Paul McCartney has collaborated with scores of artists over the decades, from Elvis Costello to Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Johnny Cash.

But he has never recorded a proper duet with his former Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr — until now.

Titled “Home to Us,” the track is a featured moment on McCartney’s upcoming solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, due May 29. The record was produced by Andrew Watt, whose recent credits include Dark Matter by Pearl Jam and Hackney Diamonds by the Rolling Stones.

The collaboration, however, didn’t come together entirely smoothly, as McCartney and Starr reveal in separate conversations.

Speaking on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Starr explains that the song began life two years ago as a jam between him and Watt, who lives down the street from him.

“I went down, and there was a kit in his studio,” Ringo says, “and he played guitar and we jammed.”

When Starr began working on his new album, Long Long Road, he thought the track might be right for it.

“I said, Andrew, send me that bit we did of the jamming. He never did,” he deadpans.

As McCartney revealed at a listening party for The Boys of Dungeon Lane, he heard their jam and began crafting it into a song. When Watt called Starr to ask him to add more drums to it, Ringo was, McCartney says, “a bit pissed.”

Nevertheless, McCartney pressed on with the track, writing lyrics about growing up in the Beatles’ hometown of Liverpool. It was there that he first joined forces with John Lennon and George Harrison — and where he and Lennon began crafting their earliest songs together on acoustic guitars.

“Even though where we lived was a little rough, it was home to us,” McCartney says.

Confusion continued to reign over their track, even after McCartney sent the demo to Starr to add vocals. Rather than sing the entire song, Starr recorded only the chorus, leading McCartney to assume that the drummer didn’t like the track.

After the two former Beatles talked it through, however, everything fell into place. Starr returned to the studio to record additional drums, and the song ultimately evolved into a true collaboration.

In all likelihood, the misunderstanding came down to Starr’s lack of experience, McCartney joked, noting with a laugh: “Ringo’s never done a duet with one of the Beatles.”

According to Billboard, the finished track has a distinctly Beatles-esque feel, featuring tempo shifts, key changes and layered harmonies. Among the voices joining McCartney and Starr are Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri of Texas.

It’s been a busy period for McCartney. In addition to preparing the new album, he’s been celebrating the release of the documentary McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass, which chronicles the search for his long-missing Höfner 500/1 violin bass. The instrument disappeared in 1972 and was finally recovered in 2024 after the Lost Bass Project launched a global hunt for the legendary guitar.

When Dolly Parton, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr recorded “Let It Be” for her 2023 album, Rockstar, it marked a historic meeting of English and Nashville music royalty.

“I just sent them a love note through their managers, and I just said what I was doing,” Parton told NPR in 2023. “And I said, ‘I didn’t want to put you on the spot, but I’d love to have you sing with me on my rock album. And if you’re interested, call me at this number.’”

Dolly had already recorded “Let It Be” when she got the idea to contact Paul McCartney. “And so I contacted him. He was so gracious.

“And then I thought, Well, we got to have Ringo, because that’s the last of the Beatles. So I asked Ringo if he would do it. Same thing: ‘I’d be glad to do it.’”

The recording was another milestone in the career of Parton, the hit-making singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist, who turns 80 on January 19.

But it turns out she had already met both Beatles years earlier, in the 1970s. What’s more, each occasion had been memorable for reasons that had nothing to do with the Beatles.

Dolly met McCartney and his first wife, Linda, on June 16, 1974, backstage at Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee. Paul and Linda were in town with their family for a six-week stay, during which time they recorded a quartet of non-album singles with their group Wings, including the number three hit “Junior’s Farm.”

During their time in Nashville, the McCartney's decided to attend the Grand Masters Fiddling Contest taking place at Opryland. When intermission came, they were invited backstage, where they met Dolly and country star Porter Wagoner and were photographed by Jack Corn for a story in The Tennessean.

Coincidentally, the event was special for another reason: It marked the last appearance Dolly and Wagoner made together in the 1970s. They had teamed up as a duo in 1967, a few years after Dolly left behind her family and first Martin guitar and set off on a music career. She and Wagoner had performed their final concert as a duo one week before meeting the McCartneys, on June 9. (Their split was the impetus for her to write her hit “I Will Always Love You” as thanks to Wagoner for all he had done for her career.)

A few years and a cross-country journey later, Dolly met Ringo Starr courtesy of Ken Mansfield, the former U.S. manager of the Beatles’ Apple Records, as well as a Grammy award–winning producer. The time was the late 1970s, and the place was Los Angeles, where Mansfield was luring Nashville stars in an attempt to break the rock-and-roll stronghold on clubs along the Sunset Strip. Waylon Jennings and Dolly were among the country artists who picked up their acoustic guitars and made the move west.

Several years before then, Starr had settled in Los Angeles, where he remained close with Mansfield. As a lifelong country music fan, the former Beatle was thrilled with the Nashville expatriates and spent one memorable evening watching Waylon Jennings perform and hanging out with him afterward.

It turned out Starr was eager to meet Dolly.

“He was very intrigued by Dolly‘s career,” Mansfield wrote in his entertaining 2007 memoir, The White Book. Dolly was, he writes, “a giant Beatles fan and, knowing that I had worked with them, had jokingly mentioned that someday she would like to meet them, Ringo in particular.”

In short order, Mansfield arranged dinner at his home for a small group, including Dolly and Ringo. Neither knew the other would be there.

“Both invitees were thrilled at the surprise,” Mansfield wrote, “and the intimacy of the evening really made the whole thing very special.”

Special — but not eventful. That is, not until Mansfield’s friend Stewart Levine crashed the party. Levine was a producer of note, with clients that included Simply Red, B.B. King, Lionel Richie, Sly Stone, Patti LaBelle and Joe Cocker. He was also a huge Dolly Parton fan and was dying to meet her. Unfortunately, Mansfield insisted the guest list should be small, “to keep the focus on just Ringo and Dolly spending time together.”

Levine didn‘t care. Shortly after dinner, he rang Mansfield’s doorbell. When the host answered the door, the producer muscled his way in, leading to a noisy confrontation.

As the men argued in the hallway, Dolly suddenly appeared. Seeing Levine, she stopped in her tracks and stared at him wide-eyed.

“After a very pregnant pause, Dolly began to speak and in a stuttering, shaky voice asked Stewart if he was Stewart Levine, the famous producer,” Mansfield wrote.

Struggling to comprehend what was happening, Levine mumbled “yes” as Dolly gazed lovingly at him.

“She continued to explain that in her lifetime she never expected that she would ever get the chance to be in the same room with Stewart Levine, let alone have the privilege of meeting him,” Mansfield wrote. ”She went on further saying that she was a giant fan of his and had absolutely adored him from afar for quite a long time.

“She then delivered the fatal blow by announcing that she was going to have to leave the room for fear that she would no longer be able to contain herself and might jump his bones right in front of everyone,” Mansfield recalled.

“She made an abrupt about-face, as if fearful of being unable to control her emotions, and returned to the living room.”

The men stood speechless for a long while. Eventually they made their way to the living room where Dolly and the others were waiting. As they appeared, everyone burst into laughter.

It had all been a joke. Hearing the commotion after Levine forced his way in, Mansfield’s wife explained to Dolly that the producer was infatuated with her, and Dolly decided to have a little fun at his expense.

“I think Stewart was so stunned by what had gone down that he wasn't even the least bit disappointed that Dolly didn't really have the hots for him,” Mansfield wrote.

Although Dolly had met her second Beatle that evening, she managed to make the night memorable for an entirely different reason.

With a fourth Beatles Anthology on the way, a previously unseen interview with George Harrison discussing the creation of the first in the series from 1995 has surfaced online.

The so-called philosophical Beatle discussed the breadth of the comprehensive Anthology 1 release, which featured 60 tracks, including “Free as a Bird,” the first new song from the Fab Four in 25 years. The project saw surviving members Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr trolling the archives, right back to the group's formative days as the Quarrymen.

“Long before we came to Abbey Road, we recorded 'That'll be the Day' in a studio in Liverpool,” Harrison tells bass player Mo Foster in the clip. “It was just a place you go in and go straight onto disc, and we paid for it ourselves. We're going really from A to Z.”

The exhaustive collection, which includes outtakes and rarities from across the band's lifespan — including a live cover of Chuck Berry's “Roll Over Beethoven” — ensured the release represented every era of the band. But the further back in time the three musicians travelled, the more difficult their task became.

“We've sifted through the early tapes, but you see, a lot of the early tapes were done in mono,” he explains. “The only tapes remaining are the actual masters. All the outtakes were thrown away long before people thought we were any good.”

The band had pored through the tapes at Abbey Road, the London studio with many ties to the band. That included their audition tapes they tracked for Decca Records, when they were eying their first record deal.

“We got turned down, and they signed Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead,” Harrison laughs. “Somebody said to Brian Epstein, ‘Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein,’ and that was probably the biggest error in music history.”

There are also stark parallels with how the Struts' record label told the band not to have too many guitars on their new Brian May-powered reworking of their biggest song. They, too, were told that guitar music was on its deathbed.

“It's a great room,” Harrison says of the studio. “At the very first session we did here, which was before Ringo was in the band, in June 1962, we recorded ‘Love Me Do’ with Pete Best.”

The band then returned in October of that year to rerecord the song again with Starr behind the kit. “But George Martin didn't know about Ringo, and he'd hired a session drummer. That's the famous story,” says Harrison, again with a chuckle. “He put out the single without Ringo playing on it! So, we're going to put out the version with Pete Best on it, because it never did come out.”

The second Abbey Road session was also memorable for all the wrong reasons. Harrison had been in a fight with some Liverpool locals who were upset about Best being replaced by Starr. Harrison recalls: “I had a black eye because people were shouting, ‘Get Ringo out. Ringo never, Pete Best forever.’

“We did so many takes of ‘Love Me Do.’ In those days, we never had light gauge strings; we used to have to have a really high action and very heavy gauge strings. After take 20, it was pretty hard on the fingers.”

Two new songs featured on the Anthology releases, with both “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” coming from John Lennon demos handed to the group by his widow, Yoko Ono.. It was the first time the trio had worked on a song together since 1970, and McCartney believes that John Lennon’s spirit often made itself known during the sessions on several occasions.

For Beatles fans, new music a quarter of a century after the heartbreak of their breakup was headline news. For Harrison, the biggest takeaway from those sessions was that water was passing under the trio’s proverbial bridge.

“The thing that's the most pleasing is that we're all friendly again,” he says. “I mean, we had some turbulent years in the meantime. It's just fun to have your old friends back again.”

John Lennon, however, felt the individual members flourished after the band broke up, even if it took several attempts for McCartney to get his solo career off the ground.

During a whirlwind decade, the Beatles were transformed from a group of four fresh-faced Liverpudlians into the biggest band in the world. Across 12 studio albums, they built a legacy that, over half a century later, remains largely unchallenged.

But despite that, John Lennon believes the Fab Four “flowered” after the group’s demise in 1970. In particular, he says his lyric-writing talents grew “a millionfold,” and he singled another member out for the way he came into himself away from the band environment.

When it came to establishing themselves as solo artists, each of the Beatles — Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — moved quickly. In 1970, the same year they released their final album, Let It Be, each of the four released solo albums. Harrison, having grown frustrated by having his wings clipped in the Beatles, released his triple album, All Things Must Pass, a commercial success that saw him establish himself outside the shadow of the Lennon-McCartney tandem.

Although All Things Must Pass performed the best of the group's solo albums that year, Lennon got high marks for his John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album, and quickly shot back with his second full-length, 1971's Imagine. The album was a huge success, selling double Platinum in the U.S. while its title track, "Imagine," became Lennon's signature tune and the song most associated with his solo years.

Starr, meanwhile, was having success as a solo artist with his hit song "It Don't Come Easy" and attempting to build a second career as a film actor in eccentric comedies, like his spaghetti-western film, Blindman.

“Imagine how we've flowered since then,” Lennon told Hit Parader in February 1972, a few months after the release of Imagine. “George is suddenly the biggest seller of all of us. I think my music's improved a millionfold lyric-wise, and Ringo's coming out and writing 'It Don't Come Easy,' and now he's going to write the title song for this cowboy thing he's in. It's really beautiful.”

Interestingly, Lennon had no praise for McCartney. At that point, the bass guitarist was having a rough time launching his solo career. His solo albums McCartney and Ram were critical and sales disappointments, and Wild Life, the debut album from his band Wings, fared even worse. Another year would pass before his well-timed TV special coincided with a turning point in his fortunes.

"The fact is, the Beatles have left school, and we have to get a job,” Lennon had told Hit Parader. “That's made us work — really work harder. I think we're much better than we ever were when we were together.

“Look at us today. I'd sooner have Ram, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, George's album, and Ringo's single and the movies than Let It Be or Abbey Road,” he said, referring to the group's final two albums.

Yoko Ono, sitting in the interview for her part in Imagine, added rather diplomatically, “If the four of them had gone on, then they would have suffocated each other.”

Talking to the magazine about Imagine, Lennon revealed that he had intended it to feature three-quarters of the Beatles.

“George is on half of my new album playing guitar. The only reason Ringo wasn't on it was because he was abroad, making his movie,” he had said. “So then the three of us would have been on, but then it wouldn't have been the Beatles. It would have been Plastic Ono because I would have had the final say.

“There would be no decision-making by George or Ringo, other than if I liked an idea I'd take it — which is what happened with the Beatles — but then it was more diplomatic.”

Of course, fans would have to wait until the 1990s for the release of any new material featuring the four Beatles. The Anthology series, issued in 1995 and 1996, brought with it two new singles — "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love" — created from Lennon's unfinished demos. Although he had been murdered in 1980, Lennon was present at those sessions like a ghost, according to McCartney.

More recently, Starr and McCartney labored to finish an old Lennon demo the guitarist had said would be “great” for the drummer.

Last month, a new, ninth chapter in the Beatles Anthology documentary, and a fourth album in the same series were announced. The release includes 13 previously unreleased demos, session recordings, and other rare recordings.

And in a new development, radio and TV personality Elliot Mintz has revealed what he believes to be the last meeting between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, coming two years after what was, for years, thought to have been their last.

When the surviving Beatles — Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — reunited in the studio in the mid ’90s, the band members felt they weren’t alone, as “strange goings-on” hinted at John Lennon’s supernatural presence.

The trio’s team-up, coming 25 years after the Fab Four disbanded, and a decade and a half after the death of John Lennon, represented the time they’d worked on new music together as they set about bringing the unreleased John Lennon song “Free as a Bird” to life.

It was one of two new songs, alongside “Real Love” — also born from John Lennon’s mind — to feature on 1995’s Anthology box set. As news of a fourth addition in the Anthology series broke last week, McCartney’s reflections on the unusual incidents that surrounded the recording of “Free as a Bird” have come to light.

“There were a lot of strange goings-on in the studio — noises that shouldn’t have been there and equipment doing all manner of weird things,” McCartney once told OnHike.com (via The Mirror). “There was just an overall feeling that John was around.”

Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, had given the rest of the band the two of his demos with the view of transforming them into finished songs. The unexplainable occurrences weren't exclusive to "Free as a Bird" either; the "Real Love" sessions were just as creepy.

“We put one of those spoof backward recordings on the end of the single for a laugh, to give all those Beatles nuts something to do,” McCartney said with a laugh. “I think it was the line of a George Formby song.” Formby was a popular entertainer when the Beatles were growing up and a favorite of the group's members, particularly Harrison.

“Then we were listening to the finished single in the studio one night, and it gets to the end, and it goes, ‘zzzwrk nggggwaaahhh jooohn lennnnnon qwwwrk.’ I swear to God.

“We were like, ‘It’s John. He likes it!’”

Lennon once told his son Julian if he ever needed to contact him from beyond the grave, he'd send a white feather. That wasn't lost on McCartney when the three musicians stepped outside the studio for an impromptu photo opportunity. At the last minute, a white peacock entered the frame.

“That’s John. Spooky, eh?” McCartney reflects. “It was like John was hanging around. We felt that all through the recording.”

Those kinds of instances might have given them the chills, but in truth, the band had welcomed Lennon's presence into the studio. Starr himself had said they kept hitting a wall when they pushed on as a trio, with Lennon’s absence a gaping hole.

“I invented a little scenario,” McCartney later said (via the HollyHobs YouTube channel). “He’s gone away on holiday, and he’s just rung us up and says, 'Just finish the track for us, will you? I’m sending the cassette, I trust you.'

“That was the key thing, 'I trust you, just do your stuff on it.'

“I told this to the other guys, and Ringo was particularly pleased. It was very nice, and it was very reverent toward John.”

Years later, after Harrison had also passed on, Starr would reunite with McCartney for his solo track "Grow Old With Me." As things stand, it is the only track from one of the four's solo releases to feature songwriting credits from the entirety of the Fab Four, with another old Lennon demo revitalized, and a touching tribute to Harrison woven into its music.

As hoped for, the band's latest Anthology release includes outtakes and rarities, and the band's now nine-part documentary has been expanded with another episode that charts the making of the first Anthology in 1994 and 1995. The ghost of JohnLennon will undoubtedly haunt that, too.

It hasn’t been hugely uncommon for Beatles members to collaborate together in the wake of the band’s demise in 1970 – that infamous rooftop concert was their final public appearance. They have, however, usually been a little limited in their scope.

Ringo Starr guested on George Harrison's third album, “All Things Must Pass”, soon after the group’s split and Ringo's solo career – which has yielded an exhaustive 21 studio albums since "Sentimental Journey" (1970) – has seen the drummer frequently join forces with the rest of the Fab Four.

But rarely did more than two Beatles get together for a song. Sure, many of Starr’s albums have featured contributions from Harrison, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon, but on separate tracks. Harrison’s 1981 single, "All Those Years Ago", reconfigured as a tribute to John Lennon after his murder the year before, featured Starr on drums and McCartney's backing vocals. But Starr's "Grow Old With Me" shattered that precedent in a remarkable way.

Released in 2019 as part of his 20th album, “What’s My Name”, the song started life in Lennon’s imagination. Little came of the demo until it serendipitously ended up in Starr's hands years after Lennon's passing.

“John wrote it,” he told TMS Global Entertainment during the record’s press tour. “And I like to mention this because Jack Douglas [the record’s producer], sent it to me out of the blue. That's why I love life. Things just arrive.

“Jack Douglas said, ‘Did you ever hear what John said on the Bermuda tapes?’”

As the name suggests, the Bermuda tapes relate to a series of demo recordings made by Lennon in Bermuda. Most songs would end up on his 1980 album “Double Fantasy” with Yoko Ono, the last record he released before his death. This idea, however, remained untouched nearly 40 years later.

“At the beginning of the cassette – I have to well up, I can’t help it. I’ve told this story nine times today – he says, “Oh, that would be good for Richard Starkey. This would be great for you, Ringo!’

“I thought, ‘It’s so beautiful.’ We’ll never know why he didn’t finish it, but we did a lot of the track. Paul was coming into town, and I said, ‘I’d love for you to play on this track.’ I thought he'd be just perfect because he's so melodic and he can only enhance the track. That's all he does when he plays, every time.”

And so, three-quarters of the Beatles featured on the track, with a touching guitar solo coming courtesy of Joe Walsh. But, with the memory of another fallen Beatle in mind, Douglas had one final touch in mind.

“Jack, who did the strings, does a George line. He plays a title of one of George's song in the with the strings, and if you listen to it carefully, you'll hear it.”

