Photo courtesy of Steel City Records.
“[At a dinner hosted by Al Aronowitz] David Bromberg picked it up and started playing a vaguely Hispanic chord pattern that became 'The Hold Up.' As Bromberg recalls, Harrison couldn't resist getting involved and 'the song came out of us in about thirty minutes. We weren't trying to do anything — least of all to write a song. It just came out.' The finished product appeared on the David Bromberg album, and is redolent of the two men's celebrated sense of humor. The track was a quirky, jokey version of 'Taxman,' the 'holdup' in question being one perpetrated by the IRS. The writing was agreed, but vernacular abounds, and it's not hard to pinpoint who wrote which lines. The witty piece still tickles Bromberg: 'Some of the best lines are his — the phrase "getting the nose wet," that's very English. Also, it was also in his head to say, "I'll put a bullet right through your best liver." That's very funny.' Harrison was true to form when a session was held to overdub his slide guitar onto Bromberg's live recording of the song. The multi-skilled Bromberg appreciated his thorough approach: 'He was a very thoughtful player; I never saw him do any improvisation at all. In our interactions, with me, he worked in a way I'd never seen anyone else work. He worked on the solo in the studio, he sat in the control booth, plugged the guitar into the board, and had the tape played over and over. He worked out exactly what he was going to play, and laid it down.' The outcome was a classic Harrison guitar vignette, displaying a skill admired by other musicians rather than critics, as David Bromberg explains: 'He could develop an instrumental hook, and that is much harder than playing a hot solo. He could develop a simple little melodic idea that would be repeated in the course of a song, so that you would never be able to hear the song without hearing this hook. He was really good at that. That's not something that people often discuss.’” - While My Guitar Gently Weeps: The Music of George Harrison
