“George has done a great Indian one. We came along one night and he had about 400 Indian fellas playing there … it was a great swinging evening, as they say.”
[John, speaking in 1967, Anthology]
George recording Within You Without You on the 15th March, 1967. The top two photos are fan photos of George arriving/leaving at the session, which took place in Studio 2, EMI Studios, Abbey Road, 7.00pm-1.30am. The middle two are George recording it, followed by the original lyrics and score, written by George.
The last 2 photos I’ve included as they’re often attributed as at the recording of Within You Without You too, however these photos were taken on the 3rd of March, when the Beatles were working on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. The Beatles Book states the man photographed with George is Ravi Shankar’s brother, although doesn’t say which one (Ravi had three brothers). However, it does appear he may have been present at the sessions on the 15th March too - is that him in photo 3?
The Indian musicians on Within You Without You are uncredited and unknown, although Beatle fan site, Absolute Elsewhere says they are “George playing swordmandel and tamboura, Natver Soni playing tabla, Amrat Gajjar playing dilruba, PD Joshi playing swordmandel, and an undocumented musician playing a droning tamboura. Neil Aspinall also contributes a tamboura part.”
“[Within You Without You is] one of George’s best songs. One of my favourites of his, too. He’s clear on that song. His mind and his music are clear. There is his innate talent, he brought that sound together.”
[John, Anthology]
“It was written at Klaus Voormann’s house in Hampstead after dinner one night. The song came to me when I was playing a pedal harmonium.
“I’d also spent a lot of time with Ravi Shankar, trying to figure out how to sit and hold the sitar, and how to play it. Within You Without You was a song that I wrote based upon a piece of music of Ravi’s that he’d recorded for All-India Radio. It was a very long piece - maybe thirty or forty minutes - and was written in different parts, with a progression in each. I wrote a mini version of it, using sounds similar to those I’d discovered in his piece. I recorded in three segments and spliced them together.”
[George, Anthology]
Finally, here’s a story Carlos Santana told Billboard recently in relation to the 50th anniversary of Sgt Pepper’s, discussing the time he took LSD, suffered a bad trip and how Within You Without You inspired him.
"It was the only time I took an LSD trip that was getting a little scary, and that song [Within You Without You] brought me back to a place where I knew at that particular moment what my place on this planet was and is.
"That song brought me from being scattered and into a fear ocean into a place where I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I could be a healer on this planet. I just knew after I heard that song I would land from this LSD trip into a place where I would have clarity the rest of my life.
"So I thank the Beatles, especially George Harrison, for Sgt. Pepper 'cause that song gave me a clarity, a sense of purpose and intentionality for the rest of my life."
Santana never told his friend Harrison about the importance of his song, adding, "We would just be drunk and singing all the time. We never talked about stuff like that."
[Carlos Santana, Billboard, May 2017]
“...With our love, We could save the world...”
Post 4/13 - Sgt Pepper is 50!