George Harrison’s Lost ‘Here Comes the Sun’ Solo Finds the Light of Day

Filed under

When Martin Scorsese’s “George Harrison: Living In The Material World” documentary finally sees its home video release May 1st, Beatle fanatics will likely find interest in some of the DVD extras. Among them is a lost guitar solo for one of the most beloved Harrison-penned Beatles songs, “Here Comes the Sun” — something Harrison’s son, Dhani, didn’t even know existed.

As the L.A. Times points out, the solo is not included on “Early Takes Vol. I,” a 10-track CD of previously unreleased Harrison solo material (outtakes and covers, mostly) that is set to be released at the same time as the “Living In The Material World” DVD. Rather, Harrison’s guitar solo can be heard in a compelling scene that shows up in the DVD extras for Scorsese’s documentary on “the quiet Beatle,” which first aired last October on HBO.

The scene involves Dhani Harrison and longtime Beatles producer George Martin (often touted as “the fifth Beatle”) and his son, Giles Martin, who are playing with unused instrumentals from the original recording session for “Here Comes the Sun” (including a scrapped instrumental score). In the studio, Dhani pushes a button and boom, we hear an unearthed guitar solo for the “Abbey Road” track. “That’s totally different to anything I’ve ever heard before,” Dhani says. “We never used that,” George Martin replies. “I’d forgotten about that.” Dhani counters: “I never even knew about it.”

Neither did we, yet director Scorsese opted not to use this revealing bit of footage in his widely-applauded documentary. Rather, Scorcese gets Ringo and Eric Clapton to discuss Harrison’s inspiration for “Here Comes the Sun,” following another trip to India — a clip you can view over at Harrison’s official site.

Here is the video of Harrison playing the song.