In the spring of 1971, the Consort was booked to play at the Fillmore East in New York, opening for Procol Harum. (50 years ago this April.) The dressing rooms in this old theatre were upstairs, and we were warming up our instruments there before the afternoon sound check. David was noodling some lines on his cello, and a melodic line he played caught my ear, so I grabbed my little tape recorder and asked him to play it again.

In early summer, when David and I were exploring ideas for new pieces for our upcoming album with George Martin, I played him this seed-theme and encouraged him to develop it. He had a sketch of a piece ready when we began working with George in August.

I don’t remember whose idea it was to give the melody to the sitar, but I recall that George was amazed that our percussionist, Collin Walcott, was also a superb sitar player. (Collin had been Ravi Shankar’s road manager during the ‘60s.)

The arrangement for this piece was truly born in the studio, and we had a great time doing it.

For the introduction, we wanted to have an embracing orchestral texture, one that was organ-like but didn’t sound like an organ. George showed us how to get it. There was a grand piano we had rented for the sessions. Once we had laid down a basic track with sustained notes by the cello and bass, and a unison woodwind intro melody, we then overdubbed Ralph, playing large two-handed chords on the piano, bar by bar. The trick was to play each chord just before the bar line, and then the engineer would punch in exactly on beat one of the bar, so you heard only the resonance of the piano strings, but not the attack. So it didn’t sound like a piano. (I’ve always thought of the piano as a great harp, if you just play the strings.) Then, for the sub-bottom of this orchestral texture, we overdubbed (under-dubbed?) a contrabass sarrusophone, a 19th century double-reed brass instrument which Paul McCandless’ father had loaned us.

The main “song” of the piece, then, was played by a unique string quartet of sitar, guitar, pizzicato cello, and Fender bass. I found the sound of this string quartet far more engaging than the totally homogenous blend of a classical string quartet.

The sitar and guitar then emerge from the quartet, into a dynamic duet adventure that eventually leads us back home to our “consorchestra” for the finale.