Which beatle played sitar

The instrument, purchased from a shop on London's Oxford Street in , was used by Harrison during the recording of the Beatles song Norwegian Wood. The Indian string instrument, crafted by a well-known music shop in Kolkata, was later gifted to a friend of Harrison's first wife, Patti Boyd. The name of the successful bidder has not been disclosed by the auctioneers. Harrison had discovered the sitar in , on the set of the Beatles' second film, Help.

His love affair with oriental mysticism first became known in Norwegian Wood, John Lennon's tale of an extra-marital fling.

Acoustic guitar and muted bass were augmented by the Indian instrument. We would usually start looking through the cupboard to see if we could come up with something, a new sound, and I picked the sitar up - it was just lying around; I hadn't really figured out what to do with it," Harrison was quoted as saying in The Beatles Anthologies.

For sheer "what the hell is that doing there? Some instruments are extraordinarily redolent of a particular idiom or mood. Steel drums, for instance, imparted a sunny Caribbean smile to the Hollies' Carrie Anne , and softened Jane's Addiction's Jane Says and Nick Jonas' Close , as well as being another pre-set mainstay of tropical house.

Like rock, jazz's instrumentation has generally been wretchedly homogenous. The first person to use a bassoon extensively as a solo instrument was Errol Buddle in The Australian Jazz Quartet in It didn't catch on. In fact if you want to play jazz but are averse to work, take up bassoon. Even further off the beaten track, saxophonist Dewey Redman played the braying Chinese suona which he insisted on calling a musette , and trumpeter Don Cherry the Afro-Brazilian single-string berimbau.

Is it possible for an instrument to migrate from curiosity to mainstream? The cello's status in jazz suggests it is. Once only used in string sections, the cello became a novelty solo instrument in Thereafter several famous bassists dabbled with it, although it is only recently that the likes of the brilliant Erik Friedlander and Ernst Reijseger have confirmed its place in the idiom, to the point where last year at least eight jazz albums featuring cello were released. Soon it will become as routine as a saxophone — just like anything might in rock when plugged into a Marshall and turned up to Interestingly, voices are much more seldom heard out of context than instruments.

It's a pity, because when you do hear singers who somehow seem to be with the wrong band, as with say Anohni Antony Hegarty or Katie Noonan, it can be an even bigger surprise than a runaway instrument. By the time they had begun the tour, Harrison had already received a full introduction to the music and sitar playing of Ravi Shankar, courtesy of Crosby during a UK tour of The Byrds in early August, So then he went to India and in India he ran into a teacher, a guru, that he liked a lot.

Indian spiritualism and music were like a magnet for Harrison and their involvement in his own music abated not one bit post The Beatles. His exposure to Indian instruments on the sets of Help! After Help! But he had certainly created a bit of music history. The song follows a Hindustani classical structure—a slow alaap introduction, followed by the main tune gat in madhya laya or a middling tempo and ending with a jhala-like quick-tempo fadeout on the sitar. The song is without doubt a path-breaker in its uncompromising adherence to a form of music that was alien to Western pop.

The sitar played on the track is wonderfully confident and accomplished but views differ on who played the instrument. The tabla was played by Anil Bhagwat. An Indian Summer now lit up the Swinging Sixties. The song was recorded in April and two months later Harrison finally got to meet Ravi Shankar.

The Indian, already a legend, was in Bath for a performance with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. They met: Ravi Shankar was decidedly undecided about Harrison, who may have been just another long-haired pop musician in the eyes of the Indian. I was confused at first.