Within You Without You
Template:Short description Template:Good article Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox song "Within You Without You" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Written by lead guitarist George Harrison, it was his second composition in the Indian classical style, after "Love You To", and inspired by his stay in India in late 1966 with his mentor and sitar teacher Ravi Shankar. Recorded in London without the other Beatles, it features Indian instrumentation such as sitar, tambura, dilruba and tabla, and was performed by Harrison and members of the Asian Music Circle. The recording marked a significant departure from the Beatles' previous work; musically, it evokes the Indian devotional tradition, while the overtly spiritual quality of the lyrics reflects Harrison's absorption in Hindu philosophy and the teachings of the Vedas.
The song was Harrison's only composition on Sgt. Pepper, although his endorsement of Indian culture was further reflected in the inclusion of yogis such as Paramahansa Yogananda among the crowd depicted on the album's cover. With the worldwide success of the album, "Within You Without You" presented Indian classical music to a new audience in the West and contributed to the genre's peak in international popularity. It also influenced the philosophical direction of many of Harrison's peers during an era of utopian idealism marked by the Summer of Love. The song has traditionally received a varied response from music critics, some of whom find it lacklustre and pretentious, while others admire its musical authenticity and consider its message to be the most meaningful on Sgt. Pepper. Writing for Rolling Stone, David Fricke described the track as "at once beautiful and severe, a magnetic sermon about materialism and communal responsibility in the middle of a record devoted to gentle Technicolor anarchy".Template:Sfn
For the Beatles' 2006 remix album Love, the song was mixed with the John Lennon-written "Tomorrow Never Knows", creating what some reviewers consider to be that project's most successful mashup. Sonic Youth, Rainer Ptacek, Oasis, Patti Smith, Cheap Trick and the Flaming Lips are among the artists who have covered "Within You Without You".
Background and inspiration
George Harrison began writing "Within You Without You" in early 1967Template:Sfn while at the house of musician and artist Klaus Voormann,Template:Sfn in the north London suburb of Hampstead.Template:Sfn Harrison's immediate inspiration for the song came from a conversation they had shared over dinner about the metaphysical space that prevents individuals from recognising the natural forces uniting the world.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Following this discussion, Harrison worked out the song's melody on a harmonium and came up with the opening line: "We were talking about the space between us all".Template:Sfn
The song was Harrison's second composition to be explicitly influenced by Indian classical music, after "Love You To", which featured Indian instruments such as sitar, tabla and tambura.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Since recording the latter track for the Beatles' Revolver in April 1966, Harrison had continued to look outside his role as the band's lead guitarist, further immersing himself in studying the sitar, partly under the tutelage of master sitarist Ravi Shankar.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Harrison said that the tune for "Within You Without You" came about through his regularly performing musical exercises known as sargam, which use the same scales as those found in Indian ragas.Template:Sfn
"Within You Without You" is the first of Harrison's many songs to include Hindu spiritual concepts in his lyrics.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Having incorporated elements of Eastern philosophy in "Love You To",Template:Sfn Harrison became fascinated by ancient Hindu teachingsTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn after he and his wife, Pattie Boyd, visited Shankar in India in September–October 1966.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Intent on mastering the sitar, Harrison first joined other students of Shankar's in Bombay,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn until local fans and the press learned of his arrival.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Harrison, Boyd, Shankar and the latter's partner, Kamala Chakravarty, then relocated to a houseboat on Dal LakeTemplate:Sfn in Srinagar, Kashmir.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn There, Harrison received personal tuition from Shankar while absorbing religious texts such as Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi and Swami Vivekananda's Raja Yoga.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Refn This period coincided with his introduction to meditationTemplate:Sfn and, during their visit to Vrindavan, he witnessed communal chanting for the first time.Template:Sfn
