“I asked Olivia, ‘I’d love to play one of George’s guitars.’ She just said, ‘Of course – which one?’” How a Gypsy jazz guitarist came to play George Harrison’s iconic Beatles guitars on a new tribute album

Robin Nolan plays a Gibson acoustic into a mic as he records at home.

Under normal circumstances, a Beatles covers album might not be headline news. But For The Love Of George – the latest release fom Robin Nolan, a player ranked among Britain’s greatest exponents of Gypsy jazz for three decades – is the final link in a chain of events so fantastical, improbable and downright surreal that, even now, there’s a hint of disbelief in his voice.

The seed of this project was planted in the mid-90s, when George Harrison personally invited the then-busker to perform at his Oxfordshire estate, Friar Park.