I WANT TO TELL YOU
“I Want to Tell You” is a song by the English rock group the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. It was written and sung by George Harrison, the band’s lead guitarist. After “Taxman” and “Love You To”, it was the third Harrison composition recorded for Revolver, marking the first time that he was allocated more than two songs on a Beatles album, as well as the start of his emergence as a songwriter beside John Lennon and Paul McCartney. When writing “I Want to Tell You”, Harrison drew inspiration from his experimentation with the hallucinogenic drug LSD. The lyrics address what he later termed “the avalanche of thoughts that are so hard to write down or say or transmit”. In combination with the song’s philosophical message, Harrison’s stuttering guitar riff and the dissonance he employs in the melody reflect the difficulties of achieving meaningful communication. (More from Wikipedia)
Following the break-up of the Beatles, George Harrison released a mammoth two-record album in 1970 called All Things Must Pass that also included a third disk called Apple Jam. Clearly Harrison was creating a lot of music that wasn’t winding up on the Beatles albums. By the time “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” showed up on Abbey Road, nearly all rock critics were acknowledging that George Harrison was a songwriter equal to John Lennon and Paul McCartney; but I had noticed that at least as far back as Revolver, where his songs were “Taxman”, “Love You To” and “I Want to Tell You”.
(September 2014)
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On Revolver, which I bought after Sgt. Pepper actually, George Harrison wrote the lead-off song, