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The Beatles · S7 E2
Norwegian Wood
A sitar, a one-night stand, and pop music's first encounter with Indian instrumentation. George brings a new sound, John brings a new kind of lyric
October 1965, Studio Two at Abbey Road. A sitar string snaps and George Harrison has no idea how to fix it, but the cheap instrument he bought from a tiny shop called Indiacraft on Oxford Street is about to change the sound of Western music forever.
"Michelle" (The Beatles, 1965). From the same Rubber Soul sessions that produced "Norwegian Wood," this is Paul McCartney's French-kissed love song that started life as a party trick at Liverpool art school. While George was discovering the sitar and John was learning to write like a novelist, Paul was proving that a pop song could be bilingual, sophisticated, and still hit you right in the chest.
Michelle, The Beatles (1965)
Paul McCartney had been playing this guitar figure at art school parties since the late 1950s, imitating French café music to look sophisticated. It stayed a party trick for years until John Lennon heard it during the Rubber Soul sessions and told him to finish it. Lennon suggested the bridge and the repeated "I love you" in French, turning a throwaway impression into one of the most tender songs on the album. Listen for the descending chromatic bass line threading beneath the French verse, one of the most elegant harmonic moves on all of Rubber Soul.
Sources
Miles, Barry. "Many Years from Now." Secker & Warburg, 1997.
MacDonald, Ian. "Revolution in the Head." Chicago Review Press, 2005.
St. Moritz, January 1965
Lennon starts writing "Norwegian Wood" in a hotel room in St. Moritz. He's on a skiing holiday with Cynthia and their producer George Martin, who's just broken his foot on the slopes. While Martin recovers in bed, Lennon sits beside him with an acoustic guitar, working out a melody in 6/8 time that owes everything to Bob Dylan.
Sources
Beatles Bible (beatlesbible.com)
The Beatles. "The Beatles Anthology." Chronicle Books, 2000.
TAP TO REVEAL: What does "Norwegian Wood" actually mean?
The Lyric
This is the song where Lennon teaches himself to write like a novelist. He told David Sheff he was "trying to write about an affair without letting my wife know I was writing about an affair, so it was very gobbledegook." The whole lyric operates on misdirection: he never says what happened, he sleeps in the bathtub, she vanishes by morning. That final line about lighting a fire? McCartney later confirmed it meant exactly what you think: burning her flat down as revenge, tongue firmly in cheek.
Sources
Sheff, David. "All We Are Saying." St. Martin's Griffin, 2000.
Miles, Barry. "Many Years from Now." Secker & Warburg, 1997.
“I went and bought a sitar from a little shop at the top of Oxford Street called Indiacraft. It was a real crummy-quality one, actually, but I bought it and mucked about with it a bit. It was quite spontaneous: I found the notes that played the lick. It fitted and it worked.”
— George Harrison
Indiacraft, Oxford Street, London
The small shop that sold incense, carvings, and cheap Indian instruments. George Harrison walked in sometime between August and October 1965 and bought the sitar that would end up on "Norwegian Wood." He later gave that exact instrument to a friend on his honeymoon in Barbados. It sold at auction in 2017 as the only Beatles sitar ever to go under the hammer.
Norwegian Wood: The Recording
Girl, The Beatles (1965)
If "Norwegian Wood" is Lennon writing about an affair he actually had, "Girl" is him writing about a woman who doesn't exist yet. He later said the "girl" was an archetype he'd been searching for his whole life, and that he'd eventually find her in Yoko Ono. Recorded on November 11, 1965, it was the very last song completed for Rubber Soul. Listen closely to John's breathing between the lines: he specifically asked engineer Norman Smith to make the intake of breath audible, creating an intimacy that was completely new for a Beatles track.
Girl, The Beatles (1965)
Those backing vocals in the middle section? Paul and George are singing "tit tit tit" over and over. McCartney said they were inspired by the Beach Boys' "You're So Good to Me" and wanted to see what they could sneak past George Martin. Nobody caught it.
Where did George Harrison first encounter a sitar?
In December 1965, the Beatles release Rubber Soul, the album where they stop being a pop group and become artists. Three thousand miles away, Brian Wilson hears it and decides he has to make Pet Sounds.
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