How 'We Love You' Used Backwards Guitar and Reversed Reverb to Sound Like a Psychedelic Meltdown

By mid-1967, the Stones were deep into their psychedelic period, partly as a middle finger to the drug busts and public pressure. “We Love You” was their defiant thank-you to fans, and the production matched the mood: chaotic, disorienting, and trippy. They literally flipped the tape upside down for backwards guitar parts — Brian Jones likely handled that, layering mangled, reversed riffs over the verse sections. The reversed reverb was even trickier: they applied reverb to a track, then recorded the playback backwards and mixed it in. That gave the drums and vocals a weird sucking, pre-echo effect, like the sound was being pulled backwards through a tunnel.

Sonically, they wanted to mimic the inside of a drugged-out headspace — that feeling of time running in reverse, where everything’s familiar but wrong. It also helped tie the song to the avant-garde studio tricks that were becoming the psychedelic signature, right alongside the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” and Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?”. The effect wasn’t just a gimmick; it made the track feel like a sonic statement: we’re not sorry, and the world sounds like this now.