Harrison and Boyd returned to England on 22 October,Template:Sfn and continued to adhere to a Hindu-aligned lifestyle of yoga, meditation and vegetarianism at their home in Esher.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Refn The education Harrison received in India, particularly regarding the illusory nature of the material world, resonated with his experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD (commonly known as "acid"),Template:Sfn and informed his lyrics to "Within You Without You".Template:Sfn Having considered leaving the Beatles after the completion of their third US tour, on 29 August 1966,Template:Sfn he instead gained a philosophical perspective on the effects of the band's international fame.<ref>Template:Harvard citation no brackets; Template:Harvard citation no brackets; Template:Harvard citation no brackets</ref>Template:Refn He later attributed "Within You Without You" to his having "fallen under the spell of the country"Template:Sfn after experiencing the "pure essence of India" through Shankar's guidance.Template:Sfn
Composition
Music
The song follows the pitches of Khamaj thaat, the Indian equivalent of Mixolydian mode.Template:Sfn Written and performed in the tonic key of C (but subsequently sped up to CTemplate:Music on the official recording), it features what musicologist Dominic Pedler terms an "exotic" melody over a constant C-G "root-fifth" drone, which is neither major nor minor in mode.Template:Sfn Based on a piece that Shankar had written for All India Radio,Template:Sfn the structure of the composition adheres to the Hindustani musical traditionTemplate:Sfn and demonstrates Harrison's advances in the Indian classical genre since "Love You To".Template:Sfn
Following a brief alap, which serves to introduce the song's main musical themes, "Within You Without You" comprises three distinct sections: two verses and a chorus; an extended instrumental passage; and a final verse and chorus.<ref name="Pollack">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The alap consists of tambura drone, over which the main melody is outlined on dilruba,Template:Sfn a bow-played string instrument that Boyd began learning in India.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Throughout the vocal section of the song – the gat, in traditional Indian terms – the rhythm is a 16-beat tintal in madhya laya (medium tempo). The vocal line is supported throughout by dilruba, in the manner of a sarangi echoing the melody in a khyal piece.Template:Sfn The first three words of each verse ("We were talking") have a tritone interval (E to BTemplate:Music), which, in Pedler's view, enhances the spiritual dissonance that Harrison expresses in his lyrics.Template:Sfn
Over the instrumental passage, the tabla rhythm switches to a 10-beat jhaptal cycle. A musical dialogue ensues in Template:Music time, first between the dilruba and sitar, then between a Western string section and sitar.Template:Sfn The interplay between these instruments follows the call-and-response tradition of Indian classical music,Template:Sfn known as jawab-sawal.Template:Sfn The passage resolves in melodic unison as the instruments together state a rhythmic cadence, or tihai, to close the middle segment. After this, the drone is again prominent as the rhythm returns to 16-beat tintal for the final verse and chorus. On the finished recording, the tonal and spiritual tension is relieved by the inclusion of muted canned laughter.Template:Sfn
In his book Indian Music and the West, Gerry Farrell writes of "Within You Without You": "The overall effect is of several disparate strands of Indian music being woven together to create a new form. It is a quintessential fusion of pop and Indian music."Template:Sfn Peter Lavezzoli, author of The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, describes the song as "a survey of Indian classical and semiclassical styles" in which "the diverse elements ... are skillfully woven together into an interesting hybrid. If anything, the closest comparison that might be made is to the Hindu devotional song form known as bhajan."Template:Sfn
Lyrics
According to Religion News Service writer Steve Rabey, "Within You Without You" "contrast[s] Western individualism with Eastern monism".<ref name="Rabey/HuffPost" /> The lyrics convey basic tenets of Vedanta philosophy, particularly in Harrison's reference to the concept of maya (the illusory nature of existence),Template:Sfn in the lines "And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion / Never glimpse the truth".Template:Sfn Author Joshua Greene paraphrases the song-wide message as: "A wall of illusion separates us from each other ... which only turns our love for one another cold. Peace will come when we learn to see past the illusion of differences and come to know that we are one ..."Template:Sfn The solution espoused by Harrison is for individuals to see beyond the self and each seek change within,Template:Sfn further to Vivekananda's contention in Raja Yoga that "Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest that divinity ..."Template:Sfn According to ethnomusicologist David Reck, aside from the reference to maya, the lyrics convey Indian philosophical concepts such as advait (the one essential reality), satya (perception of truth) and, in the line "With our love we could save the world", universal love.Template:Sfn
