Credit: Bent Rej

Listen to George Harrison’s acoustic demo of The Beatles’ ‘Love You To’

Wed 19 April 2023 19:00, UK

Before there were any traditional Indian instruments around, George Harrison had an acoustic guitar and a melody idea. The harmonic elements of what would eventually become The Beatles’ trippy Revolver track ‘Love You To’ were always indebted to the drone-like raga of Indian music, but Harrison didn’t quite have that at his disposal when the song first entered his brain.

Originally demoed as ‘Granny Smith’, ‘Love You To’ would eventually turn into Harrison’s first true embrace of Indian classical music. A sprawling and highly psychedelic composition, ‘Love You To’ would eventually get the full Indian treatment, with sitars, tablas, and tamburas being recorded by musicians from the Asian Music Circle. Harrison would add his own guitar overdubs, and other than a backing harmony vocal from Paul McCartney and a tambourine part by Ringo Starr, the other Beatles would have little to do with the final version of ‘Love You To’.

“To me, [Indian classical music] is the only really great music now, and it makes Western three-or-four-beat type stuff seem somehow dead,” Harrison explained in 1966. “You can get so much more out of it if you are prepared really to concentrate and listen.”

However, Harrison’s original demo of the track featured himself on acoustic guitar. The demo reveals that McCartney was providing his harmony vocal from the very beginning (unless the demo has Harrison harmonising with himself). In spite of this, Harrison insisted that the song was always written for a sitar, an instrument that he wouldn’t begin to study seriously until a year later.

“I wrote ‘Love You To’ on the sitar, because the sitar sounded so nice and my interest was getting deeper all the time,” Harrison claimed. “I wanted to write a tune that was specifically for the sitar. Also it had a tabla part, and that was the first time we used a tabla player.”

Harrison first stumbled upon the sitar while shooting the film Help! in 1965. He later bought one for himself and later added the instrument to the song ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ from Rubber Soul. Harrison expressed discontent with the amateurish performance and sought to increase his skill on the instrument, eventually befriending sitar expert Ravi Shankar and composing songs like ‘Within You Without You’ and ‘The Inner Light’ with the instrument.

Check out the first take of ‘Love You To’, now featured on the deluxe reissue of Revolver, down below.