Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
Before the sitar was first used on a Western pop recording, the instrument's drone had been imitated on electric guitar by the Kinks on their 1965 single "See My Friends". Another English band, the Yardbirds, hired a sitar player to play the main riff on their song "Heart Full of Soul", but the group subsequently re-recorded the track without a sitar part. The first pop release to feature sitar was instead "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", issued on the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" album in December 1965. With this sitar part, George Harrison became the first Western musician to play an Indian instrument on a commercial recording.