At times in the song, Harrison distances himself from those who live in ignorance of these apparent truths – saying, "If they only knew" and asking the listener, "Are you one of them?"Template:Sfn In the final verse,Template:Sfn he quotes from the gospels of St Matthew and St Mark, lamenting those who "gain the world and lose their soul".Template:Sfn Author Ian MacDonald defends the "accusatory finger" behind such statements, saying that, within the ideology of the emerging 1960s counterculture, "this is a token of what was then felt to be a revolution in progress: an inner revolution against materialism".Template:Sfn
The transcendental theme of Harrison's lyrics aligned with the philosophy behind the 1967 Summer of Love – namely, the search for universality and an ego-less existence.Template:Sfn Author Ian Inglis considers the line "With our love we could save the world" to be a "cogent reflection" of the Summer of Love ethos, anticipating the utopian message of Harrison's composition "It's All Too Much" and the John Lennon-written "All You Need Is Love".Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Inglis adds, with reference to the chorus: "The lyrics are given greater depth by the double meaning of without – 'in the absence of' and 'outside' – each of which is perfectly applicable to the song's sentiments."Template:Sfn
Production
Recording
Harrison recorded "Within You Without You" for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album based around Paul McCartney's vision of a fictitious band that would serve as the Beatles' alter egos after their decision to quit touring.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Harrison had little interest in McCartney's concept;Template:Sfn he later admitted that, following his return from India, "my heart was still out there", and working with the Beatles again "felt like going backwards".Template:Sfn He presented the song after it was decided to exclude his composition "Only a Northern Song", which the Beatles recorded in February 1967.Template:Sfn In contrast to his prominence as a songwriter on Revolver, "Within You Without You" was Harrison's sole composition on Sgt. Pepper.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
Template:Quote box The recording features musical contributions from only Harrison, Beatles aide Neil Aspinall, and a group of London-based Indian musicians.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn As with his Indian accompanists on "Love You To", Harrison sourced these contributors through the Asian Music Circle in north London.Template:Sfn Harrison missed a Beatles recording session to attend one of Shankar's London concerts, an absence that served as part of his preparation for recording "Within You Without You".Template:Sfn
MacDonald describes the song as "Stylistically ... the most distant departure from the staple Beatles sound in their discography".Template:SfnTemplate:Refn The basic track was recorded on 15 March 1967 at EMI's Abbey Road studio 2 in London.Template:Sfn The participants sat on a carpet in the studio, which was decorated with Indian tapestries on the walls,Template:Sfn with the lights turned low and incense burning.Template:Sfn Harrison and Aspinall each played a tambura, while the Indian musicians contributed on tabla, dilruba and tambura.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Musicologist Michael Hannan comments that, relative to standard Indian practice, the use of three tamburas produces "a denser-than-usual, pulsating jivari" (or "buzzing sound"), highlighting the naturally rich harmonics of the instrument.Template:Sfn
The session was also attended by Lennon,Template:Sfn artist Peter Blake,Template:Sfn and John Barham, an English classical pianist and student of Shankar who shared Harrison's desire to promote Indian music to Western audiences.Template:Sfn In Barham's recollection, Harrison "had the entire structure of the song mapped out in his head" and sang the melody that he wanted the dilruba player to follow.Template:Sfn The twin hand-drums of the tabla were close-miked by recording engineer Geoff Emerick,Template:Sfn in order to capture what he later described as "the texture and the lovely low resonances" of the instrument.Template:Sfn
Overdubbing and mixing
