The Beatles Lyric That Was a Love Song to God
The White Album was the record where The Beatles felt emboldened to try anything. All the guardrails were removed, and the extra space provided by making a double LP meant pretty much everything was fair game.
In the case of “Long, Long, Long,” that meant George Harrison penning an almost alarmingly quiet love song. The sneaky part of it is the intended target of that love wasn’t a person, but rather a higher power.
If nothing else, the barely-a-peep sound of “Long, Long, Long” sets it apart from the rest of The Beatles’ catalog. You’d be hard-pressed to find another Fab Four song mixed in such fashion. The difference in loudness between it and the other songs immediately surrounding it on the album (“Helter Skelter” and “Revolution 1”) is striking.
Maybe that was appropriate, since George Harrison was already starting to separate himself from the other chief Beatles songwriters (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) in his preferred topics. Harrison’s songs were beginning to fall into two categories: snide and sarcastic (like “Piggies”) or questing and spiritual (like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”).
Source: Jim Beviglia/americansongwriter.com
