Love You To

“Love You To” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. It was written by George and represents his first full-scale exploration of Indian classical music within the Beatles’ recorded output.

Love You To (working title “Granny Smith”, after the apple) is a song by The Beatles, written and sung by George. After introducing the sitar to pop music on “Norwegian Wood” in 1965, Harrison followed the Indian thread in 1966 with this fully committed Indian classical composition — featuring sitar, tabla, and tambura alongside Western instruments. It was the first Beatles song to employ an outside Indian musician (tabla player Anil Bhagwat) and marked Harrison’s decisive step beyond the sitar-as-colour approach of the previous year.

• The song had no title when the tape started rolling. Love You To was untitled at first, then dubbed “Granny Smith” after the apple, and it stayed that way across every session sheet and every mix. The name it was eventually given appears nowhere in the lyric — a small oddity that survives into the released record, where the title phrase is never actually sung.¹
• It grew more complex with each take, and that is the whole shape of the session. The first take was the basic track: George singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment, with Paul supplying backing vocals. Nothing on it announced an Indian record. The sitar came in at take three, and by the end of the night the acoustic frame the song started from had been built over rather than decorated.¹
• The evening session rebuilt the track around the drone. Takes four to six followed after a supper break, and the sitar returned — this time as an overdub onto take six, along with a tabla, bass and fuzz guitar. Four instruments arriving in one pass on a four-track machine is the constraint that shapes everything that happens two days later.¹
• George played the sitar himself; the tabla needed an outside player. An outside musician, Anil Bhagwat, was recruited for the part — approached through an intermediary and told only that he would be working with George, without being told which George. He learned whose session it was when a Rolls-Royce arrived to collect him, and again when he reached Abbey Road and found the pavement full of people waiting outside. He was credited on the album sleeve, and said he was proud of it — a rare thing for a session player of the period, and rarer still on a Beatles record.¹
• The brief was a style, not a part. Bhagwat was asked to play in the Ravi Shankar manner in sixteen beats, and the tabla was tuned with him before the take — but he was told to improvise within it, which is how the instrument is played. What is on the record is therefore not a written part; it is a performance made once, to a specification agreed in the room.¹
• A rough mono mix went home with the writer the same night. At a quarter to one in the morning the control room made a rough mono remix of the song from take six for George to take away — a listening copy, not a master, and the first time the piece existed as a single object rather than a stack of tracks.¹
• Take seven is not a performance — it is a mixdown. On 13 April the four-track take six was reduced into take seven, which created the spare recording tracks the song still needed. Reduction mixes had become standard practice by 1966 precisely because they let the group record more parts than the machine had tracks for, and this song is a clean example of the technique being used to buy room rather than to fix a mistake.^1,2
• Three parts went onto the space the reduction bought, and one of them was thrown away. George added another vocal, Ringo contributed tambourine, and Paul sang high-pitch harmonies on the lines “They’ll fill in you in with all the sins you see” — though this latter contribution was left out of the mix and, therefore, the record. It is still on the multitrack; it has simply never been heard on any released version.¹
• The song was finished the day it was reduced. Take seven was marked ‘best’, and three mono remixes were made from it the same afternoon. From that point on every released version of this recording descends from one take, mixed on one day.¹
• The sitar had arrived on a Beatles record the year before; this is where it stopped being a colour. After introducing the sitar to pop music in 1965, George followed the Indian thread in 1966 with this song. The difference is structural rather than instrumental — on the 1965 record the sitar decorates a Western song, and here the idiom is the song.²

• 11 April 1966 (Monday), Studio Two, 2.30–7.00pm — takes 1–3. An afternoon shared with a superimposition onto take eight of another song entirely, which is why the session sheet carries two titles. Take one was the basic track: George singing to his own acoustic guitar accompaniment, with Paul supplying backing vocals. The sitar came in at take three, and the song grew more complex with each take. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Phil McDonald.¹
• 11 April 1966 (Monday), Studio Two, 8.00pm–12.45am — takes 4–6. The evening returned to the song alone and carried it to a master take. The sitar was overdubbed again, onto take six, along with a tabla, bass and fuzz guitar — four parts committed in the same pass, which on a four-track machine is what forces the following session’s reduction. Same credits as the afternoon.¹
• 11 April 1966 (Monday), Studio Two (control room only), 12.45–1.00am — mono remix 1 from take 6. Fifteen minutes with no musicians present. A rough mono remix of the song was made for George to take away; it was never a candidate for release, and the mix that became the record was made two days later from a different take.¹
• 13 April 1966 (Wednesday), Studio Three, 2.30–6.30pm — reduction, overdubs, mixing and editing in one four-hour block. Take six was reduced into take seven to create spare tracks; superimpositions went onto take seven; three mono remixes were made from take seven; and those remixes were then edited together. The released mono therefore leaves the building the same afternoon the overdubs were recorded. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Richard Lush.¹
• 16 May 1966 (Monday), Studio Two, 2.30pm–1.30am — tape copying. Copies of mono remix 3 were made and numbered mono remixes 4 and 5. No new mixing decision is involved: the numbers advance because duplicate tapes were struck, which is worth knowing before reading a remix number as evidence of a further mix. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Phil McDonald.¹
• 21 June 1966 (Tuesday), Studio Three, 10.00am–1.00pm — stereo remixes 1–3 from take 7, then edited. The stereo was made ten weeks after the mono and repeated its method exactly: three mixes from the same take, spliced together into one master. P: George Martin. E: Geoff Emerick. 2E: Phil McDonald.¹