The first of two overdubbing sessions for "Within You Without You" took place at Abbey Road on 22 March.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Two more dilruba parts were added that day, after which a reduction mix was carried out, to allow for further overdubs onto the four-track recording.Template:Sfn The completed track also includes an Indian zither or harp, known as a swarmandal.Template:Sfn Played by Harrison,<ref name="Elwood/SFExaminer" /> the swarmandal provides the glissando flourishes that introduce the tabla during the song's alapTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn and signal the return to 16-beat tintal before the final verse.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn
Producer George Martin then arranged the string orchestration, for eight violins and three cellos,Template:Sfn based on Harrison's instructions.Template:Sfn The pair worked hard together on the arrangement,Template:Sfn ensuring that Martin's score imitated the slides and bends of the dilrubas.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn The orchestral parts, performed by members of the London Symphony Orchestra,Template:Sfn were added on 3 April.Template:Sfn During the same session, Harrison recorded his vocal and a sitar part, the solo of which, in the description of music critic David Fricke, "sings and swings with the clarity and phrasing of his best rockabilly-fired guitar work".Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Harrison also overdubbed occasional interjections on acoustic guitar.Template:Sfn
On 4 April, while preparing the final mixes of the song, in stereo and mono,Template:Sfn Harrison added crowd laughter taken from a sound effects tape in the Abbey Road library.Template:Sfn Martin and Emerick were both opposed to this addition but deferred to Harrison,Template:Sfn who later said that the laughter provided "some light relief", adding: "You were supposed to hear the audience anyway, as they listen to Sergeant Pepper's Show."Template:Sfn The completed recording was enhanced in the mixes through the liberal application of automatic double tracking.Template:Sfn Before Harrison recorded his vocals the previous day, the track had been edited and then sped up so that its length was reduced from 5:25 to 5:05.Template:Sfn In the process, the song's key was raised a semitone, to CTemplate:Music.<ref name="Fontenot/About">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Release
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on 26 May 1967,Template:Sfn with "Within You Without You" sequenced as the opening track on side two of the LP.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Greene notes that for many listeners at the time, the song provided their "first meaningful contact with meditative sound".Template:Sfn In his 1977 book The Beatles Forever, Nicholas Schaffner likened "Within You Without You" to Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha – an influential novel among the counterculture during the Summer of Love – in terms of the song's evocation of Hesse's "idealization of individuality" and "vision of a mysterious East".Template:Sfn Eager to separate the song's message from the LSD experience at a time when the drug had grown in popularity and influence, Harrison told an interviewer: "It's nothing to do with pills ... It's just in your own head, the realisation."Template:Sfn
Although Harrison later spoke dismissively of the Sgt. Pepper project and its legacy,Template:Refn he conceded that he had enjoyed working on the record's iconic cover.Template:Sfn<ref name="Clerk/Uncut">Template:Cite magazine Available at Rock's Backpages Template:Webarchive (subscription required).</ref> For this, he asked Blake to include pictures of four Indian yogis – Yogananda, Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya and Sri YukteswarTemplate:Sfn – among the crowd surrounding the Beatles;Template:Sfn as a further Indian detail, a four-armed idol of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi was placed in the garlands of flowers at the bottom of the image.Template:Sfn Among the song's lyrics, printed on the back cover, the positioning of the words "Without You" beside McCartney's head served as a clue in the Paul Is Dead rumour,<ref name="Fontenot/About" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> which grew in the United States partly as a result of the Beatles' failure to perform live after 1966.Template:Sfn
In 1971 the song was issued as the title track of an EP release in Mexico.<ref name="Fontenot/About" /> Part of a series of Beatles releases sequenced by Lennon, the EP also included the Harrison-written tracks "Love You To", "The Inner Light" and "I Want to Tell You".Template:Sfn In 1978 "Within You Without You" appeared as the B-side to the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"/"With a Little Help from My Friends" medley, on singles released in West Germany and some other European countries.Template:Sfn An instrumental version of the track, at the original speed and in the key of C, appeared on the Beatles' 1996 outtakes compilation Anthology 2.Template:Sfn
