The death of brilliant guitarist Bert Weedon, who influenced many of today’s musical icons – including Beatles Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison, as well as Eric Clapton and Brian May – was announced today. He died at his Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, home at the age of 91. Much will be written about his musical skills and charitable endeavours. But I suspect few of the obituaries will touch on his interest in spiritual healing and the help he received from George Chapman, a trance medium through whom the spirit of William Lang, a noted ophthalmic surgeon, conducted spirit operations.
I collaborated with Chapman on a book about this astonishing two-world healing partnership, Surgeon From Another World, which contains the testimonies of many grateful patients, including doctors and other medical specialists who consulted Chapman and Lang.
Although Bert Weedon is not one of the patients whose experiences are quoted in that book, I was able to discuss them with him when he and his lovely wife Maggie attended a dinner in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1998 to celebrate 50 years of the Chapman-Lang partnership. The dinner was hosted by the Spiritual Truth Foundation, of which I was chairman at that time (George and I are pictured below).
Weedon told me that he and his wife had enjoyed a long friendship with Chapman and had consulted the long-dead surgeon who operated through him on a number of occasions.
During his long musical career, Bert Weedon accompanied many stars, including Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole and Judy Garland, as well as enjoying success as a solo performer and making hit records such as Apache. He was awarded an OBE in the 2001 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to music, and he was also a leading figure in the showbusiness charity, the Grand Order of Water Rats.
George Chapman was consulted by many celebrities, including actors Laurence Harvey and Stanley Holloway, author Roald Dahl and his actress wife Patricia Neal, and romantic novelist Barbara Cartland. He died, at the age of 85, in 2006.
His son, Michael, also a healer, tells me he recalls Weedon playing guitar at one of his father’s celebrations, in the barn at Pant Glas, Wales, where he lived and saw patients. On another occasion the Weedons’ visit coincided with Patrick Juvet, the singer-songwriter who had a string of hits in France, as well as an English disco song, “I Love America”, who was also staying with Chapman. “So as you can imagine, it was a memorable weekend,” Michael adds. Juvet wrote about his consultations with spirit surgeon William Lang in his autobiography, Les Bleus Au Coeur (The Blue Heart) which was published in 2005.