• Both released mixes are edits, and that is the single most useful fact about this recording. The mono was assembled on 13 April from three mono remixes of take seven, spliced together; the stereo was assembled on 21 June from three stereo remixes of the same take, spliced together the same way. Neither master is a single continuous pass of the faders. Anyone comparing the two is comparing two different edits of the same performance, not two different performances — which is why the differences between them are mix decisions and splice points rather than playing.¹
• The reduction is the reason the song has overdubs at all. Take six already carried sitar, tabla, bass and fuzz guitar over the basic track; on a four-track machine there was nowhere left to put a second vocal, a tambourine and a harmony. Reducing take six into take seven collapsed the existing parts and opened empty tracks. By 1966 reduction mixes had become standard practice for exactly this reason, and the cost is equally standard: once the parts are reduced, their balance is fixed and cannot be revisited later.^1,2
• ADT was new that year, and it shows up here as a difference between mixes rather than a setting. Ken Townsend’s invention of Artificial Double-Tracking was one of the most significant developments of 1966, and it arrived in the middle of the sessions that produced this record rather than before them. The released edits were built from mixes made both with and without it, which is an unusually direct illustration of a studio still deciding how much of a brand-new effect to use.²
• The vocal that is on the tape but not on the record. Paul’s high-pitch harmonies on the lines “They’ll fill in you in with all the sins you see” were recorded during the 13 April superimpositions and then left out of the mix and, therefore, the record. The part was not erased — it was simply not brought up when the mixes were made, and because the mono and the stereo were both made from the same take, it is absent from every released version rather than surviving on one of them.¹
• The tabla part was specified as a style and delivered as an improvisation. The instruction was to play in the Ravi Shankar manner in sixteen beats, and the tabla was tuned in the room before the take — but the playing itself was left open, on the reasoning that this is how the music works. The practical consequence for a listener is that the tabla is not doubling or reinforcing anything the Western instruments are doing; it is running its own cycle underneath them, which is why it reads as a second layer of time rather than as percussion.¹
• The working title is an apple, and it was not the only one. “Granny Smith” was named after the apple, and when the next composition from the same writer arrived in June it was logged as “Laxton’s Superb”, another British apple variety — a running joke on the session sheets that John extended out loud in the studio by announcing the second one as “Granny Smith Part Friggin’ Two!” Neither title survived to a sleeve.¹
• This is a dry record on a dry album. Revolver as a whole was an extremely dry album, and the singles recorded alongside it in 1966 followed the same approach. That matters more than usual here: with very little reverb to blend the instruments into a shared space, the sitar, tabla and fuzz guitar stay separately audible instead of merging, and the record’s sense of distance comes from mix placement rather than from room sound.²
• The sitar’s second appearance is a change of role, not a repeat. The instrument reached a Beatles session in October 1965, and in 1966 the Indian thread was followed through to this song. On the earlier record the sitar plays a line inside a Western arrangement; here the drone, the cycle and the melodic idiom are the structure, and the Western instruments — bass, fuzz guitar, tambourine — are fitted into it. It is the first track in the catalogue where the Indian material is the frame rather than the ornament.²
• Four sessions, but only one of them had musicians in the room. Everything played on this record was captured on 11 and 13 April. The two later dates in its history — 16 May and 21 June — are a tape-copying session and a stereo mixing session, and the 16 May entry generates two new remix numbers without a single new mixing decision. Remix numbering on this song runs to five in mono, but only three mono mixes were ever made.¹

Every released version of this song descends from take seven, recorded on 13 April 1966. What changes between them is the edit, the spread and the fade.

• 1966 UK mono LP — Revolver (5 August 1966, Parlophone PMC 7009, side A track 4) — the version most listeners heard first, and the one that runs longest: its fade is about thirteen seconds longer than the stereo, so the sitar and tabla carry on well past the point where the stereo has gone. Everything sits in one centred image, which suits a performance built on a drone. The master is spliced from three mono mixes, some made with ADT and some without.
• 1966 US mono LP — Revolver (Capitol T-2576, side A track 4) — the same mono master as the UK issue, carried on the American pressing of the album. Nothing about the song’s own sound changes here; the interest is that the US mono and the UK mono are the same edit, long fade included.
• 1966 UK stereo LP — Revolver (5 August 1966, Parlophone PCS 7009, side A track 4) — the sitar sits centred and the instruments are set farther back than in the mono, giving the track more depth and less immediacy. It ends noticeably earlier. Like the mono it is an edit rather than a single mix, spliced from three stereo mixes made on 21 June.
• 1966 US stereo LP — Revolver (Capitol ST-2576, side A track 4) — the UK stereo edit on the American pressing, with the same centred sitar and the same early ending.
• 1987 CD — Revolver (EMI CDP 7 46441 2) — the first digital issue, carrying the 1966 stereo edit. For a generation of listeners this was the only version in circulation, which is why the stereo spread rather than the mono is the one most people picture.
• 2009 CD — Revolver (Parlophone 99458 2) — the 1966 mono edit returned to catalogue, with the long fade intact. Worth hearing directly against the 1987 disc: same take, same day’s overdubs, audibly different ending.
• 2022 — Revolver Special Edition (28 October 2022, Apple) — a new stereo mix by Giles Martin and Sam Okell, made from the original four-track master using the de-mixing technology developed by Peter Jackson’s WingNut Films, plus a Dolby Atmos mix and the original mono master. The session discs are the real find for this song: take 1 and an unnumbered rehearsal, both in mono, and take 7 itself — the reduction every released mix descends from, available on its own for the first time.