Critical reception
Contemporary reviews
Recalling the song's release in his book The Beatles Diary, Barry Miles writes: "Some thought it a masterpiece, some a prime example of mock-philosophical babble. Either way, it was pure Harrison."Template:Sfn David Griffiths of Record Mirror praised the album's musical and lyrical scope, which included "life-enhancing philosophy", and added: "George Harrison's 'Within You Without You' is a beautifully successful and adventurous statement in song of a Yoga truth."<ref>Template:Cite magazine Available at Rock's Backpages Template:Webarchive (subscription required).</ref> The Times of IndiaTemplate:'s music critic similarly admired the Beatles for "explor[ing] farther reaches in the musical firmament" and described Harrison's composition as a "memorable" track.<ref>Template:Cite magazine Available at Rock's Backpages Template:Webarchive (subscription required).</ref> In one of the few unfavourable reviews for Sgt. Pepper, Richard Goldstein, writing in The New York Times, said the song was "remarkable" musically and a highlight of the album,Template:Sfn yet he considered the lyrics "dismal" and full of "the very clichés the Beatles helped bury".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>Template:Refn Allen Evans of the NME found the "deep, rich rhythm" of the tabla "most appealing", although he bemoaned that it was difficult to decipher the lyrics "because they merge with the sitar music so closely".<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
According to the Beatles' official biographer, Hunter Davies, writing in 1968, some contemporary reviewers speculated that the burst of laughter at the end of "Within You Without You" was inserted by Harrison's bandmates to mock the song. Davies corrected this misconception, saying: "It was completely George's idea."Template:SfnTemplate:Refn In a review published five months after the release of Sgt. Pepper, Hit Parader considered that the album had not endured as well as the Beatles' previous works, and opined: "Harrison has produced a soothing, sinuous, exotic sound for 'Within You Without You'. But even though his repetitious recitation of elementary Far Eastern philosophy is probably intended to reflect the infinity of the universe, it soon becomes a bit monotonous. The laughter at the end seems to be deflating the pretentiousness of the lyrics."<ref>Template:Cite magazine Available at Rock's Backpages Template:Webarchive (subscription required).</ref>
Retrospective assessment
The song has continued to invite widely diverse opinions.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Among the most unfavourable assessments,Template:Sfn author and critic Tim Riley, writing in 1988, dismissed "Within You Without You" as "directionless", adding that it was difficult to conceive how "lines such as 'Life flows on within you and without you' were taken seriously".Template:Sfn He also said that the song was "the most dated piece on the record ... [and] could easily have been left off with little to no effect" on the album.Template:Sfn In a 2009 review, Alex Young of Consequence of Sound grouped it with the "major clunkers" on Sgt. Pepper.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Conversely, Ian Inglis considers the song to be "absolutely central to the form and content" of its parent album,Template:Sfn and Ian MacDonald views it as the "conscience" of Sgt. Pepper and "the necessary sermon that comes with the community singing".Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Musicologist Russell Reising writes that Harrison's song provides the exception on Sgt. Pepper, where the Beatles otherwise "retreated lyrically into predominantly banal, occasionally schmaltzy, and often trivial vignettes".Template:Sfn Author and critic Kenneth Womack terms it "quite arguably, the album's ethical soul".Template:Sfn
Writing for Rough Guides, Chris Ingham admires the track as "beautifully put together"; he describes it as both "some of the most exotic music released under The Beatles' name" and a "philosophical meditation on life and love beyond self ... [that], once surrendered to, is a central part of the Pepper experience".Template:Sfn In his book on the history of ambient music, Mark Prendergast includes "Within You Without You" among the album's "three outstanding cuts" and deems it to be "the most timeless piece of dronal psychedelia ever recorded".Template:Sfn AllMusic critic Richie Unterberger admires the melody, but he considers the track overlong and notes the potential for offence in this, "the first Beatles song where [Harrison's] Indian religious beliefs affected the lyrics with full force".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Musicologist Allan Moore says that Harrison's "command of the quasi-Indian medium is of a very high order" and, with regard to the song's message, he writes: "In its explicit, prescient call to the me-generation, perhaps 'Within You Without You' is a key track [on the album] ... expressing the deepest commitment to the counter-culture."Template:Sfn PopMattersTemplate:' Ross Langager has attributed a similar significance to the track:
