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. 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. Early on in the sessions, during his radio interview with WNEW's Dave Herman, Harrison bemoaned the abandoning of 1960s idealism and used flower power terminology to comment on how this issue related to the critical backlash he had recently received: "This is what kills me now, is when I see the people ... who supposedly loved me, and as I'm supposed to love them, and I see them – they're just dropping apart at the seams with hate ... I'm talking about Rolling Stone actually – talking about Jann Wenner."
Harrison recorded the basic track for "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" at A&M Studios in Hollywood between 21 April and 7 May. Harrison played 12-string acoustic guitar, with prominent support from David Foster on piano, and sparse, floor tom-heavy drumming from Jim Keltner. Klaus Voormann, Harrison's regular bass player and a friend since the Beatles' Hamburg years, chose to not participate in many of the sessions for Extra Texture, later citing the abundance of cocaine and Harrison's "frame of mind when he was doing this album". Harrison overdubbed a bass part using an ARP synthesizer in place of a more traditional bass guitar, while Gary Wright provided the ARP strings atmospherics, a sound that characterised his hit album The Dream Weaver around this time.
When discussing "This Guitar" with Paul Gambaccini in London, in September, Harrison described the song as "a cheap excuse to play some guitar". Harrison played the slide guitar parts throughout the track, including the closing solo. Leng identifies both "Pete Drake stylings" and the influence of "raga microtones" in Harrison's performance. The wah-effected guitar solo midway through the song was performed by Jesse Ed Davis, who, having first supported Harrison at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971, had since mirrored the ex-Beatle's guitar style on John Lennon's recent hit song "#9 Dream". Davis overdubbed his contribution to "This Guitar" on 5 June, the day before the Foster-arranged orchestrated strings were recorded.
Read more about this topic: This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)
Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)