To You

That was the first song we recorded, and when we did my guitar solo on that, Paul was manually operating an Eventide harmonizer (which offered such new-fangled options as pitch shifting, delay and feedback regeneration). So, I was hearing everything in the headphones, but it wouldn’t necessarily be the note I actually played. I would hear what had been manipulated. We were doing it in real time. It created this really cool dissonant thing. It was actually a bit of a precursor to what Trevor Rabin did on (the 1983 Yes charttopper) “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” with the harmonized guitar solo. Whether there is any direct connection, I couldn’t speculate. But the fact is, in terms of the art of it, it was very cool. One of the things I was very self-consciously trying to do was to make the guitar not just another generic rock guitar sound but in general, not just on that tune. What I was trying to do was to not be generic, but to absorb what else was going on at that time – and what else I had absorbed in my own experience, and to bring all of that to the forefront.

Laurence Juber – 2012 interview for Something Else!

From Club Sandwich N°16, 1979:

June 29th 1978 marked the start of operations with the recording of “To You” which is the second band of side two. It was also the start of our four and a half weeks “in the wild” at “Spirit of Ranachan” studio in Scotland where most of the backing tracks for this L.P. where recorded. The backing track of “To You” used Bass guitar, Drums, Guitar, Organ and the vocal. Over the next few days were added the backing harmony vocals, Laurence’s guitar solo, Paul’s slide guitar and Steve’s percussion.

Mark Vigars

To You. A stratocaster again — great recording guitars. The weirdness on the guitar solo was achieved by putting the guitar a ‘harmonizer’. This is sophisticated piece of studio that can shift the pitch of an instrument or voice by a dial. Great fun! The solo was recorded with Paul ‘playing’ the harmonizer while I played the guitar.

Laurence Juber, from Club Sandwich N°14, April / May 1979

Lyrics

Officially appears on

Bootlegs

Live performances

Paul McCartney has never played this song in concert.

Going further