Sgt. Pepper is about Britain, and the Summer of Love was always about America. The only song on the album that approaches the ideology and rhetoric of the hippie counterculture was George Harrison's sole contribution, the lush sitar-washed "Within You Without You", and it follows that Harrison was the only Beatle to have visited Haight-Ashbury at the peak of the scene. Even then, Eastern philosophy informed the lyric more deeply than did acid culture, and it's still a dense and stunning composition no matter its ideology.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
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Writing for Rolling Stone in 2002, David Fricke included "Within You Without You" on his list of the "25 Essential Harrison Performances".Template:Sfn He described it as, variously, the Beatles' "purest excursion ... into raga", and "at once beautiful and severe, a magnetic sermon about materialism and communal responsibility in the middle of a record devoted to gentle Technicolor anarchy".Template:Sfn In his review of the 50th anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper for the same publication, Mikal Gilmore said that only "Within You Without You" and Lennon's "A Day in the Life" transcend the album's legacy as "a gestalt: a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts".<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> In 2017, "Within You Without You" was ranked at number 50 on a list of the best Beatles songs, as compiled by the music staff of Time Out London.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Cultural influence and legacy
Template:See also Template:Quote box
Harrison's interest in Indian culture was swiftly adopted by his peers as well as their audience.Template:Sfn Author Simon Leng writes that "'Within You Without You', and Harrison's leadership of the Beatles into Vedic philosophy, sparked the entire fashion for Indian music and a million backpackers' pilgrimages to Kashmir ..."Template:Sfn Juan Mascaró, a professor in Sanskrit studies at Cambridge University, wrote to Harrison after the song's release,Template:Sfn saying: "it is a moving song, and may it move the souls of millions. And there is more to come, as you are only beginning on the great journey."Template:SfnTemplate:Refn
According to New Yorker journalist Mark Hertsgaard, the lyrics to "Within You Without You" "contained the album's most overt expression of the Beatles' shared belief in spiritual awareness and social change".Template:Sfn Harrison's espousal of Eastern philosophy dominated the group's extracurricular activities by mid 1967,Template:Sfn and his influence within the band continued to increase.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Sfn This led to the Beatles' endorsement of Transcendental Meditation<ref>Template:Cite magazine Available at Rock's Backpages Template:Webarchive (subscription required).</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and their highly publicised attendance at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's spiritual retreat in Rishikesh, India, early the following year.<ref name="Rabey/HuffPost">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Among other contemporary rock musicians, Stephen Stills was so taken with the song that he had its lyrics carved on a stone monument in his yard.Template:Sfn Lennon also admired the track,Template:Sfn saying of Harrison: "His mind and his music are clear. There is his innate talent, he brought that sound together."Template:SfnTemplate:Refn David Crosby, who introduced Harrison to Shankar's music in 1965,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn described Harrison's fusion of ideas as "utterly brilliant", adding: "He did it beautifully and tastefully ... He did it at absolutely the highest level that he could, and I was extremely proud of him for that."Template:Sfn Writing in the "100 Rock Icons" issue of Classic Rock, in 2006, singer Paul Rodgers cited the track to support Harrison's standing as what the magazine called "the Beatles' musical medicine man". Rodgers said: "He introduced me and a generation of people worldwide to the wisdom of the East. His thought-provoking 'Within You Without You' – with sitars, tablas and deep lyrics – was something completely different, even in a world full of unique music."<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>Template:Refn