The melody in question – spoiler alert – is from Harrison’s resplendent Beatles hit, “Here Comes the Sun”. It's a delicate, heartfelt touch

“So it’s like George is on it, too,” Starr smiles, a look of disbelief visible despite his aviator shades covering much of his face.

In related news, Derek Shulman has revealed how his pre-Gentle Giant band secretly recorded an album with Beatles gear, and, following Ozzy Osbourne's passing, comments on how the Beatles saved his life have resurfaced. He compared crossing paths with Paul McCartney in 2001 to meeting Jesus.

The four Beatles came and went in a whirlwind eight years. While several problems were likely to blame for their breakup — including disagreement over management, financial problems with Apple Corps and a desire to pursue other creative interests — the most likely factor was each member's emerging sense of individuality. After years of looking, dressing and creating as a group, the four Beatles were each coming into a sense of their own possibilities as solo artists.

John Lennon became interested in pursuing art rock with Yoko Ono. Ringo Starr was developing a new career as an actor. Paul McCartney had moved to fill the void left by the 1967 death of manager Brian Epstein and had by the end of 1968 become the one Beatle with any strong ambitions left for their future.

And then there was George Harrison, easily the most independent of the group. It was Harrison who, in 1966, began exploring sitar with Ravi Shankar, and who subsequently quit playing guitar for a year, unless required to for recording sessions. And it was Harrison who led the others into the study of Transcendental Meditation, a practice that had a transformative effect on each of them.

Finally, there was Apple Corps, the group's multimedia conglomerate. More than any other Beatle, Harrison had risen to the challenge of finding and developing new talent for the firm's Apple Records label, and he was the first to create his own solo albums with the release of his Wonderwall Music soundtrack in 1968.

Through it all, Harrison continued to write music for the Beatles, although little of it made it on to their records. From the start, Lennon and McCartney had cemented their place at the core of the band’s songwriting, an indelible partnership that feels as potent today as it did decades ago.

And yet, ironically, it was Harrison who would have the last word when it came to the Beatles' recordings. Disregarding the recent, AI-powered “Now and Then,” the final song recorded during the Beatles' existence as a group was actually a Harrison tune: "I Me Mine," from their 1970 swan song, Let It Be.

And, not surprisingly perhaps, it is a song about ego, the very thing that was tearing the group apart.

As Harrison explained in 1995's Anthology film, "I Me Mine" is all about “the ego problem" engulfing the Beatles. He, in particular, was tired of having Lennon and McCartney veto his songs, and fed up with McCartney's bossy nature, which caused Harrison to briefly quit the group during Let It Be. His frustration led him to write "I Me Mine" almost spontaneously.

“It is a very strange song which I wrote the night before it was in the film you see,” Harrison told the BBC of its origins in 1970. “At this time we were at Twickenham and I wrote this song; it took five minutes just from an idea I had."

Like many of Harrison's other songs, "I Me Mine" was rejected by Lennon and McCartney. In fact, it wouldn't have even been recorded had a snippet of the song not made it into the Let It Be film directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. In the scene, Harrison, McCartney and Starr rehearse the song at Twickenham Film Studios in London — where shooting began for the Let It Be film — while Lennon and Ono dance to its waltz-time beat.

“I went into the studio and sang it to Ringo," Harrison explained," and they happened to film it. And that film sequence was quite nice, you see, so they wanted to keep that sequence in the film. But I hadn't really recorded it in Apple [Studios] with the rest of the songs [on the album], so we had to go in the studio and record it.”

The song was tracked on January 3, 1970. By then, the Beatles were as good as finished. Lennon who doesn't feature on the track, had quit in September, although it was agreed his departure would not be immediately publicized.

Let It Be was released the following May, a month after Lennon cast the first stones of his solo career with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, dawning a new era for the Fab Four.

Paul McCartney called up two A-list guests as he brought his two-year-long Got Back tour to a close in London on December 19. But it was an instrument’s return from half a century in the shadows that stole the headlines.

The 59th show of a tour that kicked off in 2022 and has taken McCartney's band to four continents treated fans to a career-spanning 36-song set list, including Beatles, Wings, and solo songs.

For the final show, he tapped Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood for a run through"Get Back," while Ringo Starr showed up to perform on "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Helter Skelter," drawing a raucous reaction from the sold-out O2 Arena, London .

But "Get Back" was special for another reason: The song marked the first live appearance of McCartney’s original Höfner 500/1 violin bass in 50 years. The instrument, which was stolen in 1972, was found in early 2024 after a global search.

McCartney purchased the instrument in 1961 for £30 (approximately $37) from the Steinway Musikhaus store, during the Beatles’ famed Hamburg residency. It was also during this period that George Harrison bought his oddball Futurama guitar in lieu of a Stratocaster. That guitar, seen as the electric guitar that launched the Beatles, sold for $1.27m earlier this year.

The bass played a key role in the Beatles' early studio and stage work. It was used to track early hits like "Love Me Do" and "She Loves You" before being relegated to backup duties following major repair work in ‘64.

The bass reappeared in the 1968 music video for the Beatles' single "Revolution" and during the making of the Let It Be album. It can be seen in the 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back, where McCartney plays the bass while writing "Get Back."

Its last sighting was on January 21, 1969, just days before the Beatles’ iconic rooftop show at the Apple HQ on Saville Row, London. The bass was stolen in 1972 while McCartney and his group Wings were recording Red Rose Speedway in various London studios.

The Lost Bass Project was formed in September 2023 to help find the bass, which was discoverd in February 2024 in an attic in England.

“We received information that it had been stolen from the back of a van during the night of 10th October 1972, in the Notting Hill area of London,” the Lost Bass Project shared via a statement on its website.

“As a result of further publicity,” its statement continued, “someone living in a terraced house on the south coast of England remembered an old bass guitar that was in their attic. They soon realized just what they had. Within days it was back with Paul McCartney!”

McCartney was, understandably, as “excited as a schoolboy” to have the bass returned to him, and he kept true to his promise to fix it up and bring it back to the stage where it belongs.

“We've been looking for it for 50 years,” he proudly told his London crowd, “and I got it back. Here to make its first stage appearance in 50 years is my original bass.”

The show's finale saw Ringo Starr join his fellow former Beatle for "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" before they performed "Helter Skelter."

“It’s fantastic, playing with my old mate,” Starr told the exuberant arena before departing, leaving McCartney to conclude the show with "Carry That Weight" and "The End."

With any luck it won't be the last time McCartney tours. As he said to the crowd before leaving the stage, “All that remains to be said is, 'See you next time!'”

What is a guitarist without a guitar? In September 1966, George Harrison all but gave up playing the instrument when he embarked on a spiritual journey that began with his study of the sitar. With the Beatles just a few months away from recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Harrison traveled to India to begin formal lessons with sitar master Ravi Shankar.

As he discovered, his education wasn’t performed over a matter of hours-long sessions, nor was it strictly about the sitar. Indian music is inextricably linked with meditation and philosophy. Hindus believe music is God, and the ragas of Indian music are extended hymns to the creator. Studying the sitar is a devotion that takes a lifetime, and which has but one aim: to reveal God.

Far from daunted, Harrison threw himself into his lessons. He was eager to find something for himself, if not of himself. After some three years of global fame as a member of the world’s most popular rock and roll band, he was suffering an identity crisis that had been some time coming.

“You see your pictures and read articles about George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and John Lennon,” he told a reporter in August 1963, when the Beatles were still unknown in the United States. “But you don’t actually think, Oh, that’s me. There I am in the paper. It’s funny. It’s just as though it’s a different person.”

By 1966, Harrison was known around the world, but his thoughts and ideas were concealed behind the Beatles’ identity. “The funny position I was in was that, in many ways, you know, this whole focus of attention was on the Beatles,” he recalled years later. “So in that respect I was part of it. But from being in them, an attitude came over, which was John and Paul’s.”

Like Lennon and McCartney, Harrison aspired to write songs, and while the few he’d composed were strong enough to stand alongside theirs, his tunes were given less time and consideration by the band and its producer, George Martin. Harrison had even begun to lose his sense of guitar craft. He blamed the band’s constant touring and the hordes of screaming teens at their shows for his inability to develop and improve.

But in his studies with Shankar, and eventually with the help of meditation, Harrison found a way to grow not just as a musician but as a person too. The work consumed him. “[The sitar] has taken over one hundred percent of my musical life,” he told Disc and Music Echo in May 1967, eight months after he began his work with Shankar, and just days before the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the album that featured his Indian raga–inspired track “Within You Without You.”

“I still love rock, pop and electronic music. But there’s more to get immersed in, for me, in Indian [music]. I shall try to write more songs, and I think it can all be integrated into the Beatles quite nicely if I can keep improving.”

And then, in the summer of 1968, as abruptly as he’d abandoned the guitar, Harrison recommitted to it. He’d even written a song in which the instrument played a central role: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” It was one of four Harrison compositions included on The Beatles, the group’s so-called White Album, recorded and released that year.

Unlike many of his contributions from the past two years, the new songs were contemporary rock and roll tunes. Stylistically, however, there was nothing in the Beatles’ catalog quite like them.

Then, the following May, for just the second time, one of Harrison’s songs was selected as a B-side for a single. “Old Brown Shoe” may not have had the pop appeal of the A-side, “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” but it was a rollicking good rock and roll song, full of snarling lead guitar licks and a propulsive bass line played by Harrison himself.

This was but a glimpse of what was to come later that year with the release of Abbey Road, which featured two of Harrison’s best songs: “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun.” “Something” was so good that it was issued as an A-side single. Even Lennon said, “I think it’s about the best track on the album.”

By then it was impossible not to notice a transformation not only in Harrison’s songwriting but also in his guitar playing. More melodic and bluesy than usual, his lead lines were mellifluous, filled with vocal-like bends and moments of sustained beauty as he basked in the spaces between the notes, bending strings and working a sensuous vibrato.

His guitar playing was impeccable, nowhere more so than on drummer Ringo Starr’s Abbey Road song, “Octopus’s Garden,” where Harrison’s lines moved like liquid, imparting the sense of wonder and joy at the heart of the song.

It was clear that a change of some sort had taken place in Harrison. He wasn’t simply a better guitarist or songwriter – he had become stylistically whole.

Robert Johnson may have allegedly made a deal with the devil in exchange for his guitar talents, but George Harrison had committed to reaching God and become an even finer guitarist than before, not to mention a stronger songwriter and more confident creative artist.

The timing couldn’t have been better. The Beatles were slowly but surely breaking up. Over the next year, Harrison would finally emerge as an independent artist with what many consider to be the finest solo Beatle album, All Things Must Past.

In his remarkable career, 1970 is indelible as the year George Harrison came into his own as a songwriter and guitarist.

RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE

He was known as the Quiet Beatle, but George Harrison always stood out distinctly. As the group’s lead guitarist, he frequently had his brief moment in the spotlight, not the least when the Beatles made their U.S. debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.

There may be no more thrilling guitar moments from that first show than Harrison’s confidently fluid solo on “Till There Was You,” delivered with a cocky nonchalance, or his effortless guitar break on “I Saw Her Standing There,” performed while hopping in his boots and smiling at the audience as his fingers danced over the fretboard. His exuberance and charm were in sharp contrast to Lennon and McCartney’s more serious and occasionally clashing temperaments.

“He was a catalyst in the band,” recalled Beatles friend, artist and former Manfred Mann bassist Klaus Voormann. “Paul and John were so different, and George was bringing a certain peace into the setup. George was right in the middle between those two characters.”

He was also the moodiest of the foursome. His premiere solo composition, 1963’s “Don’t Bother Me,” was a minor-key surf-beat tune that told the world to keep its distance. The sentiment contrasted sharply with Lennon and McCartney’s love songs, whose first-person point of view made them appear to be direct messages to their female teenage fans.

Harrison could be acerbic (consider his break-up song “Think for Yourself”), indifferent (“If I Needed Someone”) and bitter (“Taxman”). But he could be tender as well, as in his two compositions from 1965’s Help!, “I Need You” and “You Like Me Too Much.”

“George had two incredible personalities,” Starr said. “He had the ‘love, bag of beads’ personality, and the ‘bag of anger.’ He was very black and white.”

He saved the colors and shades for his guitar work. Harrison’s style was a deft fusion of Buddy Holly’s rhythm/lead work, Chuck Berry’s double-stop riffing and Carl Perkins’ sprightly country and rockabilly style, which included chordal arpeggios and single- and double-string bends.

“He was clearly an innovator,” Eric Clapton recalled. “George, to me, was taking certain elements of R&B and rock and rockabilly and creating something unique.”

Harrison’s jazz influences, which included Django Reinhardt, were less obvious but could be overt at times, as on his polished solo for “Till There Was You.”

It was largely through his guitar work that Harrison distinguished himself in the Beatles’ early years. His songwriting contributions were scant, but more than any of the band’s members he lent signature elements to their sound.

During the recording of “Don’t Bother Me” on September 11, 1963, it was Harrison who pushed George Martin, unsuccessfully, to get a different guitar sound using a fuzz box. In the end, they applied tremolo from a Vox AC30 to Lennon’s guitar, probably his 1958 Rickenbacker 325, making this recording, as Andy Babiuk notes in Beatles Gear, “the group’s first evident use in the studio of an electronic effect on the guitar sound.”

On 1965’s “I Need You” and the “Ticket to Ride” B-side “Yes It Is,” Harrison treated his guitar with evocative volume swells, performed with assistance from Lennon. “I could never coordinate it,” he said of his attempts to use an expression pedal, while describing how “John would kneel down in front of me and turn my guitar’s volume control.”

Remarkably simple and employed just a few times in the Beatles’ extensive catalog (including at the tail end of McCartney’s Revolver track “Here, There and Everywhere”), the effect is nevertheless one of Harrison’s many memorable sonic signatures.

His instrument choices were equally notable. In 1964, Harrison received a prototype of Rickenbacker’s new 360/12 12-string guitar and quickly put it to use on the recording of the single “I Call Your Name” and the group’s third album, A Hard Day’s Night. For the next year and a half, the guitar made appearances throughout the Beatles’ recordings, including on “Ticket to Ride,” from Help!, and Harrison’s Rubber Soul contribution “If I Needed Someone,” where it outlined the song’s signature melody, which was itself inspired by Roger McGuinn’s riff from the Byrds track “The Bells of Rhymney,” also performed on a 360/12.

A PASSAGE TO INDIA

But no instrument was as consequential to the sound of the Beatles’ music, rock and roll, or Harrison’s own development as a musician than the sitar. He had first encountered it on the set of the group’s 1965 film, Help! “There were some Indian musicians in a restaurant scene, and I first messed around with one there,” he recalled.

Harrison felt there was something familiar about Indian music. “It was as if I already knew it,” he said. “When I was a child, we had a crystal radio with long- and shortwave bands, and so it’s possible I might have already heard some Indian classical music.” According to Harrison biographer Joshua Greene, his mother used to listen to the weekly broadcast Radio India when she was pregnant with George, “hoping it would bring peace and calm” to him.

As his curiosity grew, Harrison purchased a sitar from a shop on London’s Oxford Street called Indiacraft. “It was a real crummy-quality one, actually, but I bought it and mucked about with it a bit,” he recalled.

It was summer 1965. That October, the Beatles began the recording sessions for Rubber Soul. Lennon had a new song called “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” and was unhappy with how it was coming along.

“We went through many different versions of the song,” he said. “It was never right, and I was getting very angry about it.” The Beatles often turned to unusual sounds when they felt a song was lacking something special. Lennon asked Harrison if he could double his acoustic guitar line on the sitar. “He was willing to have a go, as is his wont,” Lennon said.

The result transformed both the song and popular music.

The following March, the Rolling Stones followed suit by ornamenting their new single “Paint It Black” with a sitar riff written and performed by Brian Jones, who had studied the instrument under Ravi Shankar’s student Harihar Rao. The track became the first rock and roll record with a sitar to hit the top of the charts, and launched a mini craze for the instrument.

The increased demand was felt particularly by New York session multi-instrumentalist Vincent Bell, who suddenly found himself hauling his heavy sitar from gig to gig. Worn out by the effort, Bell created a portable electric sitar based on an electric guitar design, which was then developed into a production model under Danelectro’s Coral brand.

Eventually, the sound of his electric sitar was heard on late-’60s hits like the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby,” Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made to Love Her,” Joe South’s “Games People Play” and many others.

The strains of Indian music became even more evident on the Beatles’ next album, Revolver, where Harrison introduced his first full-fledged sitar track, “Love You To.” Still untrained on the instrument, he applied blues-style licks to it, creating a subgenre of his own somewhere between Delta blues and Indian raga.

The growing influence of Indian music was evident on Paul McCartney’s stinging guitar solo for Harrison’s “Taxman,” a flourish made all the more ironic by the fact that Harrison himself had been unable to muster the performance.

McCartney also lent Indian-style ornamentation to his vocals on the fadeout to Harrison’s “I Want to Tell You,” an element that likewise appeared in Lennon’s backward vocals on “Rain,” recorded during Revolver.

Similarly, Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” was played as a heavy droning raga, as was “And Your Bird Can Sing.” On the latter, over a droning E chord played by Lennon and Harrison on their Epiphone Casinos, Harrison and McCartney performed a baroque lead-guitar harmony, composed by Harrison, that incorporated quick half- and whole-step bends. The result is one part Bach, one part Nashville pedal-steel guitar and one part Indian raga. It provided further evidence of the Eastern influence that was seeping into Harrison’s music.

But it was also a sign of his growing desire for something new. Revolver was, like all of the Beatles’ albums, followed by a tour, but one that proved to be disastrous. They were harassed and threatened in Manila after they unintentionally stood up Philippines First Lady Imelda Marcos. In the United States, they were under attack for Lennon’s remark to London’s Daily Standard that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.”

The group had already decided this would be its final tour, and Harrison couldn’t have been happier.

The last stop was at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on August 29. As the airliner carrying the Beatles’ back to England lifted off from LAX the next evening, he turned to a reporter onboard the plane to cover the group’s tour. “Well, that’s it,” he said flatly. “I’m not a Beatle anymore.”

ROUND TRIP

With no recording sessions scheduled until late November, the Beatles had nearly three months free. Lennon took a role in the satirical pacifist movie How I Won the War, shot in Spain, where he was joined by Starr. McCartney vacationed and scored music for the feature film The Family Way.

Harrison, for his part, left for India to begin his studies with Shankar.

The two men had first met in London the previous June. “The press had been trying to put me and him together since I used the sitar on ‘Norwegian Wood,’” Harrison recalled. “They started thinking: ‘A photo opportunity – a Beatle with an Indian.’ So they kept trying to put us together, and I said ‘no,’ because I knew I’d meet him under the proper circumstances, which I did. He also came round to my house, and I had a couple of lessons from him on how to sit and hold the sitar.”

Now Shankar welcomed his new student on a houseboat in the Himalayas, where they spent five to eight hours a day in lessons. Harrison found Shankar’s generosity touching, in particular given that he was the world’s most famous sitarist. “The moment we started, the feelings I got were of his patience, compassion and humility,” he said.

“The fact that he could do one of his five-hour concerts, but at the same time he could sit down and teach somebody from scratch the very basics: how to hold the sitar, how to sit in the correct position, how to wear the pick on your finger, how to begin playing. We did that, and he started me going on the scales. And he enjoyed it, he wasn’t grudging at all, and he wasn’t flash about it either.”

