For Revolver, which appeared in August 1966, he wrote his biggest number of songs so far on one LP. He did three — ‘Taxman’, ‘I Want To Tell You’ and ‘Love You To’. This last one was one of the first using Indian instruments, in this case the tabla, a fashion which was soon copied by hundreds of pop groups in Britain and America.
His songs after this were much more Indian, reflecting his growing knowledge of the sitar and of Indian music. ‘Within You, Without You’, which has good words as well as haunting music, is perhaps his finest song to date. This appeared on Sergeant Pepper in June 1967. It was followed, at Christmas time 1967, by ‘Blue Jay Way’ for Magical Mystery Tour, and, in March 1968, by his first song for a Beatle single, ‘The Inner Light’.
‘I began to write more songs when I had more time, especially when we began to stop touring. Having the Indian things so much in my head it was bound to come out.’ He has great difficulty getting the right sort of trained Indian musicians for studio sessions in London. For ‘Within You, Without You’ and ‘Blue Jay Way’ he spent weeks finding and auditioning people who could play Indian instruments. There were no full-time professionals in England playing the instruments he wanted.
‘They have jobs like bus driving during the day and only play in the evening, so some of them just weren’t good enough, but we still had to use them. They were much better than any Western musician could do, because it at least is their natural style, but it made things very difficult. We spent hours just rehearsing and rehearsing.’
George’s sessions take even longer than the Lennon — McCartney songs. As with theirs, George Martin also helps, and so do they, but George is in charge. Groups of very strange-looking Indian gentlemen with very strange-looking instruments come into the studio and sit cross-legged and play to George so that he can hear what they can do.
Up until now, there’s also been the problem of writing down the music for them to play. Most of them can’t read Western music.
For George’s early Indian songs, the Indian musicians just had to pick up the tunes by watching George play them. Not even Big George Martin can read Indian music.
Now George is very well versed in Indian script. He has taught himself to write down his songs in Indian script, so that the Indian musicians can play them.
‘Instead of quavers and dots written across lines, Indian music is written down very simply, like our tonic sol-fa. Instead of Doh, Ray, Me and so on, they sing Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni, Sa. Often they don’t have words for songs, but just sing those notes. You indicate how high or low, or how long each one is by putting little marks under each note.
‘The first notes of “Within You”, to go with the words “We were talking”, would go Ga Ma Pa Ni. You just need to write the first letter, that’s enough. Now I can go to the Indian musicians, give them the music, play it through to let them hear it, and they can do it themselves.’
George spends at least three hours a day practising his sitar, sitting cross-legged with the end resting on the instep of his left foot, in the Indian manner. He has notebooks full of Indian music, written down in the Indian notation. These are the lessons he has to practise. His teacher, Ravi Shankar, has sent him some tape-recorded exercises, which he has on most of the time he isn’t playing, even during meals. He is obviously very dedicated and hard-working. But he says Indian music will take him years and years before he is any good. He is so busy learning Indian music properly that his Beatle songs are usually written in a rush. He still forgets about his own compositions until a new LP is approaching — then he thinks he should write one.
‘Within You, Without You’ was written at a friend’s house after dinner one night — Klaus Voorman, the friend from Germany, who now plays with Manfred Mann.
‘Klaus had a harmonium in his house, which I hadn’t played before. I was doodling on it, playing to amuse myself, when “Within You” started to come. The tune came first, then I got the first sentence. It came out of what we’d been doing that evening — “We were talking”. That’s as far as I got that night. I finished the rest of the words later at home.
‘The words are always a bit of a hang-up for me. I’m not very poetic. My lyrics are poor really. But I don’t take any of it seriously. It’s just a joke. A personal joke. It’s great if someone else likes it, but I don’t take it too seriously myself.’
A lot of critics didn’t understand why there was sudden laughter after ‘Within You, Without You’ on Sergeant Pepper. Some said it must have been put in by the others, to mock George’s Indian music. It was completely George’s idea.
‘Well, after all that long Indian stuff you want some light relief. It’s a release after five minutes of sad music. You haven’t got to take it all that seriously, you know. You were supposed to hear the audience anyway, as they listen to Sergeant Pepper’s Show. That was the style of the album.’
His song for the Magical Mystery Tour, ‘Blue Jay Way’, was written during his visit to California in the early summer of 1967. The title comes from the street in Los Angeles in which he and Pattie had rented a house. They had just flown in from London and were waiting for their friend Derek Taylor (ex-Beatle press officer, now with Apple) to come and see them.
‘Derek got held up. He rang to say he’d be late. I told him on the phone that the house was in Blue Jay Way. He said he’d find it OK, he could always ask a cop.
‘I waited and waited. I felt really nackered with the flight, but I didn’t want to go to sleep till he came. There was a fog and it got later and later. To keep myself awake, just as a joke, to fill in time, I wrote a song about waiting for him in Blue Jay Way.
‘There was a little Hammond organ in the corner of this rented house, which I hadn’t noticed. I messed around on this and the song came.’
All the words directly relate to him waiting for Derek Taylor — ‘There’s a fog upon LA, and my friends have lost their way…’ When he came home to Esher, he perfected the song. There is still an organ effect, very deep and booming, in the backing to the song.
In January 1968 George agreed to write his first screen music for the film Wonderwall. He has been asked to do more single songs, but he has usually refused. One day he was working on one for Marianne Faithfull. She’d asked him to write one for her to sing, something like ‘Within You, Without You’. He wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. He’d got the song in his head, but the words were becoming jokier and jokier. He thought they might end up too silly and he’d have to dump them.
‘I’ve got “You can’t love me with an artichoke heart”, which is not bad.’ He sang and played the song on his Hammond organ. ‘But I’m not sure about continuing the joke — “You can’t listen with your cauliflower ear” or “Don’t be an apricot fool”. I don’t know. I’ll just see how it turns out.
‘I’ve got no vocal range, so I’ve got to keep all my songs simple. Marianne is the same, so that’s all right.’
His voice doesn’t have much range, but it has a sizeable following from the fans, judging from the letters in Beatles Monthly. Fans are always asking why John and Paul don’t let him sing more. ‘It’s not true they don’t let me. I would if I wanted to. I just can’t be bothered.’
He looks upon John and Paul as the composers and writers. He feels he needn’t bother when they are so good, unless he happens to have something in his head.