Harrison wrote the song as a sequel to his popular Beatles composition "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", in response to the personal criticism he had received during and after his 1974 North American tour with Ravi Shankar, particularly from Rolling Stone magazine.

Contributing to Harrison's sense of injustice in "This Guitar", he and his tour musicians believed that detractors had ignored the successful aspects of the 1974 shows – which blended rock, jazz, funk and Indian classical music – and had focused instead on his failure to pay due respect to the legacy of the Beatles.

The song serves as a rare guitar-oriented selection on the keyboard-heavy Extra Texture album, although David Foster, Gary Wright and Harrison all contributed keyboard parts to the track.

George Harrison's stated aim for his North American tour with Indian musician Ravi Shankar, which took place from 2 November to 20 December 1974,[1] was to offer concert-goers "another kind of experience" from the typical mid-1970s rock show.

[9] Concert-goers likewise questioned their accuracy;[10][11] according to author Nicholas Schaffner, Beatles fanzine Strawberry Fields Forever had been "deluged with letters protesting the nasty reviews".

He travelled with us from Vancouver to LA, long after we'd made all the changes ...[13] Harrison biographer Simon Leng describes this phenomenon as "one of the stranger episodes in rock music" and writes: "While the majority of reviews were positive, in some cases ecstatic, the 'given' view of the tour comes from the Rolling Stone articles.

[5][29] While members of his 1974 tour group, including future wife Olivia Arias,[30] have spoken of Harrison's defiant attitude towards the negative reviews,[13][31] Leng states that he "reacted to them as personal attacks".

[43] In a contemporary review, music journalist Ray Coleman said that the song's lyrics, together with the yearning quality of Harrison's singing and guitar playing on the track, "will raise questions about its relevance to his personal life".

[35] The song begins with the lines "Found myself out on a limb / But I'm happier than I've ever been",[44] the second of which echoes Harrison's statement to Fong-Torres that he had never been as happy as he was now – in a band with Scott, Billy Preston and Willie Weeks,[45] and as a servant of the Hindu god Krishna instead of living out the public's perception of him as "Beatle George".

[65][nb 6] In the description of author Andrew Grant Jackson, the song's opening synthesizer part "wouldn't sound out of place in a '70s horror flick or a Death Wish sequel".

[71] Extra Texture was released on Apple Records in September 1975,[72] with "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" sequenced as the third track, between "The Answer's at the End" and Harrison's Smokey Robinson tribute "Ooh Baby (You Know That I Love You)".

[75] Among the alternative packaging available in other markets, the rare Japanese picture sleeve incorporated the colour scheme from the parent album, surrounding an image of Harrison on stage during the 1974 tour.

[87] Harrison did no promotion for the single,[88] but his guest appearance on comedian Eric Idle's Rutland Weekend Television 1975 Christmas special, singing the purpose-written "The Pirate Song",[79][89] heralded a return to form for him in 1976.

"[75][nb 8] Discussing Extra Texture in his 1977 book The Beatles Forever, Nicholas Schaffner wrote of Harrison's "worldly critics" responding "like bulls to a red flag" to "This Guitar" and other "treatises on how reviewers always 'miss the point'".

[102] NME writers Roy Carr and Tony Tyler said that, in comparison with the Beatles track, Harrison's "often-impressively lachrymose guitar falls short of true grief-stricken form here", adding: "The lack of a tune doesn't help.

"[103] Conversely, Record World's single reviewer wrote that Harrison "hits the mark with this edited extra textural ballad" and highlighted Wright's ARP strings among the "superb accompaniment".

[106] Jackson nevertheless admires "the group's synergy" on the recording, as well as Forster's string arrangement, saying: "['This Guitar'] could have been one of the most depressing ex-Beatles tunes ever, but its strange groove compels repeated listening.

"[108] Robert Rodriguez considers it to be a "fine track" containing one of Harrison's "finest vocal performances", yet he also identifies an unwelcome "air of defensiveness, bordering on arrogance" in the lyrics.

[42] Writing in Mojo magazine, John Harris describes "This Guitar" as a "serviceable sequel" in which Harrison "1) does a neat Dylan impression, and 2) plays yet another lovely slide solo".

[109] By contrast, Nick DeRiso of Ultimate Classic Rock rates it as the worst song on Extra Texture, calling it "a superfluous reworking of a Beatles tune [that] served as a signpost for this album's creatively bankrupt, dead-end vibe".

[68] Ian Inglis writes of the "gulf" separating Harrison's 1968 composition from the 1975 song: "While the first was a poignant and satisfying commentary that drew attention to his newfound maturity as a songwriter, this is a petulant and rather arrogant statement in which he appears to want to put himself above criticism ...

[114][115] In November that year, during rehearsals at Bray Studios in Berkshire,[116] "This Guitar (Can't Keep from Crying)" was one of 35 songs that Harrison considered for the concert setlist, but he did not perform it at any of the shows.

[118] The recording was made in 1992[106] and, over ten years later, Ringo Starr, Dhani Harrison and Kara DioGuardi overdubbed contributions on drums, acoustic guitar and backing vocals, respectively.