GEORGE HARRISON and the Leslie Speaker

Friday June 27, 2008

Larry Curtis Spurlock

GEORGE HARRISON

and the Leslie Speaker

Again, at the apex of modern music innovation – George Harrison did not invent the Leslie rotating Speaker but he most certainly brought it out of the Hammond Organ only closet.

The Leslie Speaker was invented in 1941 by a man named Donald Leslie. The prototype was known as a Vibratone and it’s only use was as a companion to the Hammond Organ which had no built in Speakers.

Mr. Leslie, later, sold his Company to CBS in 1965 who had already purchased the Fender Guitar Company.

This marriage of Guitars and rotating Speakers was the perfect opening for George Harrison whose Beatles were in business with CBS.

The Beatles were working on the Album, Revolver which was George’s coming out party as a Writer, Producer and Lead Singer.

Although he was only credited with the Album’s initial song, Taxman and I Want To Tell You (about his trouble getting Lennon and McCartney to listen to his music) and Love You Too – he influenced the entire Album. His Indian influence and Sitar playing flung the Beatles into a different era. He wrote the music for McCartney’s Norwegian Wood and Got To Get You Into My Life.

But it was his help with John Lennon’s I’m Only Sleeping and Tomorrow Never Knows that George influenced Rock Music forevermore.

George had shown John how he could make his Guitar sound like Church Bells using a version of the Leslie and the two joined with Beatles Engineer Geoff Emerick to create that sound for John’s voice on Tomorrow Never Knows.

Much of the backing track consists of a series of prepared tape loops, stemming from the Groups interest in and experiments with magnetic tape and musique concrète techniques at that time. According to Beatles session chronicler Mark Lewisohn, George prepared a series of loops at home, and these then were added to the pre-recorded backing track. This was reportedly done live in a single take, with multiple tape recorders running simultaneously, some of the longer loops extending out of the control room and down the corridor.

Finally, when George brought Eric Clapton into the Beatles sessions at Apple on Abbey Road – they used a version of the old Leslie and Eric played it on his Fender Stratocaster on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, on the White Album at George’s direction.

Returning the favor – George visited the Studio Session where Cream was recording the 3 Studio songs for the Goodbye Cream album.

George had written a song for Eric while the two sat at a table in the Lunchroom. George was going to play a Leslie version 16 at the Bridge on the Cream recording although Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce were less than enthusiastic.

Eric, sitting directly across from George as he scribbled down the lyrics saw the word BRIDGE and mistook it for BADGE. And so it was. The song was titled Badge.

The most famous version of George’s model 16 of the Leslie was actually heard on a Cream Album where Baker and Bruce continue to reap Royalties from George’s innovation.

You can hear the Church Bells ringing in George’s white Stratocaster abrupty after these lyrics:

Thinkin' 'bout the times you drove in my car.
Thinkin' that I might have drove you too far.
And I'm thinkin' 'bout the love that you laid on my table.

I told you not to wander 'round in the dark.
I told you 'bout the swans, that they live in the park.
Then I told you 'bout our kid, now he's married to Mabel.

And there it was. A version of the original Leslie rotating Speaker.

bridge: w/chorus & delay

e-----------------------------------------------

b-----------0-----0---0-----3-------------0-----

g-----2---0-------0-------2---2-----2----0-0--0-

d-0-4-----------0-------0-------0-4-----0--0-0--

a-------3-----2-----------------------3----2----

e-------------------3---------------------------

Another popular example of George’s rotating Speaker sound is at the beginning of Ringo Starr’s 1971 Single, It Don’t Come Easy. Paul McCartney’s Let It Be was another. And another was John Lennon’s Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.

Of course George recorded several songs of his own using the model 16 but the most famous were the ones for John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton.

George Harrison; always the giver !