George Harrison and Eric Clapton famously had a fickle friendship. While they had a far more public blow-up, there is a lesser-known tiff they got into involving an early copy of the Beatles’ self-titled record, on which Clapton featured. Find out below why Harrison critiqued Clapton for trying to promote the Beatles’ album.
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The Time Eric Clapton Tried to Promote The Beatles and Was Critiqued By Pal George Harrison
Clapton is one of the few musicians who got the honor of working alongside the Beatles. Harrison brought him in to lay down a guitar solo for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” As a trusted collaborator, Clapton got an early cut of the album to take home with him. Though his heart was in the right place, he decided to share the album with others–much to Harrison’s chagrin.
“While I was in LA, I had been playing some of the songs on the album to various friends when I got a phone call from George,” Clapton once explained. “Word had got back to him that I was playing the album around town, and he was furious and gave me a huge bollocking…”
Apparently Harrison was so harsh on him that it changed Clapton’s perspective on him forever. He went on to say that he struggled to “let his guard down” with the Beatle from then on.
“I remember being incredibly hurt because I thought I’d been doing a grand job of promoting their music to really discriminating people,” he added. “It brought me down to earth with a bang, and it was a good lesson to learn about boundaries, and not making assumptions, but it stung like hell. For a little while, I steered clear of him, but in time we became friends again, although after that, I was always a little wary of letting my guard down around him.”
Ultimately, Clapton’s decision to play the record for others before it was released didn’t hurt their working relationship too badly. However, later grievances put them publicly at odds with one another.
George Harrison and Eric Clapton’s Fickle Friendship
The pervasive story when it comes to Harrison and Clapton’s friendship is their mutual love interest, Pattie Boyd. When Harrison and Boyd’s marriage became estranged, she began a relationship with Clapton, her husband’s musical collaborator and friend. Because Harrison was also having affairs, he took the news relatively well. In fact, it seems he gave Clapton more of a telling off about sharing unreleased music than moving in on his wife.
“Eric was invited over,” Biographer Philip Norman once explained. “George set it up to sort of fight with guitars by trading licks. That was supposed to be like a medieval tournament for the hand of a fair lady… George later said, ‘It’s fine because I’d rather she was with Eric than with some idiot.’”
Though things seemed to transition relatively smoothly behind-the-scenes, the public ran with the love-triangle, feud theory. It certainly colored how listeners see the friendship between these two rock giants.
(Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images)
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