheech & Chong on "
Basketball Jones" (1973). In 1974, Harrison founded
Dark Horse Records as an avenue for collaboration with other musicians. He wanted Dark Horse to serve as a creative outlet for artists, as Apple Records had for the Beatles. Eric Idle commented: "He's extremely generous, and he backs and supports all sorts of people that you'll never, ever hear of." The first acts signed to the new label were Ravi Shankar and the duo
Splinter. Harrison produced and made multiple musical contributions to Splinter's debut album,
The Place I Love, which provided Dark Horse with its first hit, "Costafine Town". He also produced and played guitar and
autoharp on Shankar's
Shankar Family & Friends, the label's other inaugural release. Other artists signed by Dark Horse include
Attitudes,
Henry McCullough, Jiva and
Stairsteps. Harrison collaborated with Tom Scott on Scott's 1975 album
New York Connection, and in 1981 he played guitar on "
Walk a Thin Line", from
Mick Fleetwood's
The Visitor. His contributions to Starr's solo career continued with "
Wrack My Brain", a 1981 US top 40 hit written and produced by Harrison, and guitar overdubs to two tracks on
Vertical Man (1998). In 1996, Harrison recorded "Distance Makes No Difference With Love" with Carl Perkins for the latter's album
Go Cat Go!, and, in 1990, he played slide guitar on the title track of Dylan's
Under the Red Sky album. In 2001, he performed as a guest musician on Jeff Lynne and Electric Light Orchestra's comeback album
Zoom, and on the song "Love Letters" for
Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings. He also co-wrote a new song with his son Dhani, "
Horse to the Water", which was recorded on 2 October, eight weeks before his death. It appeared on
Jools Holland's album
Small World, Big Band.
Guitars When Harrison joined the Quarrymen in 1958, his main guitar was a
Höfner President Acoustic, which he soon traded for a Höfner Club 40 model. His first solid-body electric guitar was a Czech-built
Jolana Futurama/Grazioso. The guitars he used on early recordings were mainly
Gretsch models, played through a
Vox amplifier, including a
Gretsch Duo Jet that he bought secondhand in 1961 and posed with on the album cover for
Cloud Nine (1987). He also bought a Gretsch Tennessean and a Gretsch Country Gentleman, which he played on "
She Loves You", and during the Beatles' 1964 appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1963, he bought a
Rickenbacker 425 Fireglo, and in 1964 he acquired a Rickenbacker 360/12 guitar, which was the second of its kind to be manufactured. Harrison obtained his first
Fender Stratocaster in 1965 and first used it during the recording of the
Help! album that February; he also used it when recording
Rubber Soul later that year, most notably on the song "
Nowhere Man". In early 1966, Harrison and Lennon each purchased
Epiphone Casinos, which they used on
Revolver. Harrison also used a
Gibson J-160E and a
Gibson SG Standard while recording the album. He later painted his Stratocaster in a psychedelic design that included the word "
Bebopalula" above the pickguard and the guitar's nickname, "Rocky", on the headstock. He can be seen playing the psychedelic Stratocaster on the
Our World performance of "
All You Need Is Love" and in the
Magical Mystery Tour film, both from 1967, and he continued to use it throughout his solo career. In July 1968, Clapton gave him a
Gibson Les Paul that had been stripped of its original finish and stained cherry red, which Harrison nicknamed "
Lucy". Around this time, he obtained a Gibson Jumbo J-200 acoustic guitar, which he subsequently gave to Dylan to use at the
1969 Isle of Wight Festival. In late 1968,
Fender Musical Instruments Corporation gave Harrison a custom-made
Fender Telecaster Rosewood prototype, made especially for him by Philip Kubicki. In August 2017, Fender released a "Limited Edition George Harrison Rosewood Telecaster" modelled after a Telecaster that
Roger Rossmeisl originally created for Harrison. ==Film production and HandMade films==