Hear The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” With a Re-Discovered George Harrison Solo

George Har­ri­son “nev­er thought he was any good” as a gui­tarist, says his son Dhani, and so “he focused on touch and con­trol… not hit­ting any off notes, not mak­ing strings buzz, not play­ing any­thing that would jar you.” Har­ri­son him­self put it this way, in typ­i­cal­ly self-effac­ing, mys­ti­cal fash­ion: “I play the notes you nev­er hear.” Of course, as most every thought­ful gui­tar play­er will tell you, these are exact­ly the mak­ings of a good—and in Harrison’s case, great—guitarist. A dime a dozen are play­ers who can play speed runs and flashy solos, who have learned every lick from their favorite songs and can re-pro­duce them exact­ly. But it’s the sensitivity—the per­son­al “touch and con­trol” over the instrument—that mat­ters most, and that can make a player’s tone impos­si­ble to dupli­cate. Harrison’s play­ing, Dhani says, “is the rea­son no one can real­ly cov­er the Bea­t­les faith­ful­ly…. At some point there’s going to be a George Har­ri­son solo, and that solo is usu­al­ly per­fect.”

I would cer­tain­ly say that is the case with the gui­tar solo in “Here Comes the Sun.” Oh, you’ve nev­er heard it? That’s because the song, as it was orig­i­nal­ly released on 1969’s Abbey Road didn’t have one. For what­ev­er rea­son, George Mar­tin decid­ed to leave it out, and the song, we might agree, is per­fect with­out it. But the solo—rediscovered by Mar­tin and Dhani Harrison—is also per­fect. You can hear a ver­sion of the song with the solo restored at the top of the post, cour­tesy of Youtube user Kanaal van Dutch­Doun­pour. And above, see Dhani, Mar­tin, and Martin’s son Giles redis­cov­er­ing the solo, which Mar­tin had for­got­ten about, while play­ing around with the mas­ter tracks of the song in 2012. (The sec­ond video first appeared on our site that same year.) At 1:01, the solo sud­den­ly appears. Mar­tin leans in and lis­tens atten­tive­ly and Dhani says, “It’s total­ly dif­fer­ent to any­thing I’ve ever heard.” It’s unmis­tak­able Har­ri­son, the “liq­uid qual­i­ty” Jayson Greene iden­ti­fied in a Pitch­fork appre­ci­a­tion, more evoca­tive of “a zither, a clarinet—something more del­i­cate, nuanced and lyri­cal than an elec­tric gui­tar.”

Impos­si­ble, I’d say, to dupli­cate. Even the younger Harrison—perhaps the most faith­ful inter­preter of George’s music—finds him­self fudg­ing his father’s solos when cov­er­ing his songs, play­ing his own instead. Har­ri­son, says Tom Pet­ty, always had a way of “find­ing the right thing to play. That was part of the Bea­t­les mag­ic.” He may not be remem­bered as the most vir­tu­oso of gui­tarists, he may not have thought much of his own play­ing, but no one has ever played like him, before or since. See Har­ri­son play an acoustic ren­di­tion of “Here Comes the Sun”—sans solo—above at the con­cert for Bangladesh.

(Note: some read­ers have point­ed out that the solo at the top of the post sounds out of tune. We do not doubt that it is George Har­rison’s play­ing, but it has been edit­ed and pos­si­bly even sped up to match the final mas­tered record­ing. This is not a pro­fes­sion­al remix, but only a rough recre­ation of what the song might have sound­ed like had the lost solo been includ­ed.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

George Harrison’s Mys­ti­cal, Fish­eye Self-Por­traits Tak­en in India (1966)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness