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TL;DR:

  • George Harrison wrote The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” because he liked descending chords.
  • The star who inspired the song also inspired The Beatles’ “Dear Prudence” and “Blackbird.”
  • “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was not a single in the United States.
The Beatles in black-and-white
The Beatles | Michael Ochs Archives / Stringer

A star said he helped inspire George Harrison to write The Beatles‘ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” The star revealed what he thought of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” when he first heard it. Subsequently, the tune appeared on a hugely successful album.

How folk singer Donovan inspired The Beatles’ ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’

During a 2016 interview with Westword, folk singer Donovan revealed he learned to play the guitar in a fingerpicking style from Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family. For context, the Carter Family was a folk group that recorded songs between the 1920s and the 1950s. Subsequently, Donovan taught John Lennon to play guitar in this style, and he also influenced George.

“George didn’t really want to learn the fingerstyle of Maybelle Carter,” Donovan said. “No, he said he really had a Chet Atkins picking style, when he held the flat pick between the thumb and forefinger and then picked the strings with the other fingers. And that was fine.

“But what George was fascinated with was these descending chord patterns that I was playing,” he added. “And out of it came the most heartrending song I’ve ever heard him write, but also that anybody had written: ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps.'”

Donovan said he inspired 2 of the other songs from The Beatles’ ‘The White Album’

Donovan mentoring John had an effect on Paul as well. “Paul was walking around while John was doing his lessons with me, and out of the picking came ‘Dear Prudence,'” Donovan recalled. “And that was wonderful. But Paul was doing this other thing and wrote ‘Blackbird.'”

The “Mellow Yellow” singer elaborated on what The Beatles learned from him. “It wasn’t just fingerstyle,” he remembered. “It was chord structures that maybe they hadn’t learned. They hadn’t learned the A minor descending to the D minor 9 — all the stuff Bert Jansch was doing and the flamenco guitar players were doing. And all they had were their acoustic guitars.”

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How ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and ‘The White Album’ performed on the pop charts

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was not a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The tune appeared on the album The White Album. That record peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for nine weeks, staying on the chart for 215 weeks in total. It was the band’s most successful studio album besides Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

According to The Official Charts Company, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” didn’t chart in the United Kingdom either. On the other hand, The White Album reached No. 1 in the U.K. for eight weeks. It spent a total of 37 weeks on the chart.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is sonic perfection and Donovan paved the way for it.

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