Harrison’s sitar going up for auction

A sitar owned and played by George Harrison is going to be auctioned in the United States. Guitarist George Harrison played an Indian sitar during the recording of the Beatles song, “Norwegian Wood.” However, Harrison later admitted that he didn’t really know how to play the instrument. Beatles Anthologies quotes Harrison as saying, “I hadn’t really figured out what to do with it. It was quite spontaneous.” Harrison became enthralled with Indian music and culture after that. The sitar was purchased from a shop on London’s Oxford Street in 1965. The Indian string instrument, crafted by a well-known music shop in Kolkata, was later gifted to a friend of Harrison’s first wife, Patti Boyd. The Beatles recorded “Norwegian Wood” – the first Western rock band to use the sitar on a commercial recording – in October 1965, heralding a short lived “raga-rock” genre. A year later, Harrison travelled to India to learn how to play the instrument under the renowned sitar maestro, Ravi Shankar. In April, 2000, while giving an interview with an international news agency, Shankar said when he first heard Harrison playing the sitar in “Norwegian Wood,” he was not impressed. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said, “it sounded so strange. Just imagine some Indian villager trying to play the violin when you know what it should sound like.” Harrison later agreed, saying the sitar on “Norwegian Wood” was “very rudimentary.” “I didn’t know how to tune it properly, and it was a very cheap sitar to begin with. But that was the environment in the band, and everybody was very open to bringing in new ideas.” He travelled to India the next year to learn the instrument from famed Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, sparking Harrison’s life-long relationship with Indian music and Hinduism. Bidding for the sitar will begin on September 28 at $50,000 (£37,327).