The Beatles’ Secret Songwriting Formula Revealed By Yngwie Malmsteen

What Do You Think?

A few weeks ago, guitar hero Yngwie Malmsteen shared his cover version of the 1968 Beatles classic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. Speaking to Guitar.com, the virtuoso spoke about the Fab Four and his theory about how they wrote and performed their songs.

He said:

“I think like the rest of the people on this planet, we’re all Beatles fans. Also, when I thought about that song, I made sure that I looked at different versions of it: Eric Clapton did it, George Harrison obviously, and there’s live versions; so I looked at them all to get a feel for the song.

“The bridge is really kind of weird. The Beatles will do that: they’ll put chords together that don’t really belong together, but they always sounded really good. They’ll put chords together that really no one out there would ever think of those chords: they’re not theoretically correct. I wouldn’t do that because I’m classically trained, but I loved how they did that, that was one of the cool things about that song, I thought.”

That’s definitely an interesting way of looking at it. He’d know because he has mastered the guitar and covered one of the Beatles’ most loved songs. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is featured in Malmsteen’s latest album Blue Lightning. At first, he wasn’t sure if he could do it and even called it a “trial and error.” Speaking of the cover, he also said, “I am delighted that I was able to do justice to the original.”