salvadorwriter

[hennessyandco@yahoo.com (Teddy):]


From what I've read about your idol J. Edgar Hoover,
he often made anti-social remarks like that, but he was
a flaming homosexual. What's your excuse?

=============repost=============
Subject: ‘Chet Atkins Picks on the Beatles’
From: salvadorwriter@cs.com (Salvadorwriter)
Date: 7/28/03 10:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id: <20030728221722.20076.00000663@mb-m29.news.cs.com>


About a month ago, several folks expressed an interest
in Chet Atkins’ influence on George Harrison’s early
guitar style. The topic of Atkins and Harrison was one
of the questions in my "Beatles Quiz". Here's the
question again:

---
[17.] Name the country music recording artist and the
name of the album, by same artist, that George

Obviously the recording artist was Chet Atkins and the
album was ‘Chet Atkins Picks on the Beatles’. (1966, RCA)

Recently I found Harrison’s liner notes, written when he
was 23. It’s quite refreshing to read. Harrison and the
other Beatles had their faults: drugs, womanizing,
infighting in latter years. But professionally, they
were a class act--completely magnanimous and gracious
with other artists, particularly the greats. That positive
attitude helped win over new fans. I recall how impressed
my father (born in 1923) was with ‘Chet Atkins Picks on
the Beatles’, and with Harrison’s liner notes. As a member
of the "older generation" he politely belittled the Fab
Four amongst friends and colleagues of his own age group,
but he was a closet Beatle fan and a devout Chet Atkins
fan. He bought me more than a couple Beatle albums, not
to mention electric guitars and a Vox amp when I was
thirteen. The Beatles were truly the epitome of love in
every sense.

Here are Harrison’s liner notes from ‘Chet Atkins Picks on
the Beatles’:

---quote on---
I have appreciated Chet Atkins as a musician since long
before the tracks on this album were written; in fact,
since I was the ripe young age of seventeen. Since then
I have lost count of the number of Chet’s albums I have
acquired, but I have not been disappointed with any of them.

For me, the great thing about Mr. Atkins is not the fact
that he is capable of playing almost every type of music
but the conviction in the way he does it. Whilst listening
to CHET ATKINS PICKS ON THE BEATLES I got the feeling that
these songs had been written specifically with Chet in mind.
The fact that they were not proves his eminence as an
artist--the perfect example being Yesterday. Chet, by
himself, gets far more out of this than some of the people
known as "class" singers do with a full orchestral
arrangement to boot!

I’ll Cry Instead, She’s a Woman and Can’t Buy Me Love,
having a country feeling about them, lend themselves
perfectly to Chet’s own style of picking, which has
inspired so many guitarists throughout the world (myself
included, but I didn’t have enough fingers at the time).

All the other tracks have Chet adding harmonies and
harmonics in the least expected places, bringing out
that crystal-clear sound of the guitar to his audience’s
benefit.

One thing remains very clear to me at the end of this LP,
and that is why this sleeve note must end here. Chet
Atkins did not get to be a great guitarist by writing
sleeve notes, but by years of devoted practice on the
instrument he so obviously loves.

GEORGE HARRISON
---quote off---

Source: Kristofer Engelhardt, The Beatles Undercover, p 29

I always loved the line: "...I didn’t have enough fingers at
the time". What humility.

Salvador


------
Salvador Astucia, author of the following books:

- "Rethinking John Lennon's Assassination: The FBI's War on Rock Stars"; and

- "Opium Lords: Israel, the Golden Triangle, and the Kennedy Assassination".

http://www.jfkmontreal.com