Sitting with the sitar for such long periods made Harrison’s hips sore, so Shankar brought in a yoga teacher to teach him exercises. Harrison also began his indoctrination in Indian religion.

“Ravi had a really sweet brother called Raju, who gave me a lot of books by wise men,” Harrison said. He recalled a life-changing passage from one of them, written by Swami Vivekananda, which said, “If there’s a God you must see him, and if there’s a soul we must perceive it. Otherwise it’s better not to believe.”

The words were a revelation to Harrison who, as a Catholic, had been raised in the Christian tradition to take God’s existence on faith. “For me, going to India and reading somebody saying, ‘No, you can’t believe anything until you have direct perception of it’ – which was obvious, really – made me think, Wow! Fantastic! At last I’ve found somebody who makes some sense,” he said.

Away from the Beatles, studying sitar and opening his mind to spiritual insights, Harrison was transformed. “It was the first feeling I’d ever had of being liberated from being a Beatle or a number,” he said.

Harrison’s self-discovery was made comically ironic by the fact that Shankar had asked his famous student to conceal his identity. “Ravi Shankar wrote to me before I went out to Bombay, and in the letter said, ‘Try to disguise yourself – couldn’t you grow a moustache?’” Harrison obliged and liked it so much that he wore one for much of his life.

For the next 21 months, Harrison rarely picked up a guitar unless he had to for recording sessions to or compose.

In December 1967, he told an interviewer that he had trouble remembering guitar chord changes, an exaggeration undoubtedly, but also an indication of how deeply he had immersed himself in his sitar studies.

He’d written the Sgt. Pepper’s song “Within You Without You,” as well as the “Lady Madonna” B-side, “The Inner Light,” for Indian instruments. Likewise, other songs from this period, including “It’s All Too Much,” “Only a Northern Song” and “Blue Jay Way,” were composed as droning tunes on the electronic organ, an instrument reminiscent of the harmonium, which is integral to many forms of Indian music.

Harrison had also begun to make a documentary about Shankar, to be released by Apple Films, part of the Beatles’ new Apple Corps multimedia conglomerate. (The movie was issued in 1971 as Raga.)

In June 1968, he and his teacher trekked out to California to shoot at Big Sur. Shankar had been patient with his student’s sporadic progress, but he also knew the sitar was a daily commitment. In addition to his duties with the Beatles, Harrison was now helping to run Apple and undertaking a film project. Like any good teacher, Shankar tried to guide his student to the right choice.

He made a suggestion that would prove consequential.

“He was the one who said to me, try to find my background, or some root,” Harrison recalled. “What’s my roots? The first thing that meant something really that I could call a root was riding down the road on my bike and hearing ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ coming out of somebody’s house.”

Elvis Presley, not surprisingly, had been a major influence on each of the Beatles, as he had on millions of teens in America, Britain and Europe. “So from there I went from Los Angeles to New York on my way home,” Harrison continued. “That was the last time I really played sitar. I checked in the hotel in New York, [and] Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton happened to be staying there.”

Enjoying the familiarity of his fellow guitarists, it seemed to Harrison that he had at last found a place where he fit in, and where he was accepted as an individual, not a Beatle.

“I thought, Well, maybe I’m better off to get back into being a guitar player, songwriter, whatever I’m supposed to be,” he recalled. “Because I’m never gonna be a sitar player. Because I’ve seen a thousand sitar players in India who are twice as better than I’ll ever be!”

A NEW GUITAR

Harrison returned to London and the White Album sessions that summer with a new commitment to his craft. The change in his guitar tone and playing style is evident on several White Album tracks made almost immediately after his epiphany, most notably “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” and “Sexy Sadie.” The former song, recorded over June and July, features some of Harrison’s most blues-inflected licks, which serve throughout the track as a second vocal line to Lennon’s own.

From this point on, bends and vibrato began to play a more prominent role in Harrison’s guitar playing, and with good reason. The months spent practicing sitar had strengthened his fingers and given him greater control over his instrument.

Coincidentally, in August, Clapton presented Harrison with a guitar that would significantly change his sound: a cherry-red 1957 Gibson Les Paul that Harrison dubbed Lucy. Its fuller, fatter tone gave his guitar playing a more assertive edge on many of the later-recorded White Album tracks, which most likely included “Birthday,” “Helter Skelter,” “Savoy Truffle” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” on which Clapton applied his lead parts using the guitar.

Though Harrison viewed Clapton and Hendrix as peers, he had no aspirations to be a guitar hero like them. He saw himself more in the spirit of Bob Dylan – a songwriter whose lyrics speak to matters of the heart and soul.

Moreover, both he and Clapton were infatuated with the roots-oriented folk-rock of Dylan’s backup group, the Band. Since serving as Dylan’s support in 1965, they’d released their own album, 1968’s Music from Big Pink, recorded in Woodstock, where the five bandmates lived communally, not far from Dylan.

The Band’s earthy mix of acoustic and electric guitars, stripped-down ballads and uptempo songs appealed to Harrison. Certainly, no group from the era had a greater impact on Clapton. Upon hearing Big Pink, he decided to break up Cream and pursue a more blues-based style of music.

In particular, Harrison and Clapton were taken by guitarist Robbie Robertson’s fluid lead playing, which approximated the sound of slide guitar. Unaware that blues guitarists like Muddy Waters used a slide, Robertson had worked for years to develop a vibrato technique that mimicked the effect.

Harrison and Clapton were also undoubtedly captivated by Big Pink’s opening sound of Robertson’s Telecaster through keyboardist Garth Hudson’s Black Box, a homemade rotary speaker cabinet. Subsequently, Clapton played his Les Paul through a Leslie rotary speaker on “Badge,” the track from Cream’s Goodbye album that he wrote and recorded with Harrison’s assistance. Harrison would also use a Leslie 147RV – a gift from Clapton – on several tracks on Abbey Road and Let It Be.

In the end, it was an encounter with Dylan that gave Harrison the confidence he needed to assert his songwriting talents to the other Beatles.

In November 1968, with the White Album sessions behind him, Harrison accepted an invitation from Dylan to spend Thanksgiving with him and the Band in Woodstock. There in the idyllic wilds of upstate New York, he once again felt the camaraderie he’d experienced meeting Clapton and Hendrix in New York the previous June.

While staying at Dylan’s house, the guitars came out, and soon Harrison’s harmonically inventive chord changes were weaving together with Dylan’s lyrics in a pair of brand-new songs: “I’d Have You Anytime,” which would eventually appear on Harrison’s All Things Must Pass solo debut, and “When Everybody Comes to Town,” which Harrison retitled “Nowhere to Go,” and which has never been officially released.

There in Woodstock, thousands of miles from England, it was not lost on Harrison that, by writing with Dylan, he had achieved something his Dylan-loving bandmates had not.

SONIC SIGNATURE

There was yet one more guitarist who would play an important role in Harrison’s development.

Delaney Bramlett had grown up poor in Pontotoc, Mississippi, and struggled to make a living in his teens, working as a sharecropper before joining the U.S. Navy to escape poverty. He had taken up guitar at age eight and after his discharge settled in Los Angeles, where he got a job in the Shindogs, the house band for the musical variety TV show Shindig!

The Shindogs’ lineup featured a number of notable and soon-to-be-famous musicians, including guitarist James Burton, pianist Leon Russell, bassist Larry Knechtel and keyboardist Billy Preston. (Preston, for his part, worked with the Beatles during the making of Let It Be in early 1969 and was signed to Apple Records by Harrison, who produced his debut album for the label.)

Outside of the Shindogs, Bramlett had worked with Russell and J.J. Cale and written tunes with Mac Davis and Jackie DeShannon. In 1967, he’d met and married singer Bonnie Lynn O’Farrell.

They joined forces as Delaney & Bonnie and landed a contract with Stax Records, where they released their debut album and established their trademark fusion of soul, gospel and R&B.

Their second album, Accept No Substitute, issued on Elektra the next year, featured an extended band that included Russell, bassist Carl Radle, keyboardist Bobby Whitlock and drummer Jim Keltner, as well as saxophonist Bobby Keys, trumpet player Jim Price and backing vocalist Rita Coolidge.

Harrison met Bramlett in October 1968 while on a visit to Los Angeles to deliver the White Album masters to Capitol and was taken by his easygoing personality and colorful background.

By the time the Delaney & Bonnie and Friends tour landed on England’s shores in 1969, the Beatles were on the verge of breaking up, as was Clapton’s post-Cream act, Blind Faith. The American troupe joined Blind Faith’s tour as the opening act and soon found their spirited performances earning them greater applause than the headliner.

Clapton was drawn to the group’s music and fun-loving spirit and requested to join them onstage as a guest. By the tour’s end, he was asking if he could be in the band.

Clapton’s participation would set in motion the next stage in his career: Delaney & Bonnie and their backing musicians formed the core of the band on his self-titled 1970 solo debut. Afterward, Clapton would team up with Radle, Whitlock and drummer Jim Gordon, a recent addition to Delaney & Bonnie’s company, to form Derek and the Dominos.

It didn’t take long for Harrison to follow Clapton’s lead. After witnessing Delaney & Bonnie’s December 1 performance at the Royal Albert Hall, he asked Bramlett if he could tag along on the group’s tour. The band picked him up at home the next morning to find Harrison waiting with a gift for Bramlett: a custom Fender Rosewood Telecaster he’d received from the guitar maker at the end of 1968 and used during the making of Let It Be and Abbey Road.

The tour was a fun and relaxing break for Harrison. It was also here that, through Bramlett, he added a new element to his guitar style: slide. Harrison credited Bramlett for instructing him on how to use the device, but as Bramlett told Harrison biographer Simon Leng in his book While My Guitar Gently Weeps, he merely showed Harrison his technique.

“One time he asked me if I would teach him how to play slide, and later, George said I’d taught him how to play it,” Bramlett explained. “But I didn’t teach him anything. George already knew how to play guitar; he just wanted to know my technique – what I thought about it and what I did. All I did was teach him my style of playing.”

Whatever the case, slide guitar soon became a signature element of Harrison’s sound. His brief tour with Delaney & Bonnie also provided him with the basic material for his first solo hit, “My Sweet Lord.”

“He said, ‘Say you were going to write a gospel song, how would you start it?’” Bramlett told Leng. Bramlett began scatting “Oh my Lord,” while Rita Coolidge joined in with “Alleluia!”

It was a sound that Harrison, deeply into his spiritual journey, would not forget.

SOLO STARDOM

By the dawn of 1970, all the elements of Harrison’s guitar style were in place. The Beatles, on the other hand, were falling apart.

Though the band hadn’t made their breakup officially known, McCartney was busy working on his solo debut and Lennon was active with his wife, Yoko Ono, on their Plastic Ono Band project, which had briefly included Clapton on guitar.

On January 27, Lennon invited Harrison to participate in the recording of a new song for the group called “Instant Karma!” “John wanted to record it in a day and release it the next day,” Harrison said.

Stopping by Apple Corps on his way to the session at Abbey Road Studios, Harrison ran into American record producer Phil Spector, who was in London at the invitation of the Beatles’ new business manager, Allen Klein. Harrison encouraged Spector to come along and oversee the “Instant Karma!” session. It was a fortuitous decision for both men. Noting that McCartney and Lennon were actively pursuing their post-Beatles careers, Spector encouraged Harrison to get busy doing the same.

Until then, Harrison had been more actively involved in other artists’ careers than his own, producing Apple Records signings like Preston and Jackie Lomax, and giving them his songs to record. They included, for Lomax, “Sour Milk Sea,” written in early 1968, and, for Preston, his latest completed effort, “My Sweet Lord.”

Harrison considered Spector’s suggestion, and, shortly after the “Instant Karma!” session, he invited the producer to hear his songs. “I went to George’s Friar Park [estate], which he had just purchased, and he said, ‘I have a few ditties for you to hear,’” Spector recalled. “It was endless! He had literally hundreds of songs… He had all this emotion built up when it released to me. I don’t think he had played them to anybody.”

Harrison’s trove included many songs the Beatles had rejected. Among them were “Isn’t It a Pity,” first offered to the group during the making of Revolver, and numerous tunes from the Beatles’ Let It Be period, including “Let It Down,” “Wah Wah” and, the song that would give his debut solo album its title, “All Things Must Pass.”

In its finished form, All Things Must Pass featured 18 songs – including two versions of “Isn’t It a Pity” and a cover of Dylan’s “If Not for You,” from his 1970 album New Morning – spread over two vinyl albums. The set was supplemented by a third disc, titled Apple Jam, that featured informal workouts recorded with the album’s musicians, including Clapton, Starr, Delaney & Bonnie, and members of their band.

All Things Must Pass was released on November 27, 1970. In the U.S., Harrison’s debut single, “My Sweet Lord,” was issued a few days earlier to help build excitement for the album. It wasn’t necessary. Beatles fans were eager for new music from their idols, even if they were now solo artists.

All Things Must Pass quickly reached the top of the charts in the U.S., U.K. and many other major markets. In the U.S., the album and the “My Sweet Lord” single simultaneously held the top spots on their respective charts, a feat known as a “Billboard double.”

It would take another year and a half before another Beatle, Paul McCartney, achieved the same.

For the millions who had followed the Beatles, Harrison’s transformation was remarkable. Looking for something to satisfy his soul, he found a way to express himself and, in doing so, become a consummate guitarist and songwriter.

Even today, 50 plus years after the Beatles’ breakup, Harrison’s legacy as a guitarist remains strong, while his music is more popular than ever, with “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” besting even longtime favorites like “Yesterday” and “Hey Jude” on streaming music charts.

Harrison, who died in 2001, might not be surprised.

“People always say I’m the Beatle who changed the most,” he noted in his later years. “But, really, that’s what I see life is about. The whole thing is to change and try to make everything better and better.”

Order George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass here.

The following appeared in the February 2018 issue of Guitar Player

When Steve Lukather was a kid, he had a recurring dream: He’d walk onto a huge stage in front of a vast audience with a guitar in his hands. “But right before I’d play my first note,” says Lukather, “I’d always wake up.”

It was only in real life, at age 19, that Lukather finally experienced that dream.

“The first real show I played was at Red Rocks Amphitheatre with Boz Scaggs,” he says. “There’s a photo of me at soundcheck with this huge grin on my face, because I’m like, ‘This is my moment. I’m having the same old dream, but, this time, I know I’m not going to wake up.’ It was a magical night. It changed everything for me.”

Fast forward to October 21, 2017, and Lukather is living another dream: He’s turning 60 years old at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas while backing a Beatle. “Why do I have Steve in my band?” says Ringo Starr before the show. “Because he was free [laughs]. He’s also good at getting the audience to stand and clap. Showbiz is his middle name.”

Lukather’s tenure with Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band is just one of many dream gigs the guitarist has lived out on stage and in the studio. The dreamiest gig, of course, is Toto.

Lukather established the multi-platinum rock group in 1977 with his North Hollywood homies (keyboardist David Paich, and the Porcaro clan of keyboardist Steve, drummer Jeff, and bassist Mike) – the same posse of studio aces who worked with Lukather in various combinations on legendary recording sessions for Boz Scaggs, Randy Newman, Michael Jackson, Don Henley, Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones, and other superstars during the golden era of session work in the late ’70s/early ’80s.

You can read all about it right from the source. Lukather’s adventures during the session era and beyond are detailed in the guitarist’s autobiography (co-written by Paul Rees), Steve Lukather: The Gospel According to Luke.

“I swear on the lives of my four children that every story is true,” he says, “Everything is in there. Well, maybe not everything. Let’s just say I can never run for office [laughs].”

At the time of this interview, Lukather was celebrating 40 years of Toto and, in a numerical coincidence, 40 million album sales worldwide. To mark the occasion, the band released 40 Trips Around the Sun (Sony/Legacy), a best-of album featuring remastered hits, as well as three previously unreleased tracks.

“Things have never been better for Toto,” says Lukather. “Everything we were told could never happen for us is now happening for us. And we don’t even have a manager!”

Why doesn’t Toto have a manager?

Well, I had to become Manager Guy. I have a staff, but Toto is my only client. I found out that classic-rock bands don’t need a manager just to call the agent, and say, “Book a tour,” and then take 15 percent.

All a band like us really needs is a tour manager, a production manager, good accounting, and a guy like me working with a great agent. And this new approach has really paid off.

We’ve always done well in Europe and Japan – that has kept us and all of our families alive – but the U.S. opened up for us in a huge way in the last few years, and that’s due to hard work. I mean, how many bands get a second chance in America?

Seeing Toto play at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles was amazing, because you’re the only band I can think of that has multiplatinum radio hits and takes things to the moon and back with extended solos.

We take pride in musically pushing things out there beyond what you might expect at a typical rock show, and we do give each member a moment to shine. I like to do my guitar spot within the context of a song.

I did “Red House” last year, even though Joe Bonamassa told me, “That’s the most over-played blues song in the world.” I said, “I used to do this one with dear Mike and Jeff Porcaro 25 years ago, so it has special meaning.”

Eddie Van Halen, Mike Landau, and just about every other pro musician who had the night off was watching you that night. Is it nerve-wracking playing for all those heavies?

I didn’t even think about it. I just looked at my ten-year-old daughter. Seeing her with a backstage pass and a walkie-talkie like she’s out on the road with us cracked me up.

Plus, I’m at an age where I am starting to get relaxed about things, because I’m not in competition anymore. Sure, there was a little pressure that night, but those guys are my friends. If I were to make a mistake, those guys would laugh with me, not at me.

When you were putting together 40 Trips Around the Sun, was it weird diving into the raw sessions for songs recorded way back in the early and middle ’80s?

It was like playing with Jeff, Mike, and my 23-year-old self again. I discovered some things, as well. On “Spanish Sea,” for example, we added new parts to the basic tracks, including a new chorus that I wrote.

The solo, though, was from the original ’85 session, where Paich said to me, “Just play the melody.” So that’s what I did, and, man, it’s the simplest, most non-flashy thing I’ve ever played in my life.

You’re really good at telling a story with your guitar – like on your solo tune, “Song for Jeff.”

As I get older, I realize that ‘playing pretty’ is what I do best. I can’t be Mr. Fast Guy anymore – not that I ever truly was. There are a billion guitarists who can play unbelievably ripping guitar better than I can.

I’ve changed my whole thinking about guitar. I’d rather be more like David Gilmour than anybody else. On the new songs, for example, I really held back, played simple stuff, and tried not to play the obvious notes.

It’s hard to classify what kind of guitar player you are.

I know! I’m not metal, not jazz, not country, and not funk, but I do all of it. And I do it all in my own weird little way. I’m probably more rock than anything else, but that’s a broad description. My job as guitarist in Toto has always been to put teeth on the parts.

What was it that motivated you to play music in the first place?

It was never for fame. People might think, “I want to be famous.” No, you don’t. Even at my low level of fame, it’s the weirdest, most bizarre thing in the world. I had to build a gate in front of my house, because people would just show up at my door and freak out my six-year-old autistic son. But that’s nothing. I have movie-star friends who have TMZ parked in front of their houses. That’s famous.

I started doing music because I saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. By today’s standards, it might seem fairly tame. They were in suits, and they didn’t even have long hair yet. But for me, it was like that part in The Wizard of Oz when life suddenly goes from black and white to color. My life changed in one moment. My goal was simply longevity – to have a long career – not to become famous.

Was there ever a moment when your faith in guitar as a career choice was shaken?

