While My Guitar Gently Weeps

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
Cover of the 1969 Australian B-side single
Song by the Beatles from the album The Beatles
Published	Harrisongs
Released	22 November 1968 (1968-11-22)
A-side	"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da"
Recorded	5–6 September 1968, EMI Studios, London
Genre	Rock psychedelic rock blues rock
Length	4:46
Label	Apple
Writer(s)	George Harrison
Producer(s)	George Martin
ISWC	T-010.098.629-5
Music sample "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 double album The Beatles (also known as "the White Album"). It was written by George Harrison, partly as an exercise in randomness after he consulted the Chinese I Ching. The song also serves as a comment on the disharmony within the Beatles at the time. The recording includes a lead guitar part played by Eric Clapton, although he was not formally credited for his contribution.

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" ranks 136th on Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", seventh on the magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time", and tenth on its list of "The Beatles 100 Greatest Songs".Guitar World magazine's February 2012 online poll voted "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" the best of George Harrison's Beatles-era songs. Clapton's performance ranked 42nd in Guitar World's October 2008 list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos".

Inspiration for the song came to Harrison when reading the I Ching, which, as Harrison put it, "seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else, as opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental". Taking this idea of relativism to his parents' home in northern England, Harrison committed to write a song based on the first words he saw upon opening a random book. He later explained the process:

I wrote "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" at my mother's house in Warrington. I was thinking about the Chinese I Ching, 'The Book of Changes". The Eastern concept is that whatever happens is all meant to be, and that there's no such thing as coincidence – every little item that's going down has a purpose.

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was a simple study based on that theory. I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book – as it would be relative to that moment, at that time. I picked up a book at random, opened it, saw "gently weeps", then laid the book down again and started the song.