Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) is a song written and sung by John Lennon and credited to Lennon/McCartney, released on the Rubber Soul album in 1965. This track is generally credited as being the first pop recording to use the sitar, an Indian stringed instrument (although as the TV Tropes Wiki points out, this is wrong; the first known pop recording featuring a sitar was "Goodness Gracious Me" in 1960, and the Kinks also got there before the Beatles). "Norwegian Wood" sparked a musical craze for the sound of the novel instrument in the mid-Sixties. The song is now acknowledged as one of the cornerstones of what is now usually called "world music", and it was a major landmark in the trend towards incorporating non-Western musical influences into Western popular music. Harrison was recently introduced to Indian classical music and the sitar by David Crosby of the Byrds. He soon became fanatically interested in the genre and began taking sitar lessons from renowned Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.

Norwegian Wood was John Lennon's way of telling his wife (Cynthia Lennon) that he had an affair.

The song was recorded 12 and 21 October 1965 in EMI Studios. Early version (Take 1) was published in the Anthology 2, and Take 2 in an informal bootleg.

Credits
Length-2'05
 * John Lennon — lead vocals, acoustic guitar (1964 Framus Hootenanny 5/024)
 * Paul McCartney — harmony vocals, bass guitar (1963 Hofner 500/1)
 * George Harrison — sitar, acoustic guitar (1962 Gibson J-160E)
 * Ringo Starr — tambourine, bass drum, finger cymbals