I had a humiliating audition with Frank Zappa when I was 17. He embarrassed me in a room full of other guitar players, and I walked out of there trying not to cry.

I thought my career was over. But when I got home, I thought, I’m going to turn this energy into a positive. I’m going to prove Frank wrong. I’m going to make it, and someday he’ll know who I am.

So I played mad and practiced my ass off.

When I fell in love with the radio as a ten-year-old and started playing guitar, I loved the aggressive lead guitar on Boz Scaggs’ “Breakdown Dead Ahead.” I found out later that was played by you.

That was back when guitar solos weren’t shunned, but welcomed. I was playing solos on everybody’s shit. Boz really helped us – though we really helped him, too. If it weren’t for us, he would have just been a blues guitar player working through the scene.

Paich wrote him a bunch of hits, we played on those, and we sort of became the “L.A. sound,” if you will. Whether on purpose or not, Boz nurtured that sound, and soon we were all working all the time.

What was the biggest challenge of doing sessions back then?

Walking in with no rehearsal, having no idea what song you’re going to play on – or even what genre it’s going to be – and coming up with great parts. And you had to come with a good part quickly, because if you took too long, people would lose interest.

There was no editing your part together later in Pro Tools. Take the funky clean thing I came up with for Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.” You’re in that room, you’ve never heard the song before, and Quincy Jones is two inches in front of your face going, “Come up with something funky for me right now.” That’s what we got paid for – not for reading the dots and playing what was written on the page, but for filling in the blanks where there was nothing on the page.

Being in that club of session players was great, because once you got in, you were in – if you got in. It was a hard club to get into. But while it took a little luck to get invited through that door the first time, it wasn’t luck to get asked back through that door a second time.

You played a pretty epic solo at the end of Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry.”

That was a great session. Aside from punching in one spot where I made a little mistake, I think that was a first take. I was extra thrilled to be on that song because Joe Walsh – who I’m the biggest fan of – did the first solo.

When I was in there, I had a whole room full of people staring me down. It was intense. Jeff Porcaro was looking at me like, “You’d better bring it, asshole.” That’s how it was. We all encouraged and pushed each other, and we all became successful.

Denny Tedesco made a cool documentary about the Wrecking Crew. You guys came a generation later. Someone should make a film about you guys.

Maybe someone will someday – probably after we’re all gone. We’re all over Thriller – the biggest record in history – and we get hardly any acknowledgement for it. Sometimes, I think we’re the Rodney Dangerfield of Rock. We get no respect [laughs].

I’m not saying, “Poor, pitiful me.” That would be ridiculous, because I’ve had an incredible career, and I’m very thankful for it. I just wish the critics would take us a little more seriously, rather than “that joke ‘Africa’ band.”

If you don’t like Toto, that’s cool. I don’t like everything, either. But even if you don’t like my band’s music, I’m probably on more than one of the records in your collection. You just don’t know it.

You’re an interesting blend of alpha dog and sensitive cat.

I’m a very sensitive cat. People don’t realize that about me, because I cover it up with humor, but this is an intense business to be in. It can really eat you up.

Some people think I have an attitude because I’m defensive about my band, but try taking shit for 40 years and not have a little edge. I don’t mean to be that way. I’m the nicest guy in the world until somebody draws first blood. Then, look out.

A lot of sessions are done in home studios now. Do you think a truly great album can be recorded that way?

Some artists can get away with making a record at home with GarageBand, and that’s cool, but you can’t make Sgt. Pepper, The Wall, or Dark Side of the Moon in your living room.

There’s something about the wood of a great studio, the million-dollar console, the expensive microphones, the really great engineer, and the really great musicians and songs that make a record a classic that will last forever.

That’s why the Beatles got two billion streams in their first year on Spotify without even trying. No one’s ever going to catch up with those numbers. The Beatles are our classical music.

Speaking of the Beatles, what’s it like to play with Ringo?

It’s hard to describe how much I love playing with Ringo. Having recorded with both him and Paul McCartney on two songs on Ringo’s Give More Love album is the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten. I can die now.

Above all, I just love Ringo as a person. He’s a beautiful cat. He has a vantage you can only have if you’ve been one of the most famous people on earth for 50 years. You’re not going to get better advice than what he offers.

Plus, there would be no rock-and-roll drums without Ringo. He put drum fills on the map. Just listen to “Tomorrow Never Knows.” I’ve been with him since 2012, and he’ll have to kill me to get rid of me.

What’s your rig like these days?

It’s pretty straightforward. A few Ernie Ball Music Man guitars – including my signature models that are loaded with DiMarzio Transition pickups – and a couple of Bogner Ecstasy heads running in stereo.

I’m not even positive which pedals are in the loop these days, because my tech, Jon Gosnell, is so on top of things that I never have to think about the wiring. One pedal I use all the time, though, is The Luke. That’s my signature preamp boost from ToneConcepts. It works great as a distortion or a boost, or you can leave it on as a sort of mastering EQ for your rig.

I also use the Jam Wahcko wah and Waterfall chorus/vibrato. The Providence Anadime chorus is cool, too. No two choruses sound the same. Sadly, I’ll be forever known as the “Dytronics Tri-Stereo Chorus overuse guy,” because that title was somehow tattooed to me while I slept, due to one stupid guitar video that has followed me around forever like herpes [laughs].

There are TC Electronic and DigiTech delays, a MXR Uni-Vibe, an Xotic SP compressor, a Strymon blueSky reverb, and some other stuff on my pedalboard.

Lately, I’ve added Jeff Kollman’s signature Kollmanation pedal from T. Jauernig Electronics. I crank my Bogner up to about 8, kick on that pedal, and, amazingly, it doesn’t cause the tone to crash, as some overdrives will in that situation. It just makes things extra smooth.

Are you digging the next generation of guitarists?

Absolutely. Claims have been made lately that the electric guitar is dying, but I don’t believe it. They say sales are down, but I don’t believe that either. People are just buying stuff on eBay.

There are young kids who really get it. Sure, they start off playing the tricks and stuff – we all did that. But the cream rises to the top, and the best musicians are soon found out. I truly believe that Millennials are going rise up musically. It’s time. There needs to be an uprising of young 18-to-25-year-old kids who bring tunes that make us go, “Whoa!”

We need some amazing young kids who take a brave political, social, and musical stand, and bring on something positive. There needs to be another Beatles.

Order Toto's 40 Trips Around the Sun here.

The Guyatone LG-40 is one of the plainest electric guitars I’ve ever owned. I usually write about guitars with sparkle finishes and loads of gadgets, but this one stands out for its complete lack of adornment.

It doesn’t even have the manufacturer’s name on it. Other Guyatones in the LG series, such as the LG-160 and LG-350, have distinctive designs, but this plain Jane has to settle for just playing and sounding nice.

Still in business today, Guyatone is one of Japan’s earliest guitar makers, having started building Hawaiian and Spanish-style guitars in the 1930s.

By the late ’50s, the company had branched into the field of musical electronics and made amplifiers, mics and record player cartridges, as well as a line of electric guitars.

From the late ’50’s into the ’60s, those guitars were distributed under so many nameplates – including Star, Guya, Ibanez, Fuji-Gen, Futurama and Kent – that it’s difficult to keep track of them all.

It appears that the name changed according to which country imported the guitars.

In the late ’50s, many British and Irish guitarists came to know Guyatone’s products under the Antoria brand. Among the more popular artists that played them were Hank Marvin, Rory Gallagher and Johnny “Guitar” Byrne of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, which featured a pre-Beatles Ringo Starr on drums.

In fact, Mr. Byrne played his Antoria/Guyatone LG all the way up until his untimely death at age 59 in 1999.

WEIRDO FACTOR

The body is just 10 inches wide at the lower bout. I have bigger ukuleles!

But beyond its weird proportions and very light weight (just under 5.5 pounds), this is actually a serious, if not extremely utilitarian guitar.

PLAYABILITY & SOUND

If you’re going to put only one pickup on a guitar, you have to make it sound good. In fact, this large single-coil sounds great. With the volume and tone controls wide open, it’s rich, punchy and bright.

Back off the tone knob and it thins out, as with a bridge pickup, but doesn’t get quieter, which makes it cool to use with distortion. Using the two knobs, I can dial in about three distinct sounds.

The 20-fret maple neck with rosewood fingerboard plays nice. It’s not wide, but it is deep and quite reminiscent of a ’50s Fender C-shape.

The non-intonatable bridge is height adjustable, but despite what appears to be a truss rod cover on the headstock, there’s nothing beneath it except more flame maple, which is featured on both the top and back of this weirdo.

VALUE

Though it plays and sounds good, the Guyatone LG-40 is in the collector books because it’s one of the earliest Japanese attempts at building a professional guitar.

As such, it garners some monetary respect, currently selling between $800 and $1,200. Mind you, I paid $50 for mine years ago (pre-internet) at a flea market!

WHY IT RULES

It’s light and sounds great, and the starkness of its design actually becomes a feature unto itself.

Besides, it can be traced back to the early days of the Merseybeat sound that went on to shape music as we know it today.

Got a whack job of your own? Feel free to get in touch with me at rtcarleton@gmail.com. Who knows? Maybe I’ll write about it.

This year sees the 60th anniversary of the Beatles’ debut studio album, Please Please Me.

Released on March 22, 1963, via EMI’s Parlophone label, the George Martin-produced LP heralded the arrival of the decade’s premier band as they climbed up the charts to the number one position.

The album’s John Lennon/Paul McCartney-penned title track was released as a single earlier that year. It was the Beatles’ second U.K. 7-inch (after 1962’s “Love Me Do”) and their first in the U.S.

On this day in 1963, the band appeared on the British television show Thank Your Lucky Stars for a mimed performance of the “Please Please Me” single. Broadcast across much of the U.K., the exposure greatly bolstered the Fab Four’s success.

“We’d had a top 30 entry with ‘Love Me Do’ and we really thought we were on top of the world,” said Lennon. “Then came ‘Please Please Me’ – and wham!”

Having sharpened their skills as a live act, the Beatles were well-prepared to cut an album.  

Indeed, most of the Please Please Me LP was recorded during a single session on February 11, 1963 in Abbey Road’s Studio 2.

“It was a straightforward performance of their stage repertoire,” said Martin. “A broadcast, more or less.”

“To listen to the Beatles’ debut album, Please Please Me, is to hear the sound of a world-class recording facility – EMI’s Abbey Road Studios – at the dawn of this technological revolution,” wrote Guitar Player editor-in-chief, Chris Scapelliti.

Naturally, the Beatles used their stage gear for these landmark recording sessions. George Harrison plugged in his 1957 Gretsch 6128 Duo Jet, Lennon used his 1958 Rickenbacker 325 Capri, and both employed their Gibson J-160E acoustic-electrics.

Meanwhile, McCartney played his 1961 Höfner 500/1 violin bass.

Order the Beatles' debut album, Please Please Me, here.

Yes, I am a Beatles maniac, but I’ve usually steered clear of Beatles bootlegs that contain subpar performances, or recordings that demonstrate the evolution of their material.

Same with Hendrix. I don’t need to hear the private first stirrings of a song’s development…kind of like how I don’t feel a need to see Marilyn Monroe waking up with a hangover.

That said, after hearing Let It Be... Naked, I knew I had to own it, because in many ways this 2003 release is obviously, and sometimes inexplicably, a far superior record to the original 1970 album release.

As the story goes, the Beatles handed off the Let It Be tapes to producer Phil Spector in the hope that he could eke out an album from what the group perceived as an uneven collection of recordings.

There were some good songs among the tracks, but the basic order was, “Phil, have a go and make it nice.” I suppose Let It Be has been my least favorite Beatles album, despite the curious greatness of “Dig a Pony” (what the heck is that song about?) and Paul’s and John’s youthful spirit as they revisit “One After 909,” one of the earliest songs credited to their world-beating partnership.

Other strong cuts included “Across the Universe,” a first-rate Lennon composition recorded as far back as early 1968 but included here because the group performed it in the Let It Be film that accompanied the album’s release – plus of course the title track “Let it Be” with Paul McCartney being great at being Paul McCartney.

Yes, there are other good tracks too, but pound for pound, 1970’s Let It Be never felt to me like a great Beatles album in the context of their other timeless releases.

Let It Be... Naked goes a long way to remedy that. The production is better overall: The drum sound is enhanced throughout, and the guitars are clearer, if not raunchier.

Likewise, smart decisions were made in compiling its tracks. The omission of “Maggie Mae” and “Dig It” is benign (no tears from me there), and the addition of “Don’t Let Me Down” is significant.

This is one of my all-time favorite Beatles songs. Billy Preston’s gospel-style playing is lovely, and the song, the vocals, everything about this track brings up the real estate significantly.

When I hear the bridge, “I’m in love for the first time,” I am amazed by the Beatles’ clever and imaginative arranging skills.

Let it Be... Naked also has a different take of “The Long and Winding Road,” on which Phil Spector’s notoriously bombastic production is minimized, making this lovely ballad something more than “Yesterday” lite.

The version of “I’ve Got a Feeling” used here is a composite of the two takes recorded on Apple Corps’ rooftop on January 30, 1969.

It rocks hypnotically, and John’s “Everybody had a hard year” section remains the same, with his nasal Dylan-esque vocal stylings captivating and magical.

What was good from the original release is left intact. The new song order, however, makes Let It Be... Naked a much smoother ride than the original LP.

While I can’t prove that in music court, I know that when I listen to the album in its entirety, it feels and sounds undeniably improved.

If, like me, you feel that 1970’s Let It Be had some moments but is basically the Beatles on an off day, I strongly recommend Let It Be... Naked as a must-have.

It’s a vast refinement of the original, and a worthy addition to the Fab Four’s great catalog.

I’d recommend the 2021 documentary Get Back too, but I am getting ahead of myself.

As for the Beatles versus the Rolling Stones? Ha!

Browse the Beatles catalog here.

Psychedelic rock owes much to the Fab Four, and not just because of the group’s obvious entries in its canon: Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour.

From the chiming circular guitar lines that close 1964’s “A Hard Day’s Night” to those that run throughout 1965’s “Ticket to Ride,” George Harrison and John Lennon made droning, arpeggiating riffs a stunning motif of mid-1960s electric guitar playing and psychedelic rock.

And as much as Jeff Beck laid the groundwork for Eastern influences, the Beatles helped cement it into the psychedelic palette with Harrison’s sitar work on “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” and the bouzouki-like guitars on “Girl,” both from 1965’s Rubber Soul.

It was but a prelude to Paul McCartney’s raga-influenced solo on “Taxman” and the classical Indian instrumentation on “Love You To,” both from the group’s 1966 psychedelic rock milestone, Revolver.

That album also saw Harrison record a backward guitar solo on “I’m Only Sleeping,” laying the foundation for sonic experiments by psychedelic axe slingers Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page.

Over the next year, the Beatles would continue to define psychedelic rock with Sgt. Pepper’s and Magical Mystery Tour. But where other guitarists opted for the obvious fuzz-box-and-reverb recipe, the Fabs took a more soporific approach (McCartney’s exhilarating “Taxman” solo notwithstanding).

In addition to Harrison’s lysergic droning solo on “I’m Only Sleeping,” there are that song’s druggy, offbeat acoustic guitars, while on Magical Mystery Tour’s “Flying,” the electric guitars plod out the melody not only behind the beat but with a dollop of echo that makes them sound leaden.

And lest anyone forget, it was Harrison who wrote the group’s 1967 ode to LSD, the Sgt. Pepper’s outtake “It’s All Too Much.”

“I just wanted to write a rock and roll song about the whole psychedelic thing,” he said. “Because you’d trip out, you see, on all this stuff, and then, whoops, you’d just be back having your evening cup of tea!”

Today, the Beatles’ psychedelic rock landmark, Revolver, is available to listen to with a brand-new stereo mix by producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell.

In addition to a Standard 14-track edition, Revolver appears in a 29-track two-disc Deluxe edition that includes session highlights, and a five-disc Super Deluxe edition with 63 tracks, including 31 session cuts and the album’s original mono master.

Get 22% off the Beatles’ Revolver Super Deluxe 5CD Box Set here.

The Beatles’ Revolver is a psychedelic rock landmark, a sonic marvel that marked a sea change in music production and culture.

Joined by their new recording engineer Geoff Emerick, the group and producer George Martin set about using the recording studio as their sonic workshop, creating sounds never heard before and introducing classical Indian music into Western pop rock.

But like most pre-1968 Beatles albums, Revolver was recorded to four-track tape, with the result that the main rhythm instruments – usually guitar, bass and drums – were placed together on one track, making it impossible to separate them for stereo mixes.

Until now, that is.

Using groundbreaking de-mixing technology, Giles Martin – George Martin’s son, and the producer behind much of the group’s reissues in recent years – was able to separate the instruments, and even the individual pieces of the drum kit, without losing the room ambience or creating ugly artifacts.

Fans can hear the results on October 28, when Revolver is reissued in a new stereo mix that reveals the music with newfound clarity and definition.

In addition to a Standard 14-track edition, Revolver will come in a 29-track two-disc Deluxe edition that includes session highlights, and a five-disc Super Deluxe edition with 63 tracks, including 31 session cuts and the album’s original mono master.

Both deluxe editions will boast new stereo mixes of the album singles “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.”

Revolver’s new Dolby Atmos mix will be released digitally.

At a listening session for the reissue, Martin demonstrated the technology using the rhythm track from “Taxman,” removing the electric guitar, then the bass, and then the drum kit, piece by piece, down to the snare.

As Martin explained in our subsequent interview, this novel technology brings with it a new dilemma: “How does one represent an artistic work years after nearly everyone who created it is no longer around to weigh in?”

What were the challenges of de-mixing and re-mixing Revolver?

Well, it’s funny. Geoff Emerick, the Beatles and my dad were pretty good to begin with, and the album sounds pretty good. And, you know, it is very compressed, and I’ve still respected that.

But in order to have the band sound like they’re in a room, you kind of have to pull them apart to a certain extent and put some air between them.

And you know, on Revolver, John Lennon never sings in the same voice. It’s different on every song. Same thing with the guitars and drums. Remixing it was like mixing eight different bands.

It’s come down through history that Geoff Emerick was critical to helping your father and the Beatles create these new sounds. Is that assessment accurate?

Listen, Geoff was a genius, yes. But I think it comes from their fingers and the guitars; my dad would say this, and Geoff would have said this as well, I think – before he became too bitter.

The sounds came from themselves and their willingness to innovate, especially with guitars. So the disappointing answer for everyone is, “It’s the band.” And the reason why it’s disappointing is because you’re looking for what knob you can turn – [laughs]

And what box you can plug into.

Absolutely – to get that sound. And that’s the tricky thing.

There’s a video of you, your father and Dhani Harrison listening to a “lost” George Harrison solo on “Here Comes the Sun” that you discovered. Were there any surprises like that with Revolver?

No, but there was a thing with fuzz guitars: They were originally going to play the horn lines on “Got to Get You Into My Life,” but they decided to go with brass instead.

Just the opposite of what happened on the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”

Yeah! So that exists in a previous version of the song. But because the recordings were four-track, if they didn’t get something right, they’d just record over it. So there are no hidden gems. But you really get a sense of their efficiency.

For example, “Paperback Writer”: There’s just one and a half takes of the basic track, which is guitars and drums. So I’ve just left the tape running for this box set. They play, it breaks down, they immediately play it again, and that’s it! It’s all done but the bass and vocals. It’s very efficient.

