George Harrison Goes Twang: A When You Awake Mixtape

George Harrison was a country music fan before he was a Beatle. This is documented, it matters, and it is the foundation of the George Harrison Goes Twang mixtape.

The Gretsch guitar that Harrison used throughout his early career was a country and rockabilly instrument first. The right hand technique he developed — the chicken-picking and the slide work that became central to his solo style — came from the same tradition. The musicians he admired and emulated in his formative years were Carl Perkins, Chet Atkins, and Eddie Cochran: country, rockabilly, rock and roll in its original synthesis with the country forms.

This mixtape traces what happened to those influences through the forty years of recordings that followed.

The Picture Book entry on the Kinfauns demos covers this territory from a different angle: Picture Book: George Harrison's Kinfauns.

The early Beatles recordings

In the Beatles context, Harrison's country influences surface most clearly in the songs where he got to deploy the Gretsch in country-inflected ways: the lead work on "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party," the patterns on "Act Naturally," and the playing that runs through the early records where the rockabilly influence on the group was still audible.

By the middle period, Harrison's playing had developed toward the Indian classical influences that became his other defining characteristic. But the country and rockabilly foundation never disappeared. It surfaces in unexpected places throughout the catalog.

The Kinfauns period

The home recordings at Kinfauns, Harrison's house in Esher, show a musician in informal mode, working through ideas that would eventually appear on Beatles records or, in some cases, in his solo work. The country and folk influences are more audible in these recordings than in the finished productions.

The demos are the document of a musician's interior — the music he played when no one was requiring him to fit it into a defined production context.

All Things Must Pass

The solo debut produced by Phil Spector is the fullest statement of Harrison's synthesis. The country elements are present throughout, filtered through the gospel-influenced arrangements and the wall-of-sound production. "Wah-Wah," "What Is Life," "Isn't It a Pity" — each of these tracks contains country musical DNA in the chord structures, the pedal steel work, and Harrison's lead guitar playing.

The Traveling Wilburys

The supergroup project with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne is where Harrison's country influences and his rock and roll influences are most openly acknowledged. The group made two records of rockabilly and country-inflected pop. The first, with Orbison still alive, is the better record, but both are worth listening to.

The mixtape sequence

• "Act Naturally" — the Ringo Starr-sung Beatles cover of the Buck Owens song, with Harrison's country guitar clearly in the frame
• "I Me Mine" — the slide guitar work that defines Harrison's later Beatles style
• "My Sweet Lord" — the gospel influence, which is a country music cousin
• "Wah-Wah" (All Things Must Pass version)
• "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" — the slide work, the country-gospel synthesis
• "Handle with Care" (Traveling Wilburys) — the group at its most straightforwardly country-rock
• "End of the Line" (Traveling Wilburys)
• "Any Road" — from the posthumous Brainwashed, Harrison at the end maintaining what he started

See the full Mixtapes collection.