2a. While My Guitar Gently Weeps

It must have taken enormous courage to present his songs to the band, knowing that his bandmates would probably come along with songs of the calibre of Eleanor Rigby or Norwegian Wood.

In the early days especially, it would have been like trying to compete in the high jump competition at the Olympics without technique, training or experience.

In hindsight, we know that he had the potential, but nobody knew that then.

George was well aware of the challenge he faced.

In Melody Maker, he said, when you're competing with John and Paul, you have to be very good to even get into the same league.

John and Paul were both very strong personalities and straight talkers, so George got some frank feedback about the quality of his songs.

There's a recording of a meeting between John, Paul and George in September 1969, where Paul said, Well, the thing is, I think that until now, until this year, our songs have been better than George's.

Now this year, his songs are at least as good as ours.

Paul's comment does seem to underrate George's songs on the White Album, and what about Taxman? But I do agree that George's songs improved a lot between 1963 and 1968.

John and Paul's attitudes were shaped by his earlier songs, and they were slow to recognise that the best of his later contributions were at least as good as ours.

This slow recognition was part of a general pattern where the Beatles tended not to praise each other, even when praise was warranted.

Here's a quote from an interview with George given to Crawdaddy magazine in 1977.

I had a little encouragement from time to time, but it was very little.

It was like they were doing me a favour.

I didn't have much confidence in writing songs because of that, because they never said, yeah, that's a good song.

Going beyond lack of encouragement, John didn't even play on a bunch of George's later songs, Savoy Truffle, Long Long Long, Here Comes the Sun, and I Me Mine.

In part, this is explained by the fact that John was recovering from a car accident during the recording of Here Comes the Sun, and he'd quit the band before they recorded I Me Mine.

But the absence of John on a number of George songs, and his minimal contribution to some others, including While My Guitar Gently Weeps, must have been noticed by George.

Clearly it was hard for George.

In the Crawdaddy interview, he talked explicitly about his problems getting songs included on Beatles albums.

They had such a lot of tunes, and they automatically thought that theirs should be the priority.

So for me, I'd always have to wait through ten of their songs before they'd even listen to one of mine.

That's why All Things Must Pass had so many songs, because it was like I'd been constipated.

He's got a fair point, although the number 10 is exaggerated.

Of the tracks the Beatles released between 1965 and 1970, if you break it down by songwriting contributions, John wrote 56, Paul wrote 61, and George wrote 21.