The Beatles share early version of ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ featuring George Harrison sitar mastery

The Beatles have shared an early version of their hit song ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’, which features George Harrison on the sitar.

READ MORE: The Beatles: every song ranked in order of greatness The song is set to feature on the new expanded Special Edition of ‘Rubber Soul’, which is released on October 2 – celebrating the classic 1965 album with newly-shared double A-side single ‘Day Tripper / We Can Work It Out’, and a selection of previously unreleased session recordings and home demos.

At the time of the announcement, there was the release of ‘Michelle (Take 1)’, and this was later followed up by another taster of the album, an early ‘songwriting work tape’, showing how ‘Day Tripper’ came together .

Now, a third preview of the newly-available material on the album drops today (Monday September 14) in the form of an early version of ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’.

Dubbed ‘Second Version – Take 2’, the recording comes as the first original version of the now-classic song was recorded during the first day of sessions for ‘Rubber Soul’ and featured Harrison’s new discovery, the sitar.

The band were unhappy with that version, so recorded three more takes nine days later.

On Take two, the first attempt featured John Lennon’s acoustic guitar, Paul McCartney’s bass, Ringo Starr on drums and George playing drone notes on sitar.

George added more sitar on tracks two and three, and John and Paul’s vocals were also recorded on track three.

While the final version opens with an instrumental version of the verse melody, this this arrangement opens with double-tracked sitar playing the bridge section.

Speaking about how the instrumental was used, George Harrison previously shared: “It felt very familiar to me to listen to that music.

Around that time I’d bought a cheap sitar in a shop called Indiacraft in London.

“When we were working on ‘Norwegian Wood’, it just needed something and it was quite spontaneous.

I picked the sitar up and kind of found the notes.

We put it on and it seemed to hit the spot and that was it.” The recording is newly mixed by producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell, and is the latest recording to be made available ahead of the release on October 2.