The Wilburys was like the Rutles: The first album took 20 minutes, the second album took even longer.”
“Well,” he says, “I was the quiet one.”
IT WAS 20 YEARS ago today, more or less, that George and a couple of cohorts named Paul and Ringo (John wasn’t around) laid down the tracks to “1 Me Mine,” the last recording by the Beatles. As a band and phenomenon the Fab Four did just about everything right, including quitting while the quitting was good. All that was left for the four individuals who once comprised the group was to live the rest of their lives in the public eye and figure out a way to make it seem like more than a postscript.
And you know it don’t come easy. Having spent most of the 70s acting out his therapies in public, John finally found a measure of serenity and was promptly martyred. Paul, the melodic genius, put out a ton of hits and more junk than Journey. The happy-go-lucky Ringo ended up in detox. Only George, the least at ease with his stardom—“I’ve never felt that comfortable with people looking at me, the kind of stuff that goes with it”—has carried on with real dignity, which says as much for his character as his talent
Of course you can’t tell him that; part of Harrison’s charm is his self-deprecating humor and lack of pretense. Sitting on a couch in one of the more nondescript offices of Warner Bros. Records, he’s wearing a T-shirt, jeans and a light jacket The familiar mop top is in he’s clean-shaven, which makes him look younger than a guy with 30 years in the biz, though as Harrison genially points out, “I’ve been trying to retire for 20.”
He’s only half kidding. A graph charting his career since 1970 would look like a suspension bridge with two peaks: one right after the Beatles broke up, with.4// Things Must Pass and the benefit concerts for Bangladesh, and the second right now, with Cloud Nine and his role putting together the Traveling Wilburys. In between there have been some good tunes and some records best forgotten, as indeed they have been. Sensing creative burnout, George sensibly took a five-year hiatus from making records during the ’80s, in which time Handmade Films, his movie production partnership with Denis O’Brien, turned out such gems as Mona Lisa and Withnail and l (and yes, Shanghai Surprise).
Through it all he’s maintained a moderately jaundiced view of his place in the music biz. A new song, “Cockamamie Business,” underscores the point, recounting Harrison’s ups and downs with the Beatles with a kind of rueful good cheer. “Didn’t want to be a star,” he sings at one point, “wanted just to play guitar.”
“Actually I should have made it ‘sitar,’” George cracks.
“I know I’m supposed to be a guitar player,” he goes on more seriously, “but 1 don’t really feel like one. I’m not someone like, say, Eric Clapton. We can talk about him ’cause he’s my friend and I know about him, he’ll just plug in his guitar, listen to the tune and blow on it and be of a certain standard immediately. I have to figure out what I’m gonna do and maybe even learn a part I’m just not that fluent with it.” *
That opinion is open to debate. Co-Wilbury Jeff Lynne calls George, “a great guitar player. When he strikes up on the slide there’s nobody better; his precision, his vibrato is perfect. But he always plays it down.”
With buddy Eric Clapton: He’s good enough to play on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”— but not the Wilburys. Photograph: Mike Wehrman/Star File
“I’m not playing it down,” George counters. “I’m just not playing it up! I think Keith [Richards] is one of the best rock ’n’ roll rhythm guitar players. I don’t think he’s very good at lead. But this is what I feel about myself too: What we do is make records, and the records have some good guitar parts on them. I like Keith enormously, I think he’s great, but he’s not Albert or B.B. King. Anyway, the main thing about him is that he has the confidence,” George smiles. “So even if it’s not perfect he doesn’t care.”
But isn’t there a virtue in concise, structured solos? Isn’t that what was sacrificed when guitar heroes came into vogue?
“Well, I’m certainly not a guitar hero,” George avers.
Maybe not, but Eric Clapton’s solos on Cloud Nine owe more to the style of Beatles’65 than Cream.
“Oh, exactly. But I’ve never been one to force myself on everything,
I like to have input from other people. If I have a song that calls for a kind of Eric Clapton guitar part, I daresay I could practice for our or so and do a part decent enough for the record. But all I’m doing is denying myself the opportunity of having Eric around and hanging out with him for a bit
“I’m not trying to be the best guitar player. I don’t really care about it To me, you can get the greatest guitar player in the world and in my eyes he’s still nothing compared to the musicians I really admire, the Ravi Shankars of the world. I’ve got a record in my bag now of a 12- year-old Indian guy playing electric mandolin who will blow away those guys in the heavy-metal bands, no question about it. It doesn’t impress me to hear some guy play this noisy fast shit I’d rather hear Robert Johnson or Ry Cooder or Segovia. Those are the guitar players I like. But you know I like everything basically—except noisy headbanging shit.” He laughs. “And drum computers and DX7s and reverb!
“So I’m not ...
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