If you want to have handwritten lyrics to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, from The Beatles’ ninth eponymous double album (so-called White Album), all you need is the asking price of $195,000.
As CNN reports, the lyrics were handwritten by George Harrison and Ringo Starr. George wrote the beginning and the end, and Ringo the rest. It seems that the duo came up with the lyrics in the studio while recording, since the lyrics were “scrawled on the back of a studio recording sheet used to account for the time and cost of a recording session.”
George first wrote: “I Look at You all see the love there thats sleeping — While my guitar gently weeps.” He then finished with the following line: “While my Guitar Gently Weeps as I’m sitting here doing nothing but aging still my guitar G W.”
To disperse any doubt, the lyrics are accompanied by authenticating letter by Frank Caiazzo, the owner of Beatles Autographs, a business that sells memorabilia signed by the band.
Late George Harrison at one point said that he wrote the song upon his return from India. He added that track is based on the “Eastern concept” that “whatever happens is all meant to be, and that there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“I decided to write a song based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book — as it would be a relative to that moment, at that time,” Harrison wrote in I, Me, Mine, his 1980 autobiography. “I picked up a book at random — opened it — saw ‘gently weeps’, then laid the book down again and started the song.”
CNN adds that one of the prominent elements of the song is that Eric Clapton is featured as the lead guitarist on the song, “a rare moment as the Beatles rarely had outside musicians appear on their records beyond orchestral musicians.”