Music critic Ken Hunt describes the song as an "early landmark" in Harrison's championing of Shankar, and Indian classical music generally, which gained "real global attention" for the first time through the Beatle's commitment.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Peter Lavezzoli also highlights the effect of Sgt. Pepper and its "spiritual centerpiece ['Within You Without You']" on Shankar's popularity, during a year that served as "the annus mirabilis" for Indian music and "a watershed moment in the West when the search for higher consciousness and an alternative world view had reached critical mass".Template:Sfn In his Harrison obituary for Salon, in December 2001, Ira Robbins considered "Within You Without You" to be "the song that most clearly articulated his devotion, both artistic and philosophical, to India", with a lyric that "pairs worldview and personality in lines that now seem prophetic".<ref>Template:Cite news Available at Rock's Backpages Template:Webarchive (subscription required).</ref>
Writing in 2013, ethnomusicologist Jeffrey Cupchik said that Harrison's Indian-influenced songs, particularly "Within You Without You", "marked the inception of a new 'hybridic' East–West style of music composition – a style that is immensely widespread today".<ref>Template:Cite journal Available at academia.edu.</ref> Musicologist Walter Everett lists Spirit's "Mechanical World" and the Incredible String Band's "Maya", both released in 1968, and much of the Moody Blues' 1969 album To Our Children's Children's Children as works that were directly influenced by the song.Template:Sfn Dead Can Dance's 1996 album Spiritchaser includes the track "Indus",<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the melody of which was found to be very similar to that of "Within You Without You".<ref name="Morse/Globe" /> The duo's singer, Lisa Gerrard, told The Boston Globe that they had obtained Harrison's blessing but "the [record company] pushed it", with the result that they were forced to give the former Beatle a partial songwriting credit.<ref name="Morse/Globe">Template:Cite news</ref> In their 1978 television film satirising the Beatles' history, All You Need Is Cash, the Rutles parodied "Within You Without You" on the track "Nevertheless", performed by Rikki Fataar in the role of Stig O' Hara.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Refn Harrison himself included musical quotations from "Within You Without You" in his 1987 song "When We Was Fab"Template:Sfn and in the instrumental "Marwa Blues", released in 2002 on his final studio album, Brainwashed.Template:Sfn
Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) staged an event titled "George Harrison 'Within You Without You': The Story of The Beatles and Indian Music" at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall.<ref name="RLPO" /> While carrying out research for this project, academics from the University of Liverpool and the University of Sheffield discovered the identity of the Indian musicians on the 1967 recording.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The two surviving players, Buddhadev Kansara and Natwar Soni, were among the performers at the RLPO event.<ref name="RLPO">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Love remix
"Within You Without You" was included on the soundtrack remix album Love (2006),<ref name="Willman/EW" /> which was created for the Cirque du Soleil stage show of the same name.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Harrison's vocal appears over the rhythm section from "Tomorrow Never Knows",<ref name="Willman/EW">Template:Cite magazine</ref> after the track opens with Lennon's lyric from the latter song.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Reviewing the album for PopMatters, Zeth Lundy writes: "The 'Within You Without You'/'Tomorrow Never Knows' mash-up, perhaps the most thrilling and effective track on the entire disc, fuses two especially transcendental songs into one: ... a union of two ambiguous, open-ended declarations of spiritual pursuit."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Refn Paul Moody of Uncut similarly considers it to be the "best of all" the mashups on Love, with the two tracks' "cosmic drones ... fitted together like a glove".<ref name="Moody/Uncut">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In their chapter on the Beatles' psychedelic period in The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles, authors Russell Reising and Jim LeBlanc describe "Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows" as "the most musically and visually stunning segment" of the Cirque du Soleil show.Template:Sfn
Remixed and remastered by George Martin and his son Giles,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> "Within You Without You"/"Tomorrow Never Knows" was the first track prepared for Love.<ref name="USAToday">Template:Cite news</ref> Speaking to Mojo magazine in December 2006, Giles Martin said that he had first created a demo combining the two songs, which he then nervously presented to McCartney and Ringo Starr for their approval. In Martin's recollection, "they loved it", which allowed the project to proceed.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> A video clip of the completed track was made to promote the album and was included on the 2015 DVD 1+.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Love remix is one of the songs in The Beatles: Rock Band.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Cover versions
