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Love You To

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"Love You To"
Song by The Beatles
Album Revolver
Released 5 August 1966
Recorded 11 April 1966
Abbey Road Studios, London
Genre Raga rock
Length 3:01 (stereo version)
3:13 (mono version)
Label Parlophone
Writer George Harrison
Producer George Martin
Revolver track listing
One example was the time that George Harrison brought in some local Indian musicians from the Asian Society to play on his song 'Love You To' — which I originally named 'Granny Smith' on the tape box, after my favorite kind of apple, only because George never had titles for his songs. I had never miked Indian instruments before, but I was especially impressed by the huge sound coming from the tabla (percussion instruments somewhat similar to bongos). I decided to close-mic them, placing a sensitive ribbon mic just a few inches away, and then I heavily compressed the signal. No one had ever recorded tabla like that — they'd always been miked from a distance. My idea resulted in a fabulous sound, right in your face, and both Harrison and the Indian musicians commented afterward about it.

—Geoff Emerick, EMI Recording Engineer, Here, There and Everywhere, 20076

I play sitar on another track. I don't care if everybody is using 'em, you know. I just play it 'cuz I like it.

—George Harrison, 1966

'Love You To' was one of the first tunes I wrote for sitar. Norwegian Wood was an accident as far as the sitar part was concerned, but this was the first song where I consciously tried to use the sitar and tabla on the basic track. I overdubbed the guitars and vocals later.

—George Harrison, I Me Mine, 1980

George's 'Love You To', his first Indian flavoured composition, was untitled at first, then was dubbed 'Granny Smith', after the apple. The song grew more complex with each take. The first, the basic track, had George singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment, with Paul supplying backing vocals. The sitar came in at take three and again as an overdub onto take six along with a tabla, bass and fuzz guitar. George played the sitar but an outside musician, Anil Bhagwat, was recruited to play the tabla. [...] 'George told me what he wanted and I tuned the tabla with him. He suggested I play something in the Ravi Shankar style, 16-beats, though he agreed that I should improvise.'

—Mark Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions, p.72, 1988

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