"This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" is a song by English rock musician George Harrison, released on his 1975 studio album Extra Texture (Read All About It). Harrison wrote the song as a sequel to his popular Beatles composition "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", in response to the personal criticism he had received during and after his 1974 North American tour with Ravi Shankar, particularly from Rolling Stone magazine. An edit of "This Guitar" was issued as a single in December 1975, as the final release by Apple Records in its original incarnation. The single failed to chart in either the United States or Britain.
The song follows in a tradition established by singers such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, of attributing emotions and actions to a musical instrument. The lyrics also serve as an example of a dialogue that was commonplace during the 1970s between songwriters and music critics. Contributing to Harrison's sense of injustice in "This Guitar", he and his tour musicians believed that detractors had ignored the successful aspects of the 1974 shows – which blended rock, jazz, funk and Indian classical music – and had focused instead on his failure to pay due respect to the legacy of the Beatles. Rolling Stones scathing assessment of Harrison's tour and accompanying album, Dark Horse, represented an about-face by the publication, previously one of his most vocal supporters, and led to Harrison's continued resentment towards the magazine over subsequent decades.
Harrison recorded "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" in Los Angeles during April and May 1975, a period marked by his post-tour despondency. The recording features guitar solos played by Harrison and American musician Jesse Ed Davis. The song serves as a rare guitar-oriented selection on the keyboard-heavy Extra Texture album, although David Foster, Gary Wright and Harrison all contributed keyboard parts to the track. "This Guitar" has traditionally received a mixed reception from reviewers, partly due to the inevitable comparisons with "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Harrison re-recorded the song in 1992 with former Eurythmic Dave Stewart, who used it to promote his Platinum Weird project in 2006. This version appears as a bonus track on the 2014 Apple Years 1968–75 reissue of Extra Texture.
Background and inspiration George Harrison's stated aim for his North American tour with Indian musician Ravi Shankar, which took place from 2 November to 20 December 1974,Madinger & Easter, pp. 445–46. was to offer concert-goers "another kind of experience" from the typical mid-1970s rock show.Clayson, p. 339. With its blending of Western rock, funk and jazz genres with Indian classical music,Leng, pp. 170, 174. author Robert Rodriguez describes the result as a musical form "[that] one day would be called 'world music'".Rodriguez, p. 60. Of the critical reception given to the Harrison–Shankar venture, tour-wide, Rodriguez writes of the "genuine highlights that went mostly unreported", since: "Smaller press outlets without axes to grind tended to review the shows the best, whereas rock establishment coverage, such as Rolling Stones, tended to spin the tour as something close to an unmitigated disaster ..."Rodriguez, p. 59.
Along with Harrison and band leader Tom Scott, tour musicians Jim Horn, Jim Keltner and Andy Newmark have each challenged the reliability of these negative reports,Lavezzoli, p. 205.Olivia Harrison, p. 316. Horn declaring the Harrison–Shankar tour "one of the best I've been on".Leng, pp. 168, 170. Concert-goers likewise questioned their accuracy;Clayson, p. 338.Greene, p. 215. according to author Nicholas Schaffner, Beatles fanzine Strawberry Fields Forever had been "deluged with letters protesting the nasty reviews".Schaffner, p. 178.
Harrison biographer Simon Leng describes this phenomenon as "one of the stranger episodes in rock music" and writes: "While the majority of reviews were positive, in some cases ecstatic, the 'given' view of the tour comes from the Rolling Stone articles."Leng, p. 174. Chief among these was a feature by Ben Fong-Torres, titled "Lumbering in the Material World",Rodriguez, p. 46.The Editors of Rolling Stone, p. 150. covering the opening, West Coast portion of the tour.Ben Fong-Torres, "George Harrison: Harrison in the Haight", San Francisco Chronicle, 2 December 2001; available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required). Feng-Torres condemned Harrison for refusing to pander to critics' and the public's nostalgia for the Beatles,Clayson, pp. 336, 338. and for the perilous state of his singing voice, after Harrison had contracted laryngitis while rushing to complete his new album during the tour rehearsals. At the time, Scott voiced his objections to Fong-Torres' article for focusing excessively on the uneven opening concert at Vancouver's Pacific Coliseum.Michael Gross, "George Harrison: How Dark Horse Whipped Up a Winning Tour", Circus Raves, March 1975; available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required). This piece was followed by Larry Sloman's article on the East Coast shows.Leng, pp. 160, 164–65. As Harrison discovered soon after the tour, Sloman had submitted a favourable piece on the concerts but, to Sloman's annoyance, the magazine's editors revised it before publication.Hagan, p. 303. Harrison complained that Rolling Stone deliberately "edited everything positive out" about the shows.
Leng writes that "Testimony" on the Harrison–Shankar tour, and a "savagely personal" attack on Harrison, came with the magazine's review for his delayed Dark Horse album.Leng, pp. 174, 176, 177. Under the heading "Transcendental Mediocrity",Greene, p. 293. Rolling Stone critic Jim Miller wrote of the "disastrous album" appearing "in the wake of his disastrous tour"Jim Miller, "Dark Horse: Transcendental Mediocrity", Rolling Stone, 13 February 1975, pp. 75–76. – completing what Harrison biographer Elliot Huntley describes as the magazine's "volte-face" on an artist it had traditionally supported.Huntley, pp. 112, 113.
