By the fall of 1965, the Beatles and George Martin had come to regard the recording studio as a place to experiment, think outside the box and slowly pull away from their tried-and-true formulas.
On October 12 of that year, they did just that, recording a brilliant new John Lennon composition inspired by a clandestine affair he was having at the time. The recording would feature an exciting new tool, George Harrison's sitar.
The exotic stringed instrument wasn't new only to Harrison and the Beatles, but to all of pop music—although an unreleased early version of the Yardbirds' June 1965 single, "Heart Full of Soul," features a sitar, and the Kinks' "See My Friends," released in July, is clearly raga-inspired, with the guitar calling to mind the sound and timbre of a sitar. Perhaps British recording engineers hadn't had very rewarding sitar experiences in the past.
"It was very hard to record [the sitar] because it has a lot of nasty peaks and a very complex wave form," said EMI engineer Norman Smith. "My meter would be going right over into the red, into distortion, without us getting audible value for money."
The October 12 version of the song, then called simply "This Bird Has Flown," features the sitar in the intro and in the middle eight, as Harrison, sometimes clumsily, mimics Paul McCartney's harmony vocal. Also notable about the October 12 recording is that Ringo Starr is playing drums.
Unhappy with the first version, the band attempted the song nine days later, when, on the fourth take, they nailed it. Lennon's acoustic guitar opens the track, and Starr, as he did for "And I Love Her," eschews drums completely, in favor of other percussive instruments, in this case finger cymbals and a tambourine.
Damian is Editor-in-Chief of Guitar World magazine. In past lives, he was GW’s managing editor and online managing editor. He's written liner notes for major-label releases, including Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'The Complete Epic Recordings Collection' (Sony Legacy) and has interviewed everyone from Yngwie Malmsteen to Kevin Bacon (with a few memorable Eric Clapton chats thrown into the mix). Damian, a former member of Brooklyn's The Gas House Gorillas, was the sole guitarist in Mister Neutron, a trio that toured the U.S. and released three albums. He now plays in two NYC-area bands.