Big Jim Sullivan, a British session guitarist who became proficient on the sitar,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> included "Within You Without You" on his album of Indian music-style recordings,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> titled Sitar Beat and first released in 1967.Template:Sfn In the same year, the Soulful Strings recorded the song for their album Groovin' with the Soulful Strings,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> a version that also appeared on the B-side of their most successful single, "Burning Spear".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In 1988, Sonic Youth recorded "Within You Without You" for the NMETemplate:'s multi-artist tribute Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father.<ref name="Mills/AM">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Fricke highlights this recording as an example of how, regardless of its Indian origins, the composition can be interpreted on electric guitar effectively and "with transportive force".Template:Sfn In 2007, the staff of the pop culture website Vulture placed Sonic Youth's version at number 2 in their list titled "Our Ten Favorite Beatles Covers of All Time".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Big Daddy covered the song on their 1992 Sgt. Pepper tribute album, a release that Moore recognises as "the most audacious" of the many interpretations of the Beatles' 1967 LP. Moore says that "Within You Without You" serves as the album's "cleverest pastiche", performed in a free jazz style reminiscent of Ornette Coleman or Don Cherry.Template:Sfn Other acts who have covered the song for Sgt. Pepper tributes include Oasis, on a BBC Radio 2 project celebrating the album's 40th anniversary (2007);Template:Sfn Easy Star All-Stars (featuring Matisyahu), on Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band (2009);<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Cheap Trick, on their Sgt. Pepper Live DVD (2009);<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the Flaming Lips, with featured guests Birdflower and Morgan Delt, on With a Little Help from My Fwends (2014).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> A recording by Big Head Todd and the Monsters appeared on the 2003 Harrison tribute Songs from the Material World.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Guitarist Rainer Ptacek opened his 1994 album Nocturnes with what AllMusic critic Bob Gottlieb describes as a "stunning instrumental" reading of the song,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> recorded live in a chapel in Tucson, Arizona.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Writing for the same website, Brian Downing considers a 1997 version by Ptacek, released on his posthumous album Live at the Performance Center, to be "perhaps one of the best unheralded Beatles covers of all time".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Patti Smith included it on her 2007 covers album Twelve,<ref>Spencer, Neil (19 March 2007). "Patti Smith, Twelve". The ObserverTemplate:Hair space/theguardian.com. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 22 August 2015.</ref> a version that, according to BBC music critic Chris Jones, "sounds like [the song] could have been written for her".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Other artists who have recorded "Within You Without You" include Peter Knight and his Orchestra, Firefall, Glenn Mercer of the Feelies,<ref name="Fontenot/About" /> Angels of Venice<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and Thievery Corporation.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Personnel
According to Ian MacDonaldTemplate:Sfn and details released by the University of Liverpool in June 2017 (except where noted):<ref name=":0" />
- George Harrison – lead vocals, tambura, sitar, swarmandal,<ref name="Elwood/SFExaminer">Template:Cite news Available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required).</ref>Template:Sfn acoustic guitar
- Anna Joshi – dilruba
- Amrit Gajjar – dilruba
- Natwar Soni – tabla
- Buddhadev Kansara – tambura
- Neil Aspinall – tambura
- Erich Gruenberg, Alan Loveday, Julien Gaillard, Paul Scherman, Ralph Elman, David Wolfsthal, Jack Rothstein, Jack Greene – violins
- Reginald Kilbey, Allen Ford, Peter Beavan – cellos
Notes
References
Sources
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External links
Template:Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band Template:The Beatles singles Template:Authority control