Revolver is a psychedelic rock landmark, and I imagine de-mixing presents you with an opportunity to make it more vivid – more what they might have done had the multitrack technology existed.

The tricky thing is, the claustrophobia you get from mono can make things sound more psychedelic. And when you open things up, it can sound less so. And the challenge is with something like “Tomorrow Never Knows”: The expectation is it’s this crazy song. And it is – but it isn’t.

There’s bass and drums, there’s a bit of tamboura, there’s an organ, tape loops… And that’s it! There’s not much going on. And so you really have to work at it to create something that satisfies the expectation.

When I was working with [Martin] Scorsese on the George Harrison film [the 2011 documentary Living in the Material World], he questioned my revisionist approach to mixing. And then I played him some stuff I’d done, and he liked it. And I said, “I just try and make songs sound how we remember them, not how they are.”

Having literally dissected Revolver, what’s your takeaway about the Beatles at this point in their musical evolution?

You can hear them like kids in the back of a car saying, “We’re bored! We want to do something different.” That’s what’s going on with Revolver. It’s like a prog record – kind of like, “Look how many ideas we have!”

And what I find fascinating is that they went from being this four-headed monster with Beatles suits on to being these four individuals going in different directions – but helping each other.

Like, no one’s saying, “Come on, John, change chords on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’” Or, you know, “Why are we doing Indian songs? We’re from Liverpool!” It’s like that pure confidence of jumping out of the plane without a parachute and knowing you’re going to land safely.

It is kind of a fearless record.

Pre-order the Revolver Special Edition Super Deluxe 5CD box set here.

Pre-order the Revolver Special Edition Super Deluxe 4LP + 7” Vinyl EP 7", box set here.

Pre-order the Revolver Deluxe Deluxe Edition 2CD here.

Pre-order the Amazon exclusive Revolver Special Edition 1LP vinyl & turntable mat here.

On October 28, The Beatles will be releasing Special Editions of their 1966 classic, Revolver.

This follows the highly acclaimed remixed and expanded Special Editions of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017), The Beatles/‘White Album’ (2018), Abbey Road (2019) and Let It Be (2021).

The band’s seventh studio album, Revolver picked up from where Rubber Soul left off as the Beatles continued to experiment with new guitar sounds and trippy studio effects in the era of psychedelia.

By the mid-‘60s, fuzz boxes like the Sola Sound Tone Bender and WEM Rush Pepbox (as used by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, respectively) began to define the sound of psychedelic rock.

And with a wildly experimental approach to recording, the band pursued exciting new sound effects via the medium of analog tape.

These effects, such as delay/loops, reverse tracks, pitch alteration and chorus-like ADT (automatic double tracking) are now commonplace on the modern guitar player’s pedalboard.

While Revolver’s original mono mix will be available, new mixes (featured on all release formats) sourced directly from the original four-track master tapes have been created in stereo and Dolby Atmos by producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell.

Top of the pile is the Super Deluxe version containing 63 tracks in hi res 96kHz/24-bit digital format and spread across 5 vinyl/CD discs. A 100-page hardbound book in a 12.56” x 12.36” slipcase is also included.

This Special Edition release contains the following:

• DISC 1: Revolver (new stereo mix): 14 tracks
• DISCS 2 & 3: Sessions (stereo & mono): 31 tracks
• DISC 4: Revolver (original mono master): 14 tracks
• DISC 5: Revolver EP: 4 tracks

Along with a 40-page booklet abridged from the Super Deluxe book, the Deluxe Special Edition contains 29 tracks and arrives in a dual CD digipak, as follows:

• DISC 1: Revolver (new stereo mix): 14 tracks
• DISC 2: Sessions highlights + “Paperback Writer” & “Rain” (new stereo mixes): 15 tracks

The Standard 14-track version appears in the following formats:

• Digital (new album mix in stereo & hi res 96kHz/24-bit stereo + new Dolby Atmos mix)
• 1CD in digipak (new stereo mix)
• 1LP (new stereo mix) on half-speed mastered 180-gram vinyl
• Limited Edition 1LP vinyl picture disc (new stereo mix) illustrated with the album cover art

Pre-order here.

On his sixth studio album, 2020 Visions, maverick guitarist Stephen Dale Petit has created a blues record unlike any other.

For one thing, it’s a concept record. For another, it presents a dystopian view of society, America in particular, with themes of factionalism, tribalism and alienation, all through the lens of someone gazing into the not-too-distant future.

In this case, that someone is an expat (Petit moved to England from California in the mid ’80s) who penned much of the material back in 2017 but is only now seeing his album – and a good many of his prescient predictions – become a reality.

 “I guess it’s pre-dystopian, to make up my own term,” Petit says in a distinct British accent.

“Having not lived in America for so long, I’m kind of imagining what it must be like for a parent who arrives home after a trip. You walk into the house and the kids are going crazy, the rooms are all torn apart, and you go, ‘What have you done to the place?’ The son says, ‘She did it,’ and the daughter says, ‘He did it.’

“That’s my feeling about the polarization in America and how savage and how indoctrinated ideologically everything seems to be.”

Petit traveled to Nashville and cut 2020 Visions with producer Vance Powell back in 2017, and if various, unforeseen circumstances had not upended his plans, he would have released the album the following year.

A cancer diagnosis – Stage 4, as it turned out – threw his world into a tailspin, and for much of 2018 he had to curtail most professional activities while dealing with treatment.

“It was a chemo and radiation regime every day for two months,” he says. “Brutal stuff. I’m all clear now, thank goodness, but it takes a while for you to get back up to speed.

“I did a couple of shows during that time, and it was strange, because I experienced this sort of artificial energy while performing, almost like a weird caffeine kick or something. But that drops off and your body’s completely reeling. Basically, it put me out of action for a good year.”

Once his doctors gave him the go-ahead to proceed with his normal life and career, Petit was set to release the album in late March of 2020 when the COVID pandemic threw a wrench into that idea.

A tour to support the album was nixed, and while he waited for lockdown to be lifted, he decided to release the record digitally.

“We finally got physical copies out in the fall of 2020, once brick-and-mortar stores began to open up again,” he explains.

“The whole thing was this crazy double-whammy. First I had my own health issues to sort out, and then this global pandemic knocked out the rest of the world. In a way, the second thing wasn’t so hard on me because of what I’d just gone through, but it was a really insane time.”

He laughs. “Is this where I say, ‘All’s well that ends well?’”

Another thing that distinguishes 2020 Visions from most other blues albums is its sound, a unique and revolutionary sonic approach that owes as much to art rock, emo, punk, metal and even jam bands as it does to traditional blues.

On the nine-minute space-age epic “The Fall of America,” Petit exorcises demons as he explores every possible shattering cry and wail his guitar can emit.

In an equally virtuoso performance on another extended track, “Zombie Train,” he goes for broke, firing off supersonic, freak-out solos and shards of psychedelic lines while leading his ace band – bassist Sophie Lord and drummer Jack Greenwood – on a slinky, cosmic and soul-drenched jam journey.

“Sputnik Days,” co-written with his legendary friend (and quasi-mentor) Mick Taylor, is a sublime yet exhilarating dream that offers Petit a showcase for celebrating the lyrical power of bent notes and harmonics.

And those are just some of the highlights. There’s also incendiary re-workings of classics like “Steppin’ Out” and “Long Tall Shorty,” on which the guitarist goes full throttle, summoning the spirits of blues greats while fearlessly claiming the songs as his own.

“Blues is the essence of what I do, but I don’t let it dictate where I can go,” Petit notes. “I just let my instinct guide me. Otherwise, I’m just re-creating what’s been done before, and what’s the point of that?

“It’s like people doing ‘Caldonia,’ which is a great song that’s been a blues standard for 50 years. On any given day, there’s a hundred bands playing it, and I think, Why would they do that, especially if they’re not going to do something new with it?

“I try to take various essences, flavors, colors and styles, but I want to bring them into the present. I want to sound like today. There’s enough people stuck in yesterday, and that’s just not for me.”

As a teenager in California, you hung out with some early metal stars of the day, including Randy Rhoads and George Lynch. Were you much of a shredder?

Not really, no. I more or less decided that I would never develop those kinds of chops. For a good while, I sat on my parents’ sofa, playing my guitar and pondering.

I’d just seen B.B. King – I even got a chance to meet him. There was something about the blues that had touched me deeply, because it’s a cry of the soul. It felt so authentic, especially when compared to the phoniness that was around at the time.

I considered all that stuff out of L.A. contaminated by the ethos of Hollywood, and I didn’t want to be a part of it. On top of that, George Lynch tried to steal my girlfriend.

Oh, well, that would sure turn you off metal.

[laughs] It didn’t help. But yeah, prior to that, I was playing lots of rock covers like everybody else – “Rocky Mountain Way” and stuff like that.

After the revelation of seeing B.B. King, how did you do your homework and absorb the blues?

It actually started with Chuck Berry. My parents listened to the Beatles and the Stones, who both name-checked Chuck. They covered him and talked about the debt they owed him. They celebrated him.

I went out and bought Chuck Berry Is on Top, which was on Chess Records, and from there I started checking out other people on the label: Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter. It happened really quickly.

I imagine you felt like an outlier in L.A. Everybody was getting into the Sunset Strip shred-metal scene while you’re digging into older stuff.

I was very much out of anybody else’s orbit. I just didn’t participate in their scene. But it was a conscious decision. At first I felt a bit awkward, but the magnetic pull of the blues was too strong.

Now, you did a bit of reverse engineering. You went to the U.K. because you were inspired by their blues players, but those were the same people who revered American blues artists.

You’re absolutely right. I was getting the echo of the echo, so to speak. But the way that it was marketed, whether it was Cream or Hendrix or even the Beatles, it was all about appealing to youth. I was young – a generation out, perhaps, but I was still a youth.

How do I put this? I just thought of England and Europe as angular, whereas America was square. There was something coming out of England that felt like a way in. To me, a player like Mick Taylor was a revelation in the beginning, more than even somebody like Peter Green. Hendrix was immediate.

I was hearing all this stuff long after it was released by listening to friends’ older brothers’ records. It all just started to percolate and simmer.

But yeah, I decided to go to England because I just wasn’t thrilled with what I was getting in America.

You became friends with Mick Taylor. How did you two meet?

I went to a show of his, and then it turned out that I knew his manager. Also, I had spoken to somebody in a restaurant adjoining the club who turned out to be his best friend. She had a dog named Roxie, and my dog was named Roxie.

The stars aligned, basically. It was fate. Mick and I met up and hit it off. He was such an important player to me in terms of understanding overbends. We all started doing two-and two-and-a-half-step overbends from hearing Crusade [by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, 1967], specifically the song “Oh, Pretty Woman.”

Mick was 17 at the time, and I started listening to it when I was 17. I was like, Oh this guy did this at my age. Incredible!

Did Mick take you under his wing?

He did. I think he was expecting a Stones freak initially, so he was pleasantly surprised that my interest was more in the blues stuff and the John Mayall records. He toured with me as a special guest, and I think he’s on three of my albums.

The way “The Fall of America” came about is interesting: Mick was living with me. I’d just come back from a trip to L.A., where I’d seen the Kills. The band’s guitar player, Jamie Hince, is fond of hooking the thumb over the neck to make chords – an old bluesman’s trick. I thought, Wow, yeah, I should try some more of that.

I started to noodle around, and Mick came into the room; actually, he was sort of lingering in the doorway while going to make some tea or whatever. He would listen to me sometimes, but he wouldn’t say anything.

So this one time he was listening, and I knew he was there. I was playing around with this riff, and finally he said, “That’s so powerful. It’s really intense and hypnotic.” Then he left to go into another room but not before saying, “It needs to go to E.” And that’s why it goes to an E at the end.

I was inspired by seeing the Kills, but Mick, to his credit, knew not to interrupt me till the right time. He could sense something was being born.

You also became friends with Eric Clapton. That must be pretty remarkable.

Oh yeah. We met through mutual friends. In the beginning, it was like a dream coming true, and you can’t quite believe it – you’re hanging with one of your heroes.

Then it changes and you’re dealing with a human being, and through that process, when you’re actually becoming friends, it goes through phases and you get closer and closer. All of that stuff happened.

Any preconceived notions I had of what he was like went out the window pretty early. He was nothing like what I expected.

Do you two sit down and play together?

Oh, no. No, no, that’s not happened, at least not yet.

He’s commented on your playing and has been quite complimentary.

Yeah, that’s brilliant, isn’t it? It’s mind-blowing, really. You hope for it, but you tell yourself not to expect it.

What kind of impact did Eric have on your playing?

Oh, a lot. [laughs] In my journey, I got my head around overbends, so I went back to the people who started it. Albert King did overbends left, right and center. I would listen to him, but I couldn’t figure him out. This was all before YouTube. I had to do it by ear.

Now, if you overbend by two steps, the note has a different tone than if you just fret honestly on the neck. It’s not dishonest – it’s just got a whole different thing. The tone is different; the timbre of the way the string vibrates is different.

With Eric, I heard the solo he did on Cream’s “I’m So Glad,” and he’s doing different things. I was knocked out.

That and the “Steppin’ Out” solo – I was literally speechless. I know that’s an overused figure of speech, but that’s how I felt. My whole foundation was rocked. Just when I thought I might be getting somewhere with the guitar, I heard this and thought, Holy shit!

You’ve put out some terrific albums, but 2020 Visions feels like a breakthrough. The electric guitar sound is wild, trippy and dramatic, and it’s not typical of how most blues guitarists sound. And you have more than one sound.

I’ve spent years thinking and working on this. To me, tone and textures are every bit as important as what you’re playing. I don’t want to sound like anybody else, and I don’t understand why other people would want to.

What I’m seeking is some sort of a sonic texture that’s unique. It’s not quirky or weird, like it’s a novelty or gimmick; rather, it’s related to what the music is addressing. It’s a style. It’s a sonic style as opposed to a musical style.

It’s easy to say, “I want to sound unique.” It’s quite another thing to pull it off.

It is. One big thing that’s helped me was getting an original Marshall JTM45. It’s part of the toolbox that enables me to do this. I hate to say that, because the amp was stupidly expensive.

I didn’t want it to be true, but the way those amps were designed with the negative-feedback loop, it stacks harmony when you’re sustaining a note. It’s more of a musical instrument than just an amp.

Let’s talk about some of the songs on the album. The title track is blues, but it’s got a very pronounced punk rock side to it.

Sure, sure. I mean, I’m playing blues licks, no doubt, but it’s got another thing. You know, I never really used to like Iggy Pop until I read that he went to Chicago and tried to be a blues guy for, like, six months. Then I kind of understood.

The guitars on the song are trashy and reckless. It’s like they collide off each other.

As well they should. The guitars on the chorus are just driving and out of control, but there’s the call-and-answer guitar to the vocal. It’s got a bluesier, warmer sound. But I’m purposely trying to smear notes, bitter to sweet.

You’re very rough with your guitar on “The Fall of America.” Every riff, power chord and solo is brutal. It’s not festival-tent blues.

It’s designed not to be that at all. There are people who can do that beautifully and brilliantly, and my hat is off to them. It’s just something that doesn’t interest me. I guess I take my sensibilities from the British musicians of the ’60s and ’70s. They were making new art.

That sounds pretentious, but they weren’t just making an archive of what was happening in the room. They were using all the tools of technology to create something unique in that moment, and it was as far from field recordings as you could get.

At nine minutes long, the song is epic. For much of it, it seems like you’re having fun exploring tones.

Oh, I am, I am! Yeah, we went on for a bit, but hey, America’s a big country. [laughs] The subject of what’s going on is a big subject. I’d never written a nine-minute song before, but it went where it wanted.

“Roxie’s Song” is altogether different. It’s a tight, beautifully constructed instrumental.

Yes, Roxie was my miniature schnauzer, and she died. With this record, there was a musical concept. I wanted it to be an honorific homage to the bent note on the guitar.

“Roxie’s Song” has a really long bend, which is the sad part. Obviously, I was gutted that my dog was dead, and I was missing her like nothing else.

But what about the happy times? So there are middle bits where it’s sort of like in summer grass and how she had to hop around to be seen. There are fun bits and moments of exhilaration, like how you play chase with your dog, or how they go crazy when you walk in the door.

How did you and Mick Taylor collaborate on writing “Sputnik Days”?

That was another one of those times when he heard me working on something, but rather than lingering in the doorway, he felt compelled to pick up a guitar.

He co-wrote it with me. It sums up what I aspire to: It’s rooted properly in deep blues while living in the present and being aware that we have tomorrow to look forward to.

One song that is very reverential to the blues is the very short instrumental “On Top.”

Yeah. That’s Sophie Lord playing bass and doing some serious chording – lovely tone clusters as the bedrock. I don’t mind going there – you know, the reverential thing – but it’s why it’s short as well.

“Zombie Train” has a bit of funky soul to it. It’s got a bit of a ’70s feel, but again, it sounds very current. And it’s a great showcase for everybody in the band.

Oh, yes, for sure. That’s another one on which Sophie is front and center. It was sort of showcased for the bass. Both Sophie and Jack Greenwood play brilliantly throughout the record.

“Zombie Train” is this spoken-song verse, and I really loved being able to stretch out on the guitar solos. It’s another long one, and it’s closer to us being a jam band or something.

You have all these Beatles connections. Ringo Starr does a spoken intro on the song “The Ending of the End,” the album’s artwork was done by Klaus Voormann, and you’re photographed by Pattie Boyd.

Yeah, it’s something. Actually, Pattie photographed me for two album covers. You know, my parents played the Beatles; they were part of my musical journey.

When I met Jimmy Page the first time, we talked through it and he agreed. He said, “Well, yeah, they’re rooted in the blues.”

The Beatles are like blues songs with pop choruses. “Can’t Buy Me Love” is a blues progression, and so is “She’s a Woman,” “Lady Madonna,” “I Feel Fine” and on and on.

“Yer Blues,” obviously.

Sure. That was a great one.

You recently started playing the Gibson Custom Modern Flying V.

I did. That’s a whole different experience because it’s so lightweight, and it kind of folds into you. You’re almost wearing it. It’s an insane guitar, and I love it.

On 2020 Visions, I mostly played a cherry-red [ES-]355 reissue. It’s the star of the record. It’s like the Cadillac of guitars. It’s semi-hollow, and it just feels like a proper guitar. I grew up hating 355s. I thought solid-body guitars were the only real guitars. Lately, I’ve done a complete turnaround.

Is there anybody in the current crop of blues guitar players who stands out to you?

There’s some great players. Connor Selby, Toby Lee – those are two off the top of my head.

It’s hard for me to criticize anybody, because I think anybody doing it should be applauded. If they’re out there and playing, they’ve already accomplished so much.

At the same time, so much current blues has become formulaic – the sounds and just the concept of what a blues record in the modern age should be.

A lot of that has to do with people being concerned about airplay. I’m unsure how it all happens. Is it the artist? The producer? These people can be great players, but it’s hard for me to listen to another blues song that’s produced the same way or with the same approach.

Sometimes I can’t get past it, but that’s a personal problem. It’s got nothing to do with anybody else.

Order Stephen Dale Petit’s 2020 Visions here.

When it comes to shaking up the guitar world, in many ways Led Zeppelin were to the ‘70s what the Beatles were to the ‘60s.

Around a fortnight after Led Zeppelin released their eponymous debut album in January 1969, the Beatles performed together for the final time on the rooftop of their Apple Corps headquarters in London.

