Composition
The basic tracks for "Within You Without You" featured only Harrison and a group of uncredited Indian musicians based in London. Producer George Martin then arranged a string section, and Harrison and assistant Neil Aspinall overdubbed the tambura. According to Prema Music, dilruba player Amrit Gajjar played on the track. Hunter Davies wrote that Harrison "trained himself to write down his song in Indian script so that the Indian musicians can play them." With "Within You Without You", Harrison became the second Beatle to record a song credited to The Beatles but featuring no other members of the group (Paul McCartney had previously done so with "Yesterday").
"Within You Without You" is the second of Harrison's songs to be explicitly influenced by Indian classical music (the first being "Love You To", released on Revolver the previous year). Harrison said "I was continually playing Indian called Sargam, which are the bases of the different Ragas. That's why around this time I couldn't help writing tunes like this which were based on unusual scales." The song is Harrison's only composition on Sgt. Pepper after "Only a Northern Song" was omitted from the album. Harrison wrote "Within You Without You" on a harmonium at the house of long-time Beatles' associate Klaus Voormann ("We were talking about the space between us all, And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion— never glimpse the truth").
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Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.”
—Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)