2010s
The Petty Archives

George Harrison's Beloved Guitars, Gently Weeping on Your iPad
By Dave Itzkoff
The New York Times - February 22, 2012

Mr. Campbell, a guitarist who performs with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, said that picking up Harrison's Rickenbacker and playing the chords to "You Can't Do That" resulted in "an out-of-body experience."

"I had to stand up for a second, it was so intense," Mr. Campbell said. "It was that instrument and that sound that inspired me so much as a kid. And there I was, hearing it up close. It was a pretty special moment, really."

For admirers who can't have the same hands-on experiences, Dhani Harrison is already planning other offerings. More of his father's guitars will be added to the app, he said, in the weeks after it is released. (The additional guitar upgrades will be free to people who have already purchased the app.)

And he said he would like to create other apps that would display the guitar collections of rock stars like Eric Clapton (George Harrison's longtime friend), Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend of the Who, and Angus Young of AC/DC.

"I don't know how well I'd do, sitting there photographing the white Hendrix Woodstock Stratocaster," Mr. Harrison said. "Then it'll be me that's in tears, and everyone else will be going, 'It's O.K.' "

For all the worship bestowed on the Harrison guitars, Mr. Campbell said his own encounters with the quiet Beatle suggested he was not especially precious about them.

"I was talking to him about how much I loved the guitar sounds on their early records, the Gretsches and the Rickenbackers," Mr. Campbell recalled. "And he went: 'Oh, yeah. They were kind of clunky and hard to play. If we had Fenders, we could have been really good.' "