And as the decade that gave us Flower Power crossfaded into the era of hard rock, the airwaves grew heavier with the sound of electric guitar riffs.

Leading the way for myriad bands the world over, Zeppelin’s far-reaching appeal has inspired generations.

From the British folk acoustic guitar brilliance of Bert Jansch to the Chicago blues genius of Willie Dixon, Led Zeppelin directly referenced guitar culture on both sides of the Atlantic, weaving the roots of rock together tighter than ever.

With the historic Beatles split coinciding with Led Zeppelin's meteoric rise, the music world was in a state of flux and some journalists were keen to dig deeper.

How much influence did the Beatles exert on ‘70s rock music?

What’s the difference between Led Zeppelin and the Beatles?

How does Jimmy Page feel about the Beatles?

All of these questions and more are answered by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in this intriguing compilation of early interview recordings.

Interestingly, when asked about whether they hope to be awarded MBEs (as per the Beatles) Page replies, “I think they’ve given up on people like us for that.”

However, in 2005, the guitarist one-upped the Beatles while receiving an OBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace for his humanitarian work in Brazil.

Similarly, Page’s award was trumped by Plant in 2009 when the singer received a CBE for his services to music.

Browse the Led Zeppelin catalog here.

As one of the world’s most famous guitarists, George Harrison was on the receiving end of some stunning and groundbreaking guitars, including a prototype Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string, in 1964, and a prototype Fender Rosewood Telecaster, in 1969.

But as astute Beatles fans learned in recent years, in 1967 Harrison became the recipient of an unusual prototype fretless electric guitar built by the short-lived U.S. Bartell company.

How the guitar came to be, and how Harrison came to own it, are among the subjects explored by British author Paul Brett in his recently published groundbreaking tome, Finding Fretless: The Story of George Harrison’s Mad Guitar (This Day in Music Books).

Brett’s interest in the guitar was spurred when his friend, veteran jazz-fusion guitarist Ray Russell, posted a cryptic message to his Facebook page to mark the Beatle’s birthday on February 25, 2019, accompanied by a photo of a fretless guitar.

“He took a little post on Facebook and said, ‘I’m remembering George today. He gave me this old guitar. I don’t know much about it,’” Brett recalls. “That just triggered my interest. It was a Bartell. I’d never heard of it.”

Russell’s post sent Brett on a journey to learn more about both Harrison’s guitar and the Bartell brand, whose venture into fretless guitars in the 1960s is among the guitar world’s most unusual evolutionary branches.

At the heart of the story is Paul Barth, one of guitar’s unsung heroes. “People don’t talk much about Paul Barth,” Brett says, “but he was really one of the founding fathers of the electric guitar.”

Barth’s introduction to the guitar industry came in the early 1920s, when he went to work for his uncle John Dopyera, inventor of the resonator guitar, at the National String Instrument Corporation. By the 1930s, Barth was working with George Beauchamp at Rickenbacker, collaborating with him on the Frying Pan electric and Beauchamp’s design for a guitar pickup.

In the early 1950s, he helped Leo Fender set up his Santa Ana assembly line and built many of the woodworking jigs from which necks and bodies were shaped for Stratocaster, Jazzmaster and Jaguar model guitars.

His work even extended to Semie Moseley at Mosrite as well as Magnatone and Hohner.

He launched his own Barth guitar brand in 1956, and in 1964 the Bartell company was created by owner and company president Ted Eugene Peckels and Barth, who served as director and head of design. The Bartell name was derived by combining Barth’s and Peckels’ surnames.

It was Tom Mitchell, a paint finisher at Bartell – he went on to create Mitchell Amplifiers – who suggested the company make a fretless guitar, around 1966 or 1967.

“Ted Peckels said, ‘That’ll never take off,’” Brett relates. “But Paul Barth, being a designer and inventor, said, ‘Yeah, let’s give it a go and see what happens.’”

A few prototypes were made, including two for Jimi Hendrix and one that Frank Zappa acquired in 1973 from a Guitar Center in California. How Harrison came to own one required some serious sleuthing on Brett’s part.

A vital lead came from his friend Richard Bennett, a guitarist with plays with Neil Diamond and Mark Knopfler, who owned a Bartell as his first guitar.

Bennett related a story about Al Casey, the owner of Al Casey’s Music Room retail outlet in Hollywood, sending a Bartell fretless to Harrison when the Beatle was staying at 1567 Blue Jay Way in Los Angeles in 1967.

The home is famous as the place where Harrison wrote “Blue Jay Way,” the haunting track from 1967’s Magical Mystery Tour, while waiting for the arrival of Beatles press officer Derek Taylor, who’d lost his way in the fog.

While browsing the internet hoping to find a photo of the Beatles with the fretless guitar, Brett entered “Al Casey Bartell fretless” into a search engine and was rewarded with a vintage print ad for Al Casey’s Music Room.

“You must have heard about them by now, so come on in and see the Bartell fretless guitars and fretless basses,” went the ad copy. Below the call to action was a cryptic parenthetical: “George Harrison got the first guitar, maybe if you hurry you can get the second one.”

The ad ran in The Los Angeles Free Press from the first week of September 1967, lending support to Bennett’s story.

Brett then learned that on August 3, while in Hollywood, Harrison and Beatles assistant Neil Aspinall attended a recording session where guitarist Mike Deasy was playing one of Bartell’s prototype hollow-bodied fretless guitars.

Harrison spoke with Deasy about the instrument for 20 or 30 minutes before leaving. Afterward, Aspinall reportedly ordered a fretless guitar from Al Casey.

It’s certain that the Bartell fretless made it to Abbey Road Studio. The guitar is documented in Beatles history through British DJ Kenny Everett’s recorded interview with John Lennon.

Their chat took place at Abbey Road Studio on June 6, 1968, shortly after the Beatles began recording the White Album. Lennon is playing the guitar, which can be heard on the recording. “What kind of guitar is that?” Everett asks at one point. “Very strange looking.” Replies Lennon, “A fretless guitar.”

“We know it was the Bartell, ’cause it’s the only one they had,” Brett says. From talking with others who knew Harrison, he learned that Lennon was more intrigued by the guitar than Harrison was. “He was more likely to pick it up and mess around with it when they were looking for a particular sound or effect.”

But was the fretless guitar ever used on a recording by the Beatles?

No documentation exists to support the notion, but Brett and others familiar with the tonal character of the instrument are convinced it appears on two White Album tracks: “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” where Brett believes it was used to perform the rubbery descending lick that precedes the lyric “I need a fix ’cause I’m going down”; and “Helter Skelter,” where it would have been used along with other guitars.

Brett says the sound of a fretless guitar is present and more apparent on the second take of “Helter Skelter,” a version clocking in at 12 minutes and 54 seconds, some four and a half minutes of which appear on Anthology 3.

“The suggestion is that it may have been used on others, mainly for overdubs, not as the lead guitar or the main instrument,” he says. “But you can certainly pick it out, because it is so unique.”

Brett points to an absence of the bright tone that comes from the strings vibrating against a metal fret. “I think George called it ‘fret sparkle,’” he says. Likewise, slides and bends sound different due to the absence of frets.

Brett also notes the microtonal characteristics of intonation that come from imperfect fretboard fingering. “The fact that it was a hollowbody guitar as well adds a bit to [the distinctive sound],” he says. “And I’m hearing the pickups – they weren’t great for volume as such.”

Though his research had proved where and how Harrison received the guitar, Brett was frustrated that he could find no photo of the instrument among pictures of the Beatles. But eventually his painstaking efforts paid off.

“It took me months of searching through tens of thousands of photos,” he says. “And there we had it: George Harrison at home with his collection of guitars.” The photo, taken some time in the 1970s, shows Harrison in a room at his Friar Park estate surrounded by mostly acoustic guitars. “And there it is right at the back next to him,” Brett reveals.

Harrison gifted the guitar to his friend Russell in 1985. In March 2020, it was featured on Antiques Roadshow, where it was valued at £400,000. Under the circumstances, Russell was unprepared to own and maintain an instrument of such value.

On October 13, 2020, this least-famous Beatles guitar went on Bonhams’ auction block, where it fetched a more conservative, but no less impressive, bid of £190,000 – roughly a quarter of a million dollars.

Brett’s dogged efforts have helped unearth yet another piece of Beatles history, but what tends to get overshadowed in the story is how Finding Fretless shines light on a previously unexplored tract in guitar history through research and stories about Barth, Bartell and other fretless guitars and their owners.

For his contributions, Brett has been nominated by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards (ARSC) to receive its 2022 award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.

NAMM has also asked him to contribute to its oral history program when he’s in Anaheim for the annual musical instrument show next month.

“We’re hoping to have a reunion of Bartell while we’re there,” Brett says, “and give Paul Barth some of the recognition he deserves.”

Order Finding Fretless: The Story of George Harrison’s Mad Guitar by Paul Brett here.

Dark, handsome, and understated, the Fender Rosewood Telecaster has much in common with George Harrison.

Custom-built for the guitarist in 1968 by Fender craftsmen Roger Rossmeisl and Philip Kubicki, it suited him down to the ground, although it was high on the roof of the Beatles’ Apple Corps headquarters in London that this unique Tele design was unveiled, at the band’s final public performance on January 30, 1969.

The origin of the Fender Rosewood Telecaster likely stems from a meeting at Apple Corp in 1968 set up by Don Randall, Leo Fender’s original business partner and head of the company’s sales division.

Keenly aware of the importance of product placement, and having courted the Beatles for some time, Randall visited the band’s Savile Row HQ, where he met with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney.

“Don began supplying the Beatles with Fender equipment immediately following the meeting,” explains Martin Kelly, guitar historian and co-author of The Golden Age of Fender: 1946-1970.

“During the recording sessions for the White Album, he had already gifted the band a left-handed Jazz Bass for Paul, a right-handed Bass VI that both John and George used, and blackface Deluxe and Twin Reverb amps.

“By the time the recordings that would become Let It Be began in January 1969, the group had been kitted out with brand-new ‘drip edge’ silverface Twin Reverbs, a Bassman amp with a 2x15 cabinet, a Fender Rhodes electric piano and George’s Rosewood Telecaster.

“You can see all this wonderful new gear, complete with hang tags, in The Beatles: Get Back. By this time, Fender had really made their move on the band and were becoming a big part of the Beatles’ sound.

“It’s scary to think that the rehearsals for Let It Be began just six weeks after the White Album had been released. In the meantime, Harrison had visited Bob Dylan and the Band in Woodstock, where he enjoyed a carefree, relaxed atmosphere. Suddenly he’s back in the Beatles fold, and the atmosphere is very different indeed.

“But in the midst of it all, this new Fender gear – including the Rosewood Telecaster – has turned up.”

Created by Rossmeisl and Kubicki, the new design appeared at a time when Fender was experimenting heavily with the Telecaster form.

“The Rosewood Telecaster was introduced at the start of a new experimental phase for the Tele,” Kelly confirms. “The first time Fender had experimented with the design was in 1959 with the introduction of the edge-bound Telecaster Custom.

“Next came the Blue Flower and Paisley Red Telecasters in 1968, along with the Rosewood Telecaster and the Thinline. The early ’70s ushered in both the Custom [a second version released in 1972] and the Deluxe [released in 1973].

“In terms of pickups and electronics, the Rosewood Telecaster is completely standard, as per a regular Tele, with two single-coil pickups and simple volume and tone controls. As with the [original] Telecaster Thinline, Rossmeisl wasn’t messing too much with convention.” (The Telecaster Thinline changed to a dual Wide Range humbucker design later, in 1971.)

However, when it comes to tonewood, the Rosewood Telecaster was a radical departure from the standard Telecaster’s traditional maple neck/ash body construction.

“The first Rosewood Tele was constructed from four pieces of rosewood glued together – two on the top and two on the bottom,” Kelly explains. “Harrison's prototype guitar was made from four bits of rosewood, whereas production examples seem mostly to be made using a solid slab of rosewood on the back and a solid slab on the front. All Rosewood Teles feature a thin layer of maple sandwiched in the center of the body.

“George’s guitar was chambered – perhaps more so than production models – to alleviate weight. Rosewood is a dense wood, and production Rosewood Teles can often be very heavy, even though they’re chambered. They vary a lot in terms of weight, but I’m reliably told George’s guitar is lighter than most production examples.”

Unlike the production models that soon followed, Harrison’s prototype guitar was built using a rosewood neck with a glued-on rosewood fingerboard. Using this method of construction, the truss rod is placed into the front of the neck prior to the board being attached.

This differs from Fender’s original practice of making Teles with a one-piece fretted neck, where the truss rod is inserted into a channel in the back. Consequently, the tell-tale “skunk stripe” on the rear and the peghead plug on the front of the fretted neck are absent from his guitar.

“It’s interesting, because this was the first time Fender had returned to the skunk stripe on Telecasters since the ’50s,” Kelly points out. “They weren’t making any other guitars that way at the time, and you’ll notice a maple [peghead] plug and skunk stripe running down the back of the neck on all production Rosewood Teles.

“The prototype has a satin finish and a pre-CBS decal, but production guitars feature glossy poly finishes and transition decals. I imagine they used a thick transition logo because they wanted it to stand out. If they’d used a contemporary black CBS logo, it wouldn’t have shown up against the dark rosewood. (Fender started using solid black peghead logo decals in 1967.)

“While interviewing Phil Kubicki for my Fender book, I asked why he fitted a pre-CBS decal to George’s prototype, and he told me, ‘Martin, I didn’t care what type of decal I used. I just reached for whatever was on my desk and whatever was closest to hand. I was not thinking about whether the main factory had switched to a different type of decal; it just said ‘Fender,’ and that was all it needed to say.’”

Interestingly, a Rosewood Stratocaster intended for (though never received by) Jimi Hendrix was made alongside Harrison’s guitar. This prototype Strat also features a pre-CBS “spaghetti” logo.

“Phil Kubicki was Roger Rossmeisl’s assistant in the R&D shop, and they made two Strats and two Teles,” Kelly reveals. “I believe they knew the Tele was going to the Beatles, and that the Strat was intended for Jimi Hendrix. Phil told me he knew who they were making them for and there was a sense of urgency to get the Tele ready first.

“This instruction likely came following Don Randall’s meeting with the Beatles at Savile Row, and I guess he had told Rossmeisl, ‘We’re sending the Beatles some stuff. Can you get the Rosewood Telecaster ready first?’

“Roger and Phil constructed two necks and two bodies, but they only finished one of each guitar. Kubicki told me that was their standard procedure. They’d make two, just in case, and they’d pick the best of both.

“They selected the best neck and the best body to make George’s guitar, and Phil told me he spent some time getting the satin finish just right by gradually working through grades of wet and dry to bring it to a certain type of sheen. He said it was at Roger Rossmeisl’s request that the guitar was finished that way.”

Having worked hard to get the Rosewood Telecaster completed, Fender flew the guitar over the pond (it had its own seat on the aircraft), and it was soon in Harrison’s hands.

“The Rosewood Tele prototype was sent over in late ’68, and George was seen playing it in January ’69. But in a pre-internet world, Fender didn’t have any immediate photographic evidence. In fact, Phil Kubicki didn’t know George Harrison had used his guitar until he saw the rooftop film over a year later! That was the first time he knew it had actually been used.”

Nevertheless, within months of being created, the Rosewood Telecaster had popped up on Fender price lists. However, with a distinct lack of accompanying information, it was something of a mystery for customers, not to mention a relatively expensive option.

“The Rosewood Tele first appeared on price sheets in May 1969, costing $375,” Kelly says. “Versus a regular rosewood ’board Tele at $269.50, it was over a hundred dollars more. A maple cap Tele was $279.50 [$10 more for a maple cap was standard then]. The edge-bound Telecaster Custom and Paisley Red/Blue Flower Teles were $299.50. So the Rosewood Telecaster was far and away the most expensive at $375.

“The Rosewood Telecaster was on price sheets from May 1969 until April 1970, when it disappeared. It was dropped having never appeared in a single advert or catalog; it only ever showed up on price sheets. Who would even know what that was, or how to order it if they’ve never seen one in the flesh?

“The price list doesn’t describe much; it just says ‘Telecaster, (Dual Pickups) Rosewood.’ So people wouldn’t have known what they were ordering. It was a fleeting idea that was never publicized by Fender at the time.

“I guess the Fender sales team thought, The Beatles have taken one; let’s build a few, put it on price sheets, and then see what happens. But there was never any imagery of it provided by Fender. Perhaps they were just testing the water to see if the Beatles would really endorse it. The film Let It Be premiered in May 1970, just as the guitar was dropped and the Beatles split.

“The Rosewood Telecaster remained off Fender price lists throughout 1971 but reappeared in February 1972 marked ‘new,’ as if they’d never made it before, more than likely the result of demand created by the film.

“It was now $399.50 and on the same price list, a regular rosewood ’board Tele is $283, and a regular Tele with a maple cap [fretboard] is $295. By January 1973, it had disappeared into obscurity once again!”

In 1986, the Rosewood Telecaster briefly reappeared on Fender price lists as part of the Limited Edition Series. Made in Japan, these guitars were initially priced $699 and have garnered a reputation over the years for being reliable, high-quality instruments.

“The mid-’80s Japanese reissues were quite accurate to the original production models,” Kelly confirms.

Japanese-made Rosewood Telecasters were also offered in the ’90s in Fender’s Reissue Series, while the Custom Shop has revisited the design on several occasions over the years, launching the Rosewood Telecaster in 2007 to commemorate their 20th anniversary.

Sporting the George Harrison–style specs of satin finish, a rosewood fretboard, no skunk stripe/plug and a pre-CBS decal, this run of instruments is easily identifiable by a neck plate that reads “Limited Release” alongside the Custom Shop logo and serial number.

“My late friend Alan Rogan [Pete Townshend’s guitar tech and guitar expert/ collector] had an early Custom Shop example with the George Harrison–style satin finish, rosewood ’board, and pre-CBS decal,” Kelly recalls. “That was a fantastic guitar!”

In more recent years, Fender Custom Shop releases that feature the George Harrison-esque specs also include the 2013 Closet Classic Rosewood Telecaster (the neck plate reads “Limited Edition”) and the 2016 Paul Waller Master Built George Harrison Rosewood Telecaster (with a “GH”-prefixed number inscribed on the back of headstock).

In 2017, Fender launched a limited run of 1,000 George Harrison Rosewood Telecasters. As you would expect, these guitars feature the prototype-style specs, and they are set apart by a neckplate marked with an Om symbol and Harrison’s signature.

With 2021’s The Beatles: Get Back documentary series creating a renewed interest in arguably Fender’s most iconic prototype guitar, the George Harrison Rosewood Telecaster was re-released this year.

As per the 2017 iteration, Fender’s latest Rosewood Tele offering sports the Om/signature neckplate and features a chambered body, 9 ½-inch radius fingerboard and 1964-style pickups. Priced at $2,899.99, the guitar is touted as a “limited edition tribute.”

“The current Fender George Harrison Rosewood Telecaster looks impressive,” Kelly remarks. “Overall, I think the design was a nice, subtle rework of the regular Tele, and George Harrison put it to phenomenal use.

“Rosewood Telecasters definitely have their own sound. To my ears, they sound springy. Because rosewood is so dense, it adds a bounce to the sound. They have a thicker, deeper, darker twang. I think the chambering affects things too; they have a different acoustic resonance. I’d be keen to know why Harrison’s is lighter than other Rosewood Teles. Perhaps because it’s more extensively chambered?”