Harrison never completely forgave Rolling Stone for its treatment of the "Dark Horse Tour".The Editors of Rolling Stone, pp. 108, 111. While members of his 1974 tour group, including future wife Olivia Arias,Olivia Harrison interview, in George Harrison: Living in the Material World DVD, 2011 (directed by Martin Scorsese; produced by Olivia Harrison, Nigel Sinclair & Martin Scorsese). have spoken of Harrison's defiant attitude towards the negative reviews,Greene, pp. 217–18. Leng states that he "reacted to them as personal attacks".Leng, p. 175. Harrison wrote "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" while on holiday in Hawaii with Arias,Badman, p. 144.Dave Thompson, "The Music of George Harrison: An album-by-album guide", Goldmine, 25 January 2002, p. 17. in February 1975. He told Musician magazine in 1987 that the song "came about because the press and critics tried to nail me on the 1974–5 tour, [and] got really nasty".White, p. 65.
Composition The song title is a play on that of his 1968 composition "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", released on the Beatles' White AlbumLindsay Planer, "George Harrison 'This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)'", AllMusic (retrieved 6 May 2013). and performed by Harrison throughout the 1974 tour.Madinger & Easter, pp. 446–47. While reviewers of the 1974 concerts had focused on his altering of the lyric to "While my guitar gently smiles" and "... tries to smile", Harrison told BBC Radio 1's Paul Gambaccini in September 1975 that it was a track that was consistently well received by audiences during the tour.Badman, p. 164. Harrison described the new composition as "Son of 'Guitar Gently Weeps'".George Harrison interview, Rockweek, "George Harrison explains 'This Guitar Can't Keep from Crying'" (retrieved 5 May 2013).
Like the Beatles track, "This Guitar" is structured around short, minor-key verses (in this case, in the key of G minor) that conclude with the song title, rather than distinct choruses. Author Ian Inglis also notes the "evident similarity" between the melody of the two compositions. As with Harrison's lyrics for "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", Inglis writes, "This Guitar" follows in a tradition established by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bo Diddley, of attributing emotions and actions to a musical instrument.Inglis, p. 51.
In a contemporary review, music journalist Ray Coleman said that the song's lyrics, together with the yearning quality of Harrison's singing and guitar playing on the track, "will raise questions about its relevance to his personal life". The song begins with the lines "Found myself out on a limb / But I'm happier than I've ever been",George Harrison, p. 311. the second of which echoes Harrison's statement to Fong-Torres that he had never been as happy as he was now – in a band with Scott, Billy Preston and Willie Weeks,Badman, p. 138. and as a servant of the Hindu god Krishna instead of living out the public's perception of him as "Beatle George".Greene, p. 217.
"This Guitar" conveys Harrison's intention to persevere despite the criticism he had received.Kahn, p. 191. In his brief discussion of the song in his autobiography, Harrison introduces the lyrics to verse two with a mention of the need to "struggle" through adversity, in an effort "to become better human beings":George Harrison, p. 312.
Commenting that Harrison was "bound to fight back against what he saw as unfair, malicious criticism", Leng views these and other lines in the song as typical of a dialogue then common in rock music, between artists and critics.Leng, pp. 177, 181, 186. Leng cites Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and John Lennon as other singer-songwriters who encouraged this dialogue and in some instances suffered for doing so.Leng, pp. 128, 182, 186.
Theologian Dale Allison writes of Harrison's "deep hurt" being reflected in the lyrics to "This Guitar".Allison, p. 157. The two bridge sections document the "unwarranted abuse that comes his way", Inglis writes, while typifying the theme that "[Harrison] is the guitar":
After Harrison has named Rolling Stone as the main perpetrator of his anguish,Clayson, p. 350. Leng suggests that he is unable to sustain the previous "artifice", whereby the lyrics' shift in perspective from first-person to third-person represented the apparently "happy" private man versus the "wounded" musician, as "personified by his guitar".Leng, p. 182. Instead, Harrison "flays his detractors" in the song's subsequent verses. These final verses contain the rhyming couplets "Thought by now you knew the score / You missed the point just like before" and "While you attack, create offence / I'll put it down to your ignorance". Music critic Lindsay Planer describes the lines as "suggesting that there is more to Harrison's music than is being taken into consideration by narrow-minded journalists".
Recording Harrison started recording his follow-up to Dark Horse, Extra Texture (Read All About It), in April 1975, while in Los Angeles working on business associated with his Dark Horse record label.Rodriguez, pp. 247–48.Madinger & Easter, p. 451. Leng remarks on Harrison's "almost unseemly" haste in returning to a studio and suggests that his "bitterness and dismay" post-Dark Horse was evident on much of the recording.Leng, pp. 178, 179. Early on in the sessions, during his radio interview with WNEW-FM's Dave Herman,Badman, p. 158. Harrison bemoaned the abandoning of 1960s idealism within the music industry and related this to the critical backlash he had recently received, from people who were "just dropping apart at the seams with hate", adding: "I'm talking about Rolling Stone actually – talking about [founding editor] Jann Wenner."Kahn, pp. 192, 208."George Harrison – Interview (1975)" , Paste (retrieved 12 November 2016); event occurs between 42:40 and 44:30.