Within You Without You

"Within You Without You" is a song written by George Harrison and released on The Beatles' 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

"Within You Without You"
Song by The Beatles
from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
Released	1 June 1967
Recorded	15 and 22 March and 3 April 1967
Studio	EMI, London
Genre	Raga rock, Indian classical music
Length	5:05
Label	Parlophone
Songwriter(s)	George Harrison
Producer(s)	George Martin
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band track listing
13 tracks Side one "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" "With a Little Help from My Friends" "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" "Getting Better" "Fixing a Hole" "She's Leaving Home" "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" Side two "Within You Without You" "When I'm Sixty-Four" "Lovely Rita" "Good Morning Good Morning" "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" "A Day in the Life"

Composition

"Within You Without You" features only Harrison and a group of uncredited Indian musicians, although producer George Martin arranged the string section, and Harrison and assistant Neil Aspinall played the tambura. According to Prema Music, dilrubha player Amrit Gajjar played on the track. It is the second of Harrison's songs to be explicitly influenced by Indian classical music, after "Love You To", and Harrison's only composition on Sgt. Pepper. "Within You Without You" was written on a harmonium at the house of long-time Beatles friend Klaus Voormann, while "there were lots of joints being smoked".

Stephen Stills was so impressed by the lyrics that he had them carved on a stone monument in his yard. John Lennon said it was"one of George's best songs."

Personnel

• George Harrison – lead vocal, tambura, sitar
• Session musicians – swarmandal, dilruba, tabla
• Erich Gruenberg, Alan Loveday, Julien Gaillard, Paul Scherman, Ralph Elman, David Wolfsthal, Jack Rothstein Jack Greene – violin
• Reginald Kilbey, Allen Ford, Peter Beavan – cello

Within You Without You Media

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  Dal Lake in Kashmir – part of the "pure essence of India" that Harrison said he experienced in 1966 and inspired the song.

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  Harrison (pictured in the Hindu holy city of Vrindavan in 1996) drew from Vedanta philosophy for the first time in his lyrics to "Within You Without You".

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  The bow-played dilruba features prominently throughout the song.

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  Aided by the Beatles' song, the sitar, and Indian classical music generally, reached its peak in popularity in the West in 1967.

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  A 1988 cover version by Sonic Youth (pictured performing in 2005) transformed "Within You Without You" into a rock song, complete with guitar feedback.

Other websites

• "Aina: Reflections". Prema Music. 2010. Archived from the original on 14 May 2012. Retrieved 7 January 2010.
• "The Beatles: Love - PopMatters Music Review". PopMatters. 15 December 2006. Retrieved 27 December 2006.
• Dowlding, William J. (1989). Beatlesongs. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc. ISBN 0-671-68229-6.
• Frushtick, Russ (21 July 2009). "'The Beatles: Rock Band' Expands Its Song List". MTV. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1616628/20090721/beatles.jhtml. 
• MacDonald, Ian (2005). Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1-55652-733-3.
• Mann, William (29 May 1967). "The Beatles revive hopes of progress in pop music". The Times (London). http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article1830434.ece. Retrieved 14 July 2008. 
• Morse, Steve (12 July 1996). Global Spirits: Dead Can Dance Make World Music Mystical. 
• Sheff, David (2000). All We Are Saying. St Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0-312-25464-4.