10 Hidden Details In Legendary Rock Songs

By the time the Beatles got around to making Rubber Soul, the lovable moptops that we all knew were a thing of the past. These young boys from A Hard Day's Night had turned into proper musicians, and this was the first taste of them experimenting in the studio, like using fuzz bass on Think For Yourself or speeding up the piano to make it sound like a harpsichord on In My Life. Those were still common instruments though, and Norwegian Wood was going to get a bit of an Eastern flavor once George Harrison got a-hold of it.

Although John Lennon's original track about a man who is hung out to dry by a one night stand was already fine on its own, he had wanted something to accentuate the main guitar lick and asked Harrison to play sitar on the track. Having been enamoured with Indian music since he first heard musicians playing it on the set of Help!, George was originally hesitant to play the piece, not really being that fluent on the instrument yet and still finding his way around when John asked him.

Using a cheap sitar he had found in England, what you're hearing on the final recording is George finding the notes on the sitar and just trying to work his way through the rest of the song, which gives the whole track a much more exotic feel, along with the different percussion that Ringo brings into the mix. The past few Beatles sessions have almost always been about silly love songs for the pop market, but this was one of the first signs that the Fab Four weren't looking to be pop stars the rest of their lives. This was art to them, and Norwegian Wood was the first step towards something new.