George Harrison
My Sweet Lord
Written after the former Beatle had been inspired by an old gospel song, it’s remembered as much for the plagiarism legal battle it led to as it is for just being a lovely song.
Words: Bill DeMain
It was the mantra that took over the world. George Harrison’s first solo No.1 single stands alone in rock history for going against the secular grain as a full-on love song to the Creator. While there’d been some precedent with both the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows and Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit In The Sky, My Sweet Lord was different. The lyric offers nothing but praise – loaded with 40 ‘Lord’s 16 ‘hallelujah’s and nine ‘Hare Krishna’s.
SLIDE RULES
How is it that George Harrison never once played slide guitar on a Beatles track? He acknowledged that what became the keening sonic trademark of his solo years was influenced by his sitar studies with Ravi Shankar and a love of the instrument’s microtonal possibilities.
“Indian music gave me a greater sense of rhythm and syncopation,” Harrison told Guitar Player in 1987. “Then with the slide what I could do is actually hit the string with one stroke and do a little wobbly bit. The Indian music got inside me to a degree that it had to come out somewhere.”