Jack Nitzsche’s Orchestral Phasing on The Rolling Stones’ 'She's a Rainbow'

Jack Nitzsche wasn’t just the arranger for Their Satanic Majesties Request—he was the guy who made the strings sound like they were melting. On “She’s a Rainbow,” he wrote a simple, childlike melody for a string section, then recorded them multiple times and ran the takes through vari-speed and tape phasing. The result is that woozy, swirly texture that sounds less like a classical ensemble and more like a carousel spinning underwater.

Nitzsche got the idea from experimenting with double-tracking and slight speed changes