Listen to The Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," a stunning unreleased version

Not that I want to argue, but “Within You…” wasn’t really a hit (it wasn’t even released as a single). You should have gone with “Taxman” from Revolver.

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Weirdly its working for me in Australia. The song in this recording is clearly almost there. Not an early cut at all.

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I was more looking at “prove Lennon/McCartney weren’t the only good songwriters in the band.” There was plenty evidence of that beforehand. :slight_smile: “Taxman” and “Northern Song” also evidence.

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Yep. That organ was definitely electric. None of the wheeziness or “air” of a harmonium.

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I’m in the USA. Count your blessings.

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Well, Sgt. Peppers was the first LP I bought as a kid, and while I eventually came to appreciate “Within You…” when I first heard it I thought it was just weird. And while “Taxman” is good I always felt it was a very typical mid-60’s song, it could have been written by the Hollies or the Yardbirds, whereas Lennon/McCartney would come up with stuff that to this day astonishes me.

I think here “prove it” was more about him proving to the rest of the band that he could write on their level, since George’s songs more often got cut from the albums.

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That is already a mighty high bar to clear.

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Cool.

The internet is fragmenting.

While my plumbing gently leaks.

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It takes a village.

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That was just stunning.

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Many of these bootlegs made itnto Usenet. It shows they followed Jack Black’s dictum:

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Is it true that the top level domain for Canada is .eh?

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One lyric I have for the “I don’t know why, nobody told you” section:

We’re in the same room, and yet we’re texting,
distracted by a spam email.

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Works in Safari - for me, anyway.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps really takes me back to my mid teens. Back then I thought it was an impossibly beautiful song. The opening staccato piano notes on the original Beatles version seem reminiscent of some kind of urgent morse code message. Now, when i listen to it, many times tonight, I can’t turn it off, not while George is singing. It’s great that the music still stands up as listenable, but no one who did not live through the time can truly appreciate the musical impact of the Beatles - they are welded to that era. @generic_name I did enjoy watching that Howard Goodall analysis - watched for the 2nd or 3rd time.

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Er, uhm Taxman? From Revolver. You, obviously, were not a Beatle people.

George Harrison was a massively underrated songwriter at that time. I remember reading about him calling up Phil Spector after the Beatles broke up, quietly saying he’d like to play a few tunes for him, and unloaded dozens and dozens of demos he’d been saving for years, blowing Phil’s mind. All Things Must Pass is an astonishing solo album that showed what he was really capable of.

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