Be it the prototype or production-style design, Fender’s Rosewood Telecaster reissues collectively outnumber the late ’60s/early ’70s models by a long way. Educated guesses put shipping figures of the original runs in the low hundreds.

“Original ’69-’72-era Rosewood Teles are few and far between, and I’d be surprised if more than 250 to 300 were made,” Kelly states. “There were other quirky Fender models, like the Swinger, that were never advertised by the company.

“Weirdly though, they did a fair amount for the Custom – the cut-down hockey-stick headstock ‘bits-er’ guitar that appeared in the 1970 catalog and period ads. Maybe Fender was backing the wrong horse!”

Martin Kelly is the co-author of The Golden Age of Fender: 1946-1970 (Cassell Illustrated). His latest book, Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo, is available via Phantom Books.

Guitar Player thanks ATB Guitars in the U.K. for showing us the Fender Rosewood Telecaster featured here.

Last time, we delved into how the Beatles struggled to the breaking point over how to approach some of the more delicate tunes presented in the documentary The Beatles: Get Back (watch all 8 hours now on Disney Plus).

Acoustic arrangements that sound simple can actually be the trickiest to tackle, especially as a group. 

After George Harrison bails and ultimately rejoins the quartet, they finally figure out “Two of Us” and “For Your Blue,” but one iconic song eludes them altogether...

ACROSS THE TUNE-IVERSE

Watching the Beatles try to figure out “Across the Universe” is fascinating. First they listen to an early version laid down at Abbey Road in February 1968.

According to beatlesbible.com, the basic track has Lennon on acoustic guitar and Harrison on tambura, an Indian drone instrument.

As the group attempts a full electric arrangement in The Beatles: Get Back, it’s cool to hear the song fleshed out with Lennon on his Epiphone Casino, Harrison playing his Les Paul with a wah pedal, and harmony vocals, on top of Paul and Ringo’s rather plodding bass and drums.

But what the somewhat discombobulated band brings to the table lacks the transcendent quality of the acoustic arrangement we know and love.

The scene culminates with McCartney shouting, “I think you’d better take control, John!”

He doesn’t.

Instead, they launch into Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music.” Next thing you know, they’re playing around with a silly cut-time version.

“Across the Universe” gets shelved. Phil Spector ultimately turned the original version into a “wall of sound” production with strings and a choir. That wound up on Let It Be.

The stark Let It Be… Naked re-imagining from 2003 proved the bare-bones original idea is still sturdy when “undressed,” with Spector’s embellishments removed. 

Sometimes less is more – all you need is a little acoustic love.

CHANGE YOUR WORLD

There is much to learn by delving into “Across the Universe.” The key is to play it in D, using the Let It Be… Naked version as a guide. The Let It Be mix is slowed down to Db, while the first-released version – which appeared on No One’s Gonna Change Our World, a 1969 album to benefit the World Wildlife Fund – is sped up to Eb.

It’s much easier to play in D, although the intro requires a bit of facility. It starts by jumping from an open D shape to the one at the 10th position, with a focus on strings one and three. 

It then falls back down to land on F# min (use a wrapped thumb to keep the B string open for a toggle to F# minsus4). Keep that B string open for the next move, toggling from A5 to Asus2, before resolving on open D.

The rest is pretty basic stuff. The simple chord arrangement can be found online and includes lots of D and A chords, while the straightforward rhythm consists of eighth-note downstrokes. 

The foundation is rock solid, but the magic lies in how the ingenious melody flows through the simple chord structure.

“Across the Universe” is within reach for any decent singer, as the range isn’t too broad and the melody winds around in small steps. For the vocally challenged, there are two paths.

First, connect with a buddy to play the melody while you cover the chords, or perhaps bounce parts back and forth.

Second, for those with fingerstyle chops or some facility picking out chord melodies, this is an endlessly interesting tune to tackle solo, and a great one to use as a jumping off point for your own embellishment.

Try working in three different ranges on the fretboard. Start in open position. Use your ear to follow the melody through the chords on the entire song.

Want to take it to the next level? Jump to the fifth position starting with the second verse.

Next level again? Try the 10th position, starting on the last verse.

Throughout the tune, experiment with playing partial chords and leaving strings open where they work to add colorful suspensions.

I spent weeks working with “Across the Universe” after watching The Beatles: Get Back, and discovered new dimensions with each attempt.

May learning “Across the Universe” help you change your world for the better.

Order The Beatles: Get Back book here.

While I mostly collect weird guitars, I also love Pez dispensers, old radios, records, and just about anything related to the Beatles. Two of those passions – weird guitars and the Fab Four – intersect here, a plastic acoustic guitar from the British Invasion emblazoned with the group’s likenesses.

I’ve wanted one of these for decades, but the price kept them out of reach until kismet, kindness and luck bestowed this very model upon me.

This toy guitar was made in 1964 by Selcol, a firm in England, under license by Mastro, an American company owned by Mario Maccaferri, the brilliant luthier who made the wonderful French flattops Django Reinhardt played in the 1930s.

Amid Europe’s political turmoil in the run-up to WWII, Maccaferri moved his shop to America just in time for a moratorium on using wood to build anything that wasn’t for the war effort. 

He found success manufacturing clothing pins from plastic and eventually built an array of musical instruments – including drums, bongos and, yes, awesome guitars and ukuleles – from the material.

When my buddy and 8-Ball teammate guitarist Matt Turbin went to England last year for his daughter’s wedding, I jokingly asked him to pick me up one of these rarities. To my surprise, he found one on London’s Craigslist. Though it was missing its tuners and strings, it was in one piece, with vibrant graphics. And at just $150, it was a steal!

WEIRDO FACTOR

What’s truly bizarre is that this toy “New Sound Guitar,” as Selcol called it, is playable and sounds quite good. That’s surprising not only because it’s made of plastic but also because it’s a novelty made simply to cash in on the Beatles boom.

PLAYABILITY & SOUND

While it may not compare with pro examples, Maccaferri’s “Plastic Mac” has a scale length accurate to that of a soprano uke.

The frets are measured and molded into just the right position, and the bracing beneath the top is strategically placed into the plastic mold.

Finding new tuners wasn’t straightforward. Replacement parts aren’t available, and original tuners are rare and sell for between 50 and 75 bucks apiece. But as it happens, Maccaferri used the same parts on plastic instruments it built based on Disney characters (see below.)

For $15, I bought a Mickey Mouse ukulele on eBay, and after moving the tuners to the Selcol guitar – and paying $7 for multicolored strings – returned my Beatles ukulele to stock.

VALUE

These sold for $5 in 1964. At the time I wrote this, two were on eBay for $2,500 and $5,000 bucks. Even beat-up examples command between $500 and $750, all of which makes the $172 I paid for my instrument a bargain.

WHY IT RULES

It’s Beatles memorabilia first and foremost, but it’s also a Plastic Mac. The first thing I played on it as soon as I got it assembled was McCartney’s version of “Something.” I almost cried.

Many thanks to Matt Turbin for making my tongue-in-cheek request a reality.

Like other players from across the musical universe, we’ve been engrossed in director Peter Jackson’s epic documentary culled from the sessions that yielded the Beatles’ Let It Be.

Revelations abound, though they are fewer on the acoustic guitar side, as the group’s original goal was to create a live rock and roll show.

That wound up being the infamous rooftop concert at Apple Corps headquarters in London.

The mass of material created during the sessions can be divided into two camps: the electric rooftop rockers, and the softer melodic goodness that didn’t fit squarely into that box.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the film, but perhaps most interesting is how the album’s unplugged tunes came to be.

WE CAN WORK IT OUT... OR CAN WE?

The main takeaway may be that, occasionally, things don’t work out the way you planned. Sometimes you can find a song on acoustic guitar that you simply can’t find on an electric guitar. 

The revelation revolves around multiple attempts at “Two of Us,” starting on day one of rehearsals at Twickenham Film Studios, with McCartney on acoustic while Lennon and Harrison play electrics.

Paul switches to bass for the next go around when he and Harrison get into the infamous row that led a frustrated George to quip, “Whatever you want me to play, I’ll play it. Or I won’t play at all.”

In the next clip, Lennon and McCartney are rocking out, standing up to share a single vocal mic and having a ball, while Harrison sits on a Fender guitar amp playing his Les Paul.

Yet another stab at “Two of Us” winds up sounding akin to the song “Get Back.” But Lennon can’t stop fooking around on his Epiphone Casino, McCartney scolds him, and Harrison not only gives up on the tune – he quits the Beatles right then and there.

He’s literally “on his way home.”

TWO, THREE OR FOUR OF US?

The acoustic epiphany finally occurs after Harrison rejoins the band at Apple Studios and they give “Two of Us” another chance.

They hit another dead end in the electric format, this time with John tossing out different vocal approaches, until he realizes, “Maybe just softer.”

He quickly tunes up Harrison’s Gibson J-200. Paul picks up his Martin D-28 – a right-handed model strung lefty – while explaining that he doesn’t feel quite right playing bass on this one anyway, “because it was written on guitar.”

John strums a cowboy G chord with a straight eighth-note feel and declares, “That’s it!” McCartney plays the intro with nice vibrato, smiles, and they’re off, with Paul essentially playing the lead role on his Martin, and Harrison copping a bass-like line on his Telecaster.

They cut a take and Harrison proclaims, “It sounds lovely, that, now. After all that anguish we went through with it. Put it on the B-side.”

They finally get it.

FOR YOU BLUE, OR MAYBE JUST ME?

Harrison first introduces his brand-new skiffle blues “For You Blue” on his J-200 at Twickenham.

“Maybe it’s an acoustic song for me,” he remarks. “It’s great because I don’t need any backing, really.”

He wants to do his own thing so badly, but the Beatles end up delivering a playful arrangement when they move to Apple, with Lennon slip-sliding away on a Hofner 5140 Hawaiian Standard lap-steel he barres with what appears to be a lighter, as McCartney plays a piano whose strings are threaded with paper to create an old-timey tack-piano sound.

Harrison leads them on acoustic with a capo at the sixth fret, and it remains an anchor in the recording.

NOTHING’S GOING TO CHANGE… OR IS IT?

The other acoustic gem on Let It Be that doesn’t quite “come together” in the Get Back documentary is “Across the Universe.”

It’s a simple song with an epic saga of deep development that dates from February 1968 through attempts at a band arrangement during these rehearsal sessions, and then beyond the breakup of the Beatles as the track receives different production treatments.

We’ll delve into that, and what guitar players can learn from the tune itself, next time.

Order The Beatles: Get Back book here.

We recently asked some of the guitar world’s best-known players to name their favorite lesser-known solos. In other words: No Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Gilmour et cetera.        

In addition to his decade-long run as a member of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Ricky Byrd has played electric guitar alongside a list of music legends that includes Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, Ian Hunter, Smokey Robinson, and Mavis Staples.

“I’m a product of all the music I listened to as a kid, and I’m not ashamed to nod to my influences,” Byrd recently told us. “That could be anything from Sweet to the Stones and the Faces.” 

“There’s the Who, the Kinks, maybe a little Dylan and Lou Reed. When I make a record, instead of trying to come up with a new rock 'n' roll sound, I’m reverting back to myself as a 13-year-old kid listening to music on my headphones. That’s what makes me happy.”

Here are just some of those happy moments…

1) Mountain | “Theme for an Imaginary Western” from ‘Climbing!’

GUITARIST: Leslie West

“Leslie West was a friend, and I was lucky enough to play with him onstage a few times. His choice of notes, the tone, the way he plays for the song instead of just riffing – it’s just stunning.”

2) Mountain | “Mississippi Queen” from ‘Climbing!’

GUITARIST: Leslie West

“Leslie West gets two choices here. His playing slayed me when I was 14 years old, and it still does. Again, the tone – the growl he got out of a P-90! In fact, this song made me run out and buy a ’50s Les Paul Junior – for $350 because this was back in the early ’70s. I learned how to pinch the string and get that squeal from the Les.”

3) Free | “Mr. Big” (live) from ‘Free Live!’

GUITARIST: Paul Kossoff

“The tone, phrasing and the coolest vibrato out there. You think Angus Young listened to Paul Kossoff ? Most important was the way he built the solo to this amazing climax. Just so good and exciting. He was the perfect player to complement Paul Rodgers’ voice.”

4) Johnny Winter And | “It’s My Own Fault” from ‘Live Johnny Winter And’

GUITARIST: Johnny Winter

“I played the vinyl to death trying to learn the riffs. Johnny’s tone, bends, his feel – it was sloppy in the best way possible. His playing was a perfect match for his voice. Rick Derringer was no slouch on this one either.”

5) Cactus | “Parchman Farm” from ‘Cactus’

GUITARIST: Jim McCarthy

“I loved Cactus. The solo that Jim McCarthy plays – and what he plays throughout the song – is so good that it’s like, ‘Where do I start?’ This is a freight train disguised as a Les Paul coming at you at 100 miles per hour. I tried so hard to learn this as a kid, and I still can’t play it.”

Pick up a copy of Ricky Byrd's latest solo album Sobering Times here.

Available on CD, vinyl and digitally across all platforms from April 15, Edgar Winter’s talent-packed new album, Brother Johnny, pays tribute to his Firebird-toting blues brother – the late, great Johnny Winter (1944-2014) – with a collection of songs featuring some of the biggest names in the guitar world.

A legend among legends, Johnny Winter’s continued reverence has prompted a sizeable host of well-known guitar players to contribute to the recording. Several years in the making this 17-track collection (which includes two original numbers penned by Edgar Winter) was curated with producer Ross Hogarth in order to demonstrate Johnny Winter’s storied evolution as an artist.

“Many people immediately started trying to convince me to do a Johnny Winter tribute album,” said Edgar, reflecting on the days following his brother’s passing back in 2014. “But I was totally devastated, and the timing just didn't feel right to me. It wasn’t until after I completed the Rock ‘N’ Blues Fest, a tour we were meant to do together with our respective bands, that the idea of a tribute record started to take form.

“There was such an overwhelming outpouring of love and respect for Johnny, I began to realise it was not just business people sensing an opportunity here; it was Johnny's true, loyal, and devoted fans and our fellow musicians, many of whom are on this record, who wanted to see this happen as well.”

Among those featured on Brother Johnny include electric guitar luminaries Joe Bonamassa, Robben Ford, Billy Gibbons, Warren Haynes, Steve Lukather, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Derek Trucks, Joe Walsh, and Phil X.

Kicking off the album’s release Quarto Valley Records has unveiled the “Johnny B. Goode” single – a song that remained in Johnny Winter’s setlist up until the end. Vocals are provided by Winter and Joe Walsh while fellow Texan, John Mellencamp guitarist David Grissom, delivers a dynamite performance of Chuck Berry's timeless rock ‘n’ roll masterpiece.

Acclaimed filmmaker Lance Bangs (the Rolling Stones, Nirvana, R.E.M.) has written and directed the official music video for George Harrison’s smash hit "My Sweet Lord" over half a century following its original release. The song appeared on Harrison’s 7x platinum 1970 triple solo album All Things Must Pass (his third long-player following 1968’s Wonderwall Music and 1969’s Electronic Sound) and was the Beatle’s first single as a solo artist. Achieving phenomenal worldwide success, "My Sweet Lord" went on to become the biggest selling single of 1971 in the U.K. and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S.

Bangs’ unmissable music video pays tribute to Harrison’s legacy in the world of music and comedy (HandMade Films) with a suitably iconic cast that includes a host of actors, musicians, comedians and other creatives. Some of those making an appearance were especially close to Harrison – notably Olivia and Dhani Harrison, along with bandmates Ringo Starr and Jeff Lynne.

Echoing the sentiments of the song, the “metaphysical special agent” protagonists – played by Fred Armisen and Vanessa Bayer – search for the unseen, yet they can’t see for looking. “Making this was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life,” said Bangs. “The approach was to represent the song visually while these agents and inspectors kept missing the metaphysical wonder around them… George threaded a sense of humor through all of his videos, so we kept that spirit and filled the cast with friends and admirers of his music, many coming from the current comedy landscape.”

The new “My Sweet Lord” video features the 2020 mix by Paul Hicks (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, John Lennon) as featured on the recent 50th Anniversary editions of All Things Must Pass.

Speaking of the new releases (which include Uber Deluxe and Super Deluxe box sets, CDs, vinyl, downloads and streams) Dhani Harrison said, "Since the 50th anniversary stereo mix release of the title track to my father’s legendary All Things Must Pass album in 2020, my dear pal Paul Hicks and I have continued to dig through mountains of tapes to restore and present the rest of this newly remixed and expanded edition of the album."

Browse George Harrison’s catalog here.

As Peter Frampton noted, there was no shortage of guitarists at the Concert for Bangladesh. And while some of the electric guitars that were played at one or both shows are famous – consider Eric Clapton’s “Brownie” Strat, which he used for the second show after abandoning the Gibson Byrdland he played in the first set – others remain mired in mystery. 

Here’s a guide to the main examples wielded at the concerts.

1. George Harrison’s Mystery Strat

Harrison spent much of the show playing a stripped Fender Strat with a ’50s maple neck, a guitar whose background has baffled many. Its only known appearances were at the Concert for Bangladesh and on The Dick Cavett Show two months later, when Harrison sat in on slide guitar with Gary Wright and the Wonder Wheel. 

Some believe he rented it from Manny’s Music in Manhattan, but it’s unlikely he would have had the same guitar twice. And as Molland says, “I don’t think he would’ve rented a guitar for a show like that.” 

Perhaps it was a gift from Clapton, who had purchased six mid-’50s Strats for a bargain price at the Sho-Bud guitar shop in Nashville, and given three of them to Pete Townshend, Steve Winwood and Harrison. 

Another theory is that the Bangladesh Strat is a late ’50s-early ’60s transitional model that featured a maple neck and three-ply pickguard, and that Harrison had simply stripped it of its finish, just as he and Lennon had done with their Epiphone Casinos around the time of the White Album. 

“There was a phase in England, where everybody wanted their Fender guitars stripped,” Frampton says, “including me, [Humble Pie bassist] Greg Ridley and [Small Faces/Faces multi-instrumentalist] Ian McLagan. Ian and I were pretty handy, so we got a paint stripper, got all the paint off and put polyurethane varnish on. None of us realized at the time how we were destroying the value of those guitars.” 

Of course, many players of the time simply gave their now-priceless guitars – like Harrison’s rosewood Telecaster – away to friends. Harrison related the story of how he gave this particular Strat to Spike Milligan: “He was at my house one day with Peter Sellers.  

Peter was playing the drums, Spike was playing the piano, and I was playing guitar. Then Spike got off the piano and wanted to play the guitar, so I plugged him in to this Strat through a little Champ amplifier. 

He said, ‘Oh, I haven’t played for 30 years,’ but he just picked it up and it sounded like Django Reinhardt or something. And I thought, Well, that’s good. So when he left, I put it in the case, and put it and the Champ in Peter Sellers’ boot and told him, ‘When you drop Spike off give him this. It’s the Strat from the Concert for Bangladesh.’” 

2. 1963 Martin D-28 

Bob Dylan bought this Martin in the late ’60s and used it for 10 years, according to his repairman, Larry Cragg, who bought the guitar from him in 1977 for $500. Cragg, who nicknamed it Bob, kept the guitar unplayed in its original case and in a humidity- and temperature-controlled environment until he sold it at auction in 2017 for $396,500.

3. Harptone L-6NC

This six-string acoustic guitar, with its zero-fret design and unique headstock shape and double-neck truss rod, is currently on display at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City. It’s said to have been a gift to Harrison from Peter Drake, the pedal-steel master who played on All Things Must Pass. 

Harptone asked Drake to give a few guitars to the Beatles to try out, and Ringo Starr liked his so much that the company made him a signature model. Harrison owned and used at least four, including this guitar and an L-12NC 12-string that he purchased for approximately $150 prior to recording the White Album. 

Badfinger members used the 12-string on the sessions for All Things Must Pass and Badfinger bassist Tom Evans played it at the Concert for Bangladesh. Harrison played the L-12 when he guested on Splinter’s 1974 debut album, The Place I Love, and gave it to member Bobby Purvis. The guitar was auctioned in 2005 and sold to a private collector. It appeared at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum’s Concert for Bangladesh exhibit in 2005–2006.

4. 1958 Gibson Explorer

This is the Explorer on which Don Preston delivered his fiery solo on “Jumpin Jack Flash,” inspiring Eric Clapton to get one of his own. The Explorer was among the 'Modernistic' solidbody designs Gibson developed alongside the Flying V and Moderna in the late '50s (although it is believed no Moderna guitars ever made it into production.) Preston’s guitar is from the model’s first year, when Gibson shipped just 19 instruments, making it one of the most valued guitars on the vintage market.  

5. Gibson Byrdland 

A rental or a guitar that he owned? Nobody seems to know when Clapton picked up the Byrdland he played at the early show on August 1, but his choice of the guitar continues to be a source for discussion among guitarists.

Some believe it was a 1950s model, pointing to the rounded cutaway, which was sharper on 1960s models. Others point to the double parallelogram inlays and black pickguard, which are typical for the 1960s ES-350T thinline model. Some claim that the body looks deeper than a Byrdland or 350T, suggesting that it’s an L-5 CES. But other features – including the headstock’s “torch” inlay, white-outlined truss-rod cover, gold-plated tuners, f-hole bindings, multi-ply body binding and the tailpiece – strongly suggest it’s a Byrdland. Even Clapton said so.

Buy the Concert for Bangladesh on CD and vinyl here.

Happy birthday to Steve Lukather!

Toto founding member Lukather is one of the most prolific session players alive, clocking up a staggering number of album credits to his name (over 1,500!) The multiple Grammy-winning guitarist has contributed to a vast number of works spanning genres and styles from pop to hard rock, and for several years has toured with Beatles drummer Ringo Starr in the All-Starr Band supergroup.

As well as being one of the most in-demand guitar players around, Lukather is a successful artist in his own right having recorded 8 solo albums to date, including this year’s I Found the Sun Again (featuring Ringo Starr on drums.)

Lukather was awestruck by the Beatles at an early age when teaching himself to play on a Kay acoustic guitar. Recalling his first encounter with the Meet the Beatles! album the guitarist said, "The sound of it overcame my whole soul, if you want to call it that. I knew that's what I wanted to do. I remember George Harrison played a solo in “I Saw Her Standing There” and just the sound of the guitar bending and the reverb struck a nerve inside of me."

Lukather later paid homage to George Harrison, recording “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” for Toto’s 2002 covers album Through the Looking Glass. And in this clip, the guitarist lets rip with an impassioned electric guitar solo as he performs the number live with Toto – the close-up shot allowing us to view his incredible technique at close quarters.

Check out the awesome Steve Lukather Collection at Ernie Ball Music Man here.

On this day in 1977, rock icon Marc Bolan sadly passed away after the car he was travelling in collided with a tree in Barnes, southwest London. He was 29 years old. Following his untimely death, Bolan’s musical legacy continued to thrive, as countless punk, indie and new wave artists drew on his unique style for inspiration.

In this incredible concert film from 1972 (shot by Apple Films with the assistance of Ringo Starr and recorded onboard The Rolling Stones’ Mobile Studio by Tony Visconti), Bolan plays to a 10,000-strong crowd at London’s Empire Pool while fronting his band T. Rex. 

At this time, the glam rock pioneers were riding high with three U.K. number one singles to their name (Hot Love, Get It On, and Telegram Sam) while their Electric Warrior album had peaked at the top spot in the U.K. album charts for no less than eight weeks.

Bolan was a guitar fanatic who enjoyed playing a variety of instruments including an Olympic White Fender Strat and an Epiphone acoustic guitar (as seen in this concert footage), along with a Flying V, SG and custom-made Zemaitis guitar. But it was his late '50s Gibson Les Paul that arguably drew the most attention.

In this film, Bolan’s famous Les Paul can be seen sporting its original neck (which was later broken and replaced by a Les Paul Custom neck). The guitar was previously stripped and refinished by Bolan, while the exposed pickups reveal a black and ‘zebra’ bobbin set of humbuckers. 

A replica of this guitar – the Marc Bolan Les Paul – was introduced by the Gibson Custom Shop in a limited run of 100 aged instruments in 2011, complete with the later Les Paul Custom-style neck and orange-y “Bolan Chablis” finish.

Buy Electric Warrior here.

Let It Be – The Beatles’ final album from 1970 – has been revisited in style. Due out on October 15 in a range of formats and a must-have for Beatles fans, the Special Edition releases include new mixes by Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell in stereo, 5.1, and Dolby Atmos surround sound.

Also included are previously unreleased session recordings, rehearsals, and studio jams, along with the May 1969 Get Back LP stereo mix by Glyn Johns.

Three of these tracks are available to listen to right now, including “Let It Be” (2021 Stereo Mix); “Don’t Let Me Down” (first rooftop performance); and “For You Blue” (Get Back LP Mix).

All Let It Be Special Edition releases feature the new stereo mix which is based on Phil Spector’s “reproduced for disc” version taken from the original sessions and rooftop performances.

Further to the standard release, a Deluxe CD digipak (with 40-page booklet) contains a disk of outtake highlights. Additionally, the physical and digital Super Deluxe collections boast 27 previously unreleased session recordings, a four-track Let It Be EP, and Glyn Johns’ 14-track stereo mix from ‘69.

“I had always thought the original film Let It Be was pretty sad as it dealt with the break-up of our band,” writes Paul McCartney in the foreword of the new release’s accompanying book, “but the new film shows the camaraderie and love the four of us had between us. 

"It also shows the wonderful times we had together, and combined with the newly remastered Let It Be album, stands as a powerful reminder of this time. It’s how I want to remember The Beatles.”

Preorder / pre-save The Beatles’ Let It Be Special Edition here.

A new documentary film focusing on The Beatles’ fabled visit to India over half a century ago is set for DVD release on October 29. Featuring rare archive footage, recordings, and photography The Beatles and India explores how George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr’s spiritually led journey to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968 impacted their creativity and helped the band’s sound evolve.

While the group were attending Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation seminar in Bangor, Wales in August 1967, ‘fifth Beatle’ Brian Epstein tragically passed away. Committed to following a new spiritual path, all four members made the pilgrimage to Rishikesh in northern India the following February where a richly creative period ensued.

With acoustic guitars to hand, Harrison, Lennon, and McCartney entered an especially productive phase of songwriting. Largely written during their stay in India and appearing in stark contrast to The Beatles’ distinctly lysergic 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the eponymous follow up – known as the ‘White Album’ – was recorded at Abbey Road following their return and released in November 1968.

Accompanying the documentary’s release is an album of The Beatles’ songs interpreted and performed by a host of renowned contemporary Indian musicians. The Beatles and India: Songs Inspired by the Film will be available on Silva Screen Records.

The most recent single from the album – “Mother Nature’s Son” featuring Karsh Kale and Benny Dayal – is available to listen to here. Check out the album’s first single, John Lennon’s “India, India” featuring Nikhil D’Souza, here.

Click here for more information.

At 81 years old, Ringo Starr shows no signs of slowing down, citing his vegetarian diet and “staying active” as part of his recipe for longevity. “Staying active” indeed, Starr’s lengthy and continued solo career is now in its sixth decade – a musical voyage which began in 1970 with his aptly named debut album, Sentimental Journey.

Quickly following up this year’s Zoom In EP, Starr has announced his latest EP titled Change the World is now available to order (see link below). Much like Zoom In, Starr’s new extended play record – due out on September 24 – was tracked at his Roccabella West studio and features an assortment of guest artists.

Among the throng of guest musicians appearing on Change the World is Toto founder and Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band member Steve Lukather who co-penned the EP’s lead single "Let's Change The World" with Joseph Williams (son of film composer John Williams). Both Lukather and Williams also play on the track.

Adding further electric guitar hero status to the recording is Eagles and fellow Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band guitarist Joe Walsh who appears on the EP’s closing number, “Rock Around the Clock.” A record-breaking hit in the mid-‘50s for rock ‘n’ roll pioneers Bill Haley & His Comets, "Rock Around the Clock” was a highly influential song for The Beatles, with John Lennon telling Playboy in the early ‘80s, "I had no idea about doing music as a way of life until rock 'n' roll hit me… It was "Rock Around the Clock"." 

Interestingly, Starr also played drums alongside The Who’s Keith Moon on the Lennon-produced Harry Nilsson version of "Rock Around the Clock” from Nilsson's 1974 album Pussy Cats.

"I've been saying I only want to release EPs at this point and this is the next one,” says Starr. “What a blessing it's been during this year to have a studio here at home and be able to collaborate with so many great musicians, some I've worked with before and some new friends." 

Pre-order Ringo Starr’s Change the World here.

On this day in 1966, The Beatles’ seventh studio long-player, Revolver, was released. Bouncing on from the similarly immersive Rubber Soul album tracked months prior, the band entered EMI's Abbey Road Studios in April 1966 to pursue some highly experimental recording techniques.

At this point in their career, The Beatles were almost exclusively focused on studio recording as opposed to playing live. And with that in mind, they were able to experiment with effects as freely as they pleased without needing to consider how they might replicate the same sounds on stage.

Following the development of the fuzz pedal in the early '60s, stompboxes were increasingly seen both on stage and in the studio. Paul McCartney was photographed using a Sola Sound Tone Bender paired with a blond Fender Bassman amp in 1965, and again during the Revolver sessions the following year. 

John Lennon was snapped in the Revolver sessions using another legendary British fuzz – the WEM Rush Pepbox – paired with a Vox UL/Ultra Linear-series amp, a solid-state/tube hybrid guitar amp design with built-in reverb, tremolo, and distortion effects.

Listen to  “Love You To”  from Revolver for some tasteful electric guitar fuzz effects courtesy of George Harrison.

By manipulating recording tape, The Beatles were able to pursue several new sounds. Such novel techniques included using tape loops in a similar vein to how modern loopers can create sample collages, and adjusting record/playback speed in order to alter pitch.

Other groundbreaking sounds achieved through tape manipulation include the chorus-like signal doubling effect known as ADT (Automatic Double Tracking), and reverse effects (which required the bulky reel-to-reel tapes to be turned upside down).

Fortunately, modern digital sampling technology allows guitarists to easily achieve reverse sounds using effects pedals such as the Boss DD-7 Digital Delay and Danelectro Back Talk.

Check out “Tomorrow Never Knows” for some choice examples of these tape-based effects.

Finally… Have you ever wondered why the album was named Revolver? Here, Paul McCartney explains the answer...

Buy The Beatles Revolver here.

The Beatles: Get Back – a six-hour, three-part documentary directed by Peter Jackson – will air on Disney+ this November.

Compiled from over 60 hours of footage shot in 1969 by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and over 150 hours of audio, the film captures the creative genesis of the Fab Four's final album, 1970's Let It Be. 

Notably, the film will also present the band's legendary January 30, 1969 "rooftop concert" in its entirety for the first time ever.

You can watch a preview of the film – which was made in cooperation with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon, and Olivia Harrison – above.

“In many respects, Michael Lindsay-Hogg's remarkable footage captured multiple storylines,” Jackson said in a statement. “The story of friends and of individuals. It is the story of human frailties and of a divine partnership.

“It is a detailed account of the creative process, with the crafting of iconic songs under pressure, set amid the social climate of early 1969. But it's not nostalgia – it's raw, honest, and human. Over six hours, you'll get to know The Beatles with an intimacy that you never thought possible.

“I'm very grateful to The Beatles, Apple Corps, and Disney for allowing me to present this story in exactly the way it should be told," he continued. "I've been immersed in this project for nearly three years, and I'm very excited that audiences around the world will finally be able to see it.”

The Beatles: Get Back will air on Disney+ in three two-hour segments on November 25, 26, and 27. Ahead of the documentary's release, a hardcover book of the same name – featuring transcriptions of the band's recorded conversations and hundreds of never-before-published photos from the sessions – will arrive via Apple Corps Ltd./Callaway Arts & Entertainment on October 12.

Steve Lukather has announced a new single, Run to Me, which features Ringo Starr on drums, as well as appearances from Huey Lewis & the News’ John Pierce and Joseph Williams.

Co-written by David Paich, Williams and Lukather, the track is accompanied by a lockdown-filmed music video, and features a tasteful lead from Luke.

“I wanted to release this now because it fits the moment. A time where we all need a happy song for an unhappy time,” says Lukather.

“When I got together with Joseph Williams and David Paich to collaborate on the songwriting, there was pure collective inspiration amongst the three of us to articulate this message of hope directed towards our daughters.

“Musically, the song is absolutely influenced by my growing up in the Sixties, inspired by some of my favorite elements of the repertoire that defined that indelible era. And, Ringo, what can I say. It is an honor to have his contribution captured on a song of mine, much less his gracious presence in the video.”

A new solo album is on the way from Lukather in early 2021, with details to follow soon.

Luke made headlines across the internet last week, when he unleashed a 7am guitar solo to compete with his neighbors’ leaf-blowers.

The Beatles wrote a virtual library of killer guitar riffs, and the one that powers "I Feel Fine" is undoubtedly one of their best, and most intricate. Even guitar legends with more than half a century of experience have admitted to struggling with it to this day.

Amazingly though, that riff isn't even the most groundbreaking part of this 1964 hit. That distinction belongs to the distinct buzz of feedback that perfectly presages John Lennon's electrifying opening salvo. 

Paul McCartney tells the story in a 1994 interview: 

“John had a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar. It had a pick-up on it so it could be amplified. We were just about to walk away to listen to a take when John leaned his guitar against the amp. I can still see him doing it - and it went, ‘Nnnnnnwahhhhh!' And we went, ‘What’s that? Voodoo!’ ‘No, it’s feedback.’ Wow, it’s a great sound!’ George Martin was there so we said, ‘Can we have that on the record?’

"That’s me completely,” Lennon said of "I Feel Fine" to Playboy in 1980. “Including the guitar lick with the first feedback anywhere. I defy anybody to find a record, unless it is some old blues record from 1922, that uses feedback that way. So I claim it for the Beatles. Before Hendrix, before The Who, before anybody. The first feedback on record.”

Though they surely couldn't have foreseen the infinite directions guitarists would take recorded feedback in over the next 50+ years, the Fab Four's decision to incorporate it into a pop song was unprecedented, and paid huge dividends.

"I Feel Fine" topped the US charts for three weeks, and the UK charts for five. And, as for pushing the boundaries of popular music, they were just getting started...

As any rock fan knows, the Beatles never got back together.

What you might not know is that even partial Beatles reunions and "near misses" were frustratingly rare back when such things mattered (prior to George Harrison's death in 2001).

Which is why the video above is so enjoyable.

On June 5, 1987, three of the five musicians who originally appeared on the classic Beatles White Album track, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," reunited to perform the song live at the Prince's Trust Rock Gala at London's Wembley Arena.

George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton were joined by an all-star U.K. band, including Elton John, Phil Collins, Jeff Lynne, Ray Cooper and ... well, if you're wondering who that understandably happy bassist is, it's Mark King of Level 42.

What's most interesting about this performance is the fact that A. the normally Strat-happy Clapton is playing a beautiful Gibson Les Paul, just as he did on the original 1968 recording, and B. the also-Strat-happy Harrison joins Clapton in the extended guitar solo at the end of the song (He does not solo on the original studio version). 

The two guitarists trade solos and feed off each other's energy, and their intertwining lines are often pretty damn cool.

Paul McCartney, another one of the five original musicians who appeared on the original Beatles recording (John Lennon is the fifth), would go on to perform "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with Clapton and Starr in November 2002 at the Concert for George. Harrison, Starr and Clapton also performed the song live in 1971 at the Concert for Bangladesh.

Of course, for the closest thing to a full-on Beatles reunion, there's nothing quite like the mid-Nineties footage of McCartney, Harrison and Starr hanging out together during the making of Anthology (bottom video).

For studio recordings that come close to full reunions, check out Starr's "I'm the Greatest" from 1973 (written by Lennon and featuring Lennon, Harrison, Starr and Let It Be keyboardist Billy Preston) and Harrison's "All Those Years Ago" from 1981 (featuring McCartney, Harrison and Starr).

I've been writing this column for almost three years and never covered the Beatles. It’s tough to choose an album of theirs, because I love every one for different reasons. 

Ultimately, I’ve selected the White Album for its variety of sounds, and because it was the first Beatles album I purchased, when I was 11 years old. It’s also probably the record I’ve listened to the most.

Officially titled The Beatles, and released in 1968 on the group’s Apple Records label, the White Album features incredible guitar sounds, as well as what are arguably John Lennon’s most rocking and inventive songs with the group. 

“Everybody’s Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)” is a study in rock guitar playing, with the opening, downbeat-obscuring chord phrase drawing us into the song. 

The interplay between the guitars and bass is masterful, as is the song’s climax, where the guitars plow away at the flat-7 chord. On “Yer Blues,” Lennon sings “Yes I’m lonely, wanna die” over a unique, 6/8 blues form that goes straight for the jugular.

Here again, the guitar playing is phenomenally raw, and the scratch vocal leaking into the basic track makes me feel like I’m listening to Lennon’s subconscious mind. “Yer Blues” sounds as vital and modern today as it did in 1968. I wish more blues releases had this kind of urgency and honesty.

“Happiness Is a Warm Gun” takes its name from the disturbing headline of an article in American Rifleman magazine, and is a continuation of Lennon’s abstract expressionism exemplified previously on “I Am the Walrus.”

The song’s beautiful, haunting melody is supported by dreamy, arpeggiated guitar chords, and the song’s sinewy low-note solo ends with a groan that’s just brilliant. I still scratch my head in wonder at how terrific that guitar sounds 50 years on.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” though not one of my favorites, features Eric Clapton playing through what sounds like a Leslie speaker - the effect was actually created by a technician manually wobbling the Varispeed control on the tape delay. Here again, the guitars sound masterful and iconic, and every part fits just perfectly.

Elsewhere, the acoustic guitars on “Blackbird,” “Julia,” “Rocky Raccoon,” “Mother Nature’s Son” and “I Will” sound intimate and have breath - you can hear the air resonating around them. It’s not a stretch to say these tracks created a template for a generation of Travis-picking singer/songwriters.

I’ve always felt the White Album was underrated compared to other Beatle releases. And while I hear in its songs the loss of the band members’ youths and their growing isolation from one another, I also hear an inspired and ambitious effort that shows each of the Beatles maturing and developing his own distinctive voice.

• Jim Campilongo's new album, Best of Jim Campilongo Vol.1, is out now via Sundazed/Harmonic.
• The Beatles' White Album is available now on 4x LP 180gm vinyl via Capitol.