Two months or so ago, I found myself discussing George Harrison with a friend. The conversation drifted towards the fascinating story behind “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” that iconic track from The Beatles’ “White Album,” famously featuring Eric Clapton’s guest guitar work. I recounted the anecdote – something along the lines of, “Harrison was a believer in interconnectedness, in meaning behind happenstance. So, when he opened the I Ching and his eyes fell upon the phrase ‘while my guitar gently weeps,’ he knew he had his song.”
It’s a testament to the enduring power of Beatles lore that such details, half-remembered as they may be, stick with you. And my recollection was, broadly speaking, on the right track. Just recently, indulging in some bedtime reading with Ian MacDonald’s seminal Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties, I stumbled upon his analysis of this very song. This book, a song-by-song deep dive into the Beatles’ discography, complete with lyrical, musical, and cultural context, is indispensable for any serious Beatles aficionado. While I might quibble with MacDonald’s opinions on some of the Beatles’ heavier late-era tracks – he wasn’t particularly enamored with the likes of “Yer Blues,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and especially “Helter Skelter” – his arguments are always insightful, and the book is captivatingly written.
MacDonald’s take on the story I’d recounted goes like this: “The characteristically accusatory lyric, written after returning from India, originated in one of the many random impulses The Beatles resorted to around this time, Harrison finding the phrase ‘gently weeps’ by chance in a book.” A footnote elaborates: “He chose the phrase thus in accordance with his understanding of Indian teaching that there is no such thing as coincidence, that meaning inheres in every moment (The Beatles Anthology, p. 306).”
Alt text: George Harrison focused on his guitar during a White Album recording session, embodying the dedication behind “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.
So, the detail I slightly misremembered was that it wasn’t the entire phrase “while my guitar gently weeps” that Harrison encountered, but just “gently weeps.” And MacDonald, intriguingly, doesn’t specify which book, only citing The Beatles Anthology book as his source. Turning to page 306 of the Anthology, we find Harrison’s own words:
GEORGE: I wrote ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ at my mother’s house in Warrington (the spiritual home of George Formby). I was thinking about the Chinese I Ching, ‘The Book of Changes’. In the West we think of coincidence as being something that just happens — it just happens that I am sitting here and the wind is blowing my hair, and so on. But the Eastern concept is that whatever happens is all meant to be, and that there’s no such thing as coincidence — every little item that’s going down has a purpose.
‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ was a simply study based on that theory. I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book — as it would be relative to that moment, at that time. I picked up a book at random, opened it, saw ‘gently weeps’, then laid the book down again and started the song.
Harrison’s account leaves the specific book ambiguous. It could have been anything. However, online sources frequently point to the I Ching itself as the book Harrison randomly opened, not just a book inspired by the I Ching.
The I Ching and Serendipitous Inspiration
For those unfamiliar, the I Ching, or Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text, dating back approximately 3,500 years. It’s used as a tool for seeking guidance by creating a hexagram – a symbol composed of six lines representing yin and yang – through the manipulation of yarrow stalks or coins. This hexagram is then consulted for answers to posed questions, offering insights into situations and potential future developments.
My own introduction to the I Ching came during my college years through Philip K. Dick’s novel, The Man in the High Castle. The I Ching plays a central role in the narrative, guiding the characters’ decisions. Intriguingly, Dick himself used the I Ching to plot and even write the novel; when a character consults the book in the story, it reflects Dick’s own consultation and the hexagram he received at that stage of writing. Curiosity piqued, I acquired my own copy about fifteen years ago, experimenting initially with the three-coin method before discovering the more nuanced four-coin method (or, in my case, an Excel spreadsheet that replicates it).
This late-night reading of Revolution in the Head sparked a new train of thought. Could I possibly pinpoint where George Harrison might have encountered “gently weeps” within the I Ching itself, assuming he did indeed open it at random? My personal copy is a hefty tome, exceeding 800 pages, likely a different edition and translation than what Harrison would have used in the late 1960s.
However, let’s proceed with the assumption that it was the I Ching. Let’s also assume Harrison’s edition was less encumbered by extensive commentary than mine, focusing more directly on the core text – the original Chinese translated into English.
Alt text: Open pages of an I Ching book, symbolizing the ancient text’s role in inspiring “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.
Searching for “Gently Weeps” in the I Ching
Fortunately, my edition includes a concordance – an index to virtually every word in the book. Consulting it, the word “weep” appears only twice within the I Ching. Once in Hexagram 3 (Sprouting), as “weeping blood, coursing thus,” and again in Hexagram 61 (Centering Conforming), as “maybe weeping, maybe singing.”
In Hexagram 3, the phrase emerges in a transforming line reading (specifically, Six Above). If a questioner receives an old yin line here, transforming into a young yang as events unfold, the reading includes:
Riding a horse, arrying thus. Weeping blood, coursing thus.
Weeping blood, coursing this. Wherefore permitting long-living indeed?
Even allowing for translation variations, it’s difficult to imagine “blood” being misread or mistranslated as “gently.” This seems unlikely to be the source.
However, in Hexagram 61, the phrase also occurs in a transforming line reading (Six-at-third), again arising from an old yin transforming into a young yang:
Acquiring antagonism. Maybe drumbeating, maybe desisting. Maybe weeping, maybe singing.
Maybe drumbeating, maybe desisting. Situation not appropriate indeed.
Could this be it? Could “maybe weeping” in this translation have been rendered as “gently weeps” in George Harrison’s edition?
It’s certainly plausible. A highly influential translation in the English-speaking world is the Wilhelm/Baynes edition, translated from Chinese to German and then to English. This was the very edition Philip K. Dick used in 1962 while writing The Man in the High Castle. In that translation, Hexagram 61 is named “Inner Truth,” and a casting of this hexagram is pivotal at the novel’s climax.
While definitive proof remains elusive – we can’t definitively say Harrison opened the I Ching at random, nor confirm that “maybe weeping” was translated as “gently weeps” in his edition – the connection is compelling. Barring contradictory evidence, it’s entirely conceivable that on a spring day in 1968, George Harrison opened his I Ching to Hexagram 61 and discovered the phrase that sparked one of his most enduring and emotionally resonant songs, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” It’s a beautiful example of how chance, philosophy, and a little bit of Eastern mysticism might have conspired to create a classic.
Alt text: George Harrison passionately playing guitar on stage, reflecting the emotional depth of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” in live performance.
