Norwegian Wood

"Norwegian Wood" redirects here. For other uses, see Norwegian Wood (disambiguation). "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" Song by the Beatles from the album Rubber Soul Released 3 December 1965 Recorded 12 and 21 October 1965, EMI Studios, London Genre Folk rock,raga rock Length 2:05 Label EMI, Parlophone, Capitol Writer Lennon-McCartney Producer George Martin Rubber Soul track listing 14 tracks Side one "Drive My Car", "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", "You Won't See Me", "Nowhere Man", "Think for Yourself", "The Word", "Michelle", Side two "What Goes On", "Girl", "I'm Looking Through You", "In My Life", "Wait", "If I Needed Someone", "Run for Your Life", Music sample "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player., You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" (also known as simply "Norwegian Wood") is a song by the Beatles, first released on the 1965 album Rubber Soul. John Lennon was the primary writer, and finished writing the words and middle eight with Paul McCartney (credited to Lennon-McCartney). It is the first example of a rock band playing the sitar in one of their songs; it was played by George Harrison. Composition and Lyrics edit: Lennon started composing the song on his acoustic guitar in January 1965, while on holiday with his wife, Cynthia, in the Swiss Alps. Lennon later explained that the lyric was about an affair he had been having: " I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going on, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair. But in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with. " Lennon indicated that Paul McCartney helped him finish off the lyric. McCartney explained the title and lyric as follows: " Peter Asher brother of McCartney's then-girlfriend Jane Asher had his room done out in wood, a lot of people were decorating their places in wood. Norwegian wood. It was pine, really, cheap pine. But it's not as good a title, "Cheap Pine", baby. So it was a little parody really on those kind of girls who when you'd go to their flat there would be a lot of Norwegian wood. It was completely imaginary from my point of view but in John's it was based on an affair he had. This wasn't the decor of someone's house, we made that up. So she makes him sleep in the bath and then finally in the last verse I had this idea to set the Norwegian wood on fire as revenge, so we did it very tongue in cheek. She led him on, then said, "You'd better sleep in the bath." In our world the guy had to have some sort of revenge ... so it meant I burned the place down .... " There has been various speculation as to the subject of Lennon's affair: his friend Pete Shotton suggested a journalist of their acquaintance, possibly Maureen Cleave (though Cleave has said that in all her encounters with Lennon there was "no pass"), while writer Philip Norman claimed that the woman was model Sonny Drane, the first wife of Beatles photographer Robert Freeman. Musical structure edit: The song as first released is performed in E major and is one of the few Beatles songs in triple time. An earlier take, released on Anthology 2, is in the key of D major. The song opens with I (E) chord and a vocal melody B-natural (on the word "I") which is the 5th scale degree in E Mixolydian. This shifts to a D natural harmony (supported by scale degree 7 in E mixolydian) with a (Dadd9) chord on "she" and "once", to return, via a passing C# on "had", to the tonic harmony (E maj.), supported in the vocal line by a double entendre 5th (B) melody note on "me" (an octave below the opening B-natural on "I"). Meanwhile the bass emphasizes the E tonic in a static harmony. In the bridge (in Em key) the root chord begins at "She asked me", transforms to an IV chord (A) at "where", goes back to i (Em) at "looked" before the bridge runs back to the major verse with a ii7 (F#m7)- V (B) progression that resolves on the appropriate E chord of "I sat on a rug." Recording edit: Harrison--who would later be strongly influenced by Indian culture and become a practitioner of transcendental meditation--decided on using a sitar when The Beatles recorded the song on 12 and 21 October 1965. He later said: " During the filming of Help! there were some Indian musicians in a restaurant scene and I kind of messed around with a sitar then. But during that year, towards the end of the year anyway, I kept hearing the name of Ravi Shankar. ... So I went out and bought a record and that was it. It felt very familiar to me to listen to that music. It was around that time I bought a sitar. I just bought a cheap sitar in a shop called India Craft, in London. It was lying around. I hadn't really figured out what to do with it. When we were working on Norwegian Wood it just needed something, and it was quite spontaneous, from what I remember. I just picked up my sitar, found the notes and just played it. We miked it up and put it on and it just seemed to hit the spot. " Personnel edit: John Lennon - double-tracked vocal, acoustic guitar, Paul McCartney - bass, harmony vocal, George Harrison - double-tracked sitar, Ringo Starr - tambourine, maracas, finger cymbals, Personnel per Ian MacDonald Reception and legacy edit: The song is described by writer Mark Lewisohn as "pure Lennon genius ... one of the most original pop music songs recorded to date", and by music critic Richie Unterberger as "undoubtedly the Beatles' greatest lyrical triumph during their folk-rock phase". In 2004, "Norwegian Wood" was ranked number 83 on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Cover versions of the song were performed by many artists, including Sergio Mendes, Herbie Hancock, Count Basie, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr., P.M. Dawn, Tangerine Dream, Arjen Anthony Lucassen and José Feliciano. The British band Cornershop recorded a version of the song in the Punjabi language for the album When I Was Born for the 7th Time. The standard Japanese translation of the song's title is Noruwei no Mori. The popular 1987 Japanese novel Norwegian Wood, which often mentions the song, takes its name from it. The novel was adapted into a film in 2010, which featured the song. Notes edit: ^ Unterberger 2010., ^ Paul Williams, The Crawdaddy! book: writings (and images) from the magazine of rock, (Hal Leonard Corporation, 2002), ISBN 0-634-02958-4, p.101., ^ Miles 1997, p. 270-1., ^ http://www.scribd.com/doc/12947313/16/Rubber-Soul, ^ Lavezzoli 2006, p. 171., ^ Miles 2001., ^ Sheff 2000, p. 178., ^ www.beatlesinterviews.org/dba06soul.html., ^ Spitz2005, p. 585., ^ Norman 2008, p. 418., ^ Norman 2008., ^ Pollack 2008., ^ "Norwegian Wood" by The Beatles. The in-depth story behind the songs of the Beatles. Recording History. Songwriting History. Song Structure and Style, ^ Dominic Pedler. The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles. Music Sales Limited. Omnibus Press. NY. 2003. pp258, ^ Dominic Pedler. The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles. Music Sales Limited. Omnibus Press. NY. 2003. pp258-259, ^ Dominic Pedler. The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles. Music Sales Limited. Omnibus Press. NY. 2003. pp182-183, ^ The Beatles Anthology, ^ MacDonald 2005, p. 162., ^ Lewisohn 1988, p. 63., ^ 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: The Beatles, 'Norwegian Wood This Bird Has Flown' | Rolling Stone, ^ Nimura, Janice (September 24, 2000). "Rubber Souls". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-12-20.

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