... and when he played While My Guitar Gently Weeps
At the 2004 induction of George Harrison at the R'n'R Hall Of Fame, Prince played an awesome, legendary Telecaster solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
''While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is not only one of the most beautiful songs written by George Harrison with the Beatles. It is also one of the most beautiful songs on the “White Album”.
Guitar World, 2016
While My Guitar Gently Weeps is a sandbox song for a rock guitarist, a reference - and a pleasure to play, blues-improvising on it.
The song has two keys, the verse is in A minor and then, in the chorus, the key shifts to A major - the so-called "modal exchange". It's the verse, in particular, that allows for pretty good blues improvisations, perhaps thanks to the high notes of the piano pedal and the descending bass line with chromatic bursts that complete the series of melancholic chords (in minor keys) that converge to the (brief) moment of joy "in major" in the chorus, only then to go back to the suffering blues climate - that is the topical atmosphere here.
Clapton, in the Abbey Rd. Studios session that created this "White Album" pearl, was equipped with just a '57 Les Paul but left to the Beatles and for posterity a stunning rock solo. Story says that this he was invited by George whom had given a shot at it but wouldn't like the result. When he brought in Clapton the magic arrived: he slow-handedly sawed a serious web cast over the A blues scale- it was 1968 and it became a legendary piece of rock history tout court.
That very same solo you can find slavishly reproduced, to our great pleasure, by Marc Mann during the version played in homage to Harrison's 2004 R'n'R Hall Of Fame Induction by a band with Dhani Harrison, George's son, Jim Capaldi and Stevie Winwood (ex-Traffic), as well as Billy Preston, Tom Petty, Steve Ferrone and Scott Thurston. And Prince.
Mann indulges in playing Clapton: pulling these strings slowly and whining his way to the chorus, while the band goes straight ahead with the taste they have decided to give to the piece: beat sitting, and the bandwagon of too many musicians playing too many guitars [Twelve-string acoustic (Tom Petty) and 6-string (acoustic, Harrison, and electric, Mann)], along with more harmnoies from organ and piano. Edgeless music.
In this white-rock scenario, at the end of the verbatim quote from Clapton, here the Prince appears: his guitar is nervous, angular, contemptuous, blues to the core. There he is: holding the guitar like a halberd, whiffs of Killin’ Floor and more: a Wes Montgomery playing octaves and fierce, very fast twists à la Steve Vai, and strings pulled to the brink of breaking and finally even LedZep-staccato chords, as if to tell the band “come on, wrap up this blob.”
Prince ends up screaming a little riff on the bottom of his fretboard, takes off the guitar and, after winking at the roadie Takumi Suetsugu, throws The Telecaster gently into the audience (where Takumi grabs the guitar, a bit battered, with the order to give it to Oprah Winfrey, who's in the audience) and off the stage he goes! He turns his back, ignoring the public AND the band in a big way, leaves without saying a word, and. Fuck you very much.
They say he that night, was a co-“induced” guest, and eventually played that solo because the show's producer Joel Gallen wanted him on stage, and absolutely so. Harrison’s widow hesitated at first, considering her husband’s wish to invite only musicians he knew personally. Then she changed her mind. And Prince later said he was happy to have participated alongside one of his favorite artists, mumbling: “it was an honor to play with Tom Petty: Free Fallin’ is one of my favorite songs.”
In reality, as far as we know, Prince never showed up or played at any of the rehearsals, ending up on stage without even a sound-check. So when his thing began, no one on stage had any idea.
But here it is: after Marc Mann reels off verbatim the nostalgia of Clapton in the late ’60s, what a change! Prince mixes various techniques in a solo of almost three minutes, adds a rage that was not around before and throws in Hendrixian moods and gestures (seemingly mixed with certian psychoactivated excitement of the Nineties) plus a studied theatricality. And howling at every strung note that comes to life out of his hands.
Finally we get to the climax that leads him right to the edge of the stage.... and boom! there he is: letting himself fall backwards onto the crowd (caught by the open palms of the usual trusty Takumi, casually among the audience.)
Some folks on the web have thought well of slaughtering this blessed solo, more for the haughty arrogance of Prince's exit than for anything else.
Most people, however, think like me: the solo is a tornado in a small room. A room occupied - until then - by rich middle-aged ALL-WHITE people (except for Billy Preston, but, sincerely, he has never been too much of a black dude either) singing a piece with blues nuances, blues sadness but arranged instead with a really whitey rock feel. For that way of sitting on the beat. Many white musicians tend to stay on top of it, they don't drag a little behind the beat, like black drummers love to do. Let alone that Petty's twelve string guitar...
So Prince arrives in this wobbly swamp full of harmonics and there he is: purple shirt, purple handkerchief, purple fedora. And wearing a velvet jacket as tight as the brutally metallic timbre of his Telecaster (the same guitar model Keith Richards used in Simpathy For The Devil - btw another great song from 1968),
And, starts - with his right hand like a whisk - to fan you a hellfire of notes with machine-gun precision, high above the rhythmic mush underneath.
The phallus-guitar miming ejaculation while spitting out the occasional long sustained high note, playing the guitar with his teeth... there is all the mimicry of the R'n'R of the late twentieth century, now reduced to rock history and gimmick. And I wouldn't rule out boredom for the routinary part of the music business - here showing hints of the same alphabet of detachment Kurt Cobain displayed post-"In Utero."
In short, Prince's solo stormed the Hall (of Fame.) And, at the end of a concert that - in its own way - became legendary, why did he decide a straight walk towards the dressing rooms? I'm asking for a friend but...
isn't this silent walkaway an expression of the curious and difficult coexistence between the opportunity represented by joining a one-night band (ultimately playing the Beatles not too well, absent a pulse, let alone the funk) and his being of eminently-black artist, albeit loved by whites?
(...)