Love You To

Robert Bunter: George takes another (his first) trip to the land of carpeted elephants and loosely-draped saris. The sitar on "Norwegian Wood" was just a toe-dip into the surging Ganges - now we're fully immersed.  Fuzz bass meshes nicely with the sarods and spirit harps, and a double-tracked vocal (with McCartney chiming in on harmony) takes it to the next level. This one must have really blown every pimply kid's mind in 1966 when they got this back from the Woolworths and gave it a spin on their little plastic hi-fi. They called their friends immediately: "Hey, Chad! Did you get to the fourth song on side one yet? I think something's wrong with my hi-fi! I already frightened enough by Ringo's glasses on the back cover. I'm not ready for this!"

Richard Furnstein: Indian-fetishist George Harrison urges us to "make love all day long" in this track, and that little dose of the freaky deaky is just the tip of the iceberg. He also convinces us that electric guitars are for dorky old squares. Have fun singing about surfing and Henry the VIII, goofs, I'm off in Southern Vindaloo with this instrument with 84 strings and my fingers are stained with curry. You say you want a revolution? Here's a raga song that manages to fit in the pop format. Nice and tidy, but still freaky enough to scare your little sister. Just another day at the office for the bobble brained lead guitarist of a band that I like to call the Beatles.

George also declares "love me while you can, before I'm a dead old man." It's a goofy lyric, but it makes you wish that the Concert For George happened a few years earlier so that George could have felt the love. It sure was a touching tribute to the man. I guess people did give him a lot of love when he was stabbed in the chest by Michael Abram in his beautiful home on December 31, 1999. Goodnight, 20th Century, I hope you don't mind if we almost senselessly murder one of your most beautiful individuals. What did he do to deserve it? Oh, I don't know, garden? Play the ukulele? Create world music? Gosh damn.

Robert Bunter: George really nails it here. It's like he's saying to everybody, "Hey, you want fresh new sounds? How would you like THIS?" And the answer is: plenty! I really like it a lot!