The Beatles' lead guitarist George Harrison says he "wasn't taken seriously" by his co-stars when he happened upon the notes for what he believed was a genius song. He'd been studying Eastern Philosophy, and after a season of Transcendental Meditation in India, he returned to the UK and began to read the Chinese I Ching: The Book of Changes.

He opened it at random, saw the words "gently weeps" and then turned to his guitar. Moments later, the first version of the soon to become legendary song 'When My Guitar Gently Weeps' was born. He explained: "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." He'd decided to test the theory by writing a song "based on the first thing I saw upon opening any book".

Declaring the resulting track "pretty good", George convinced the rest of the band to record a demo of it with him at his Surrey home that spring in 1968 - and he followed up with a solo guitar version at the iconic Abbey Road studio in London two months later.

However, his biggest struggle would be persuading the others to accept its potential - and John Lennon and Paul McCartney usually commanded frontman status within the group.

"[They] were so used to just cranking out their tunes that it was very difficult at times to get serious and record one of mine. It wasn’t happening," he exclaimed in frustration, as reported by the Liverpool Echo.

"They weren’t taking it seriously and I don’t think they were even all playing on it... I went home that night thinking, ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ because I knew the song was pretty good."

Not to be deterred, he enlisted pal Eric Clapton to work his magic on the track instead - but he encountered resistance from him too.

He replied: "Nobody’s ever played on a Beatles record and the others wouldn’t like it", but George shot back: "Look, it's my song!" before insisting that he played on it.

Announcing to the others that Eric would be part of it encouraged them to "act better" and with Paul adding a piano accompaniment, they finally all began to "take it more seriously".

Later that year, it was one of four songs written by George that took pride of place on The White Album, as he finally began to come into his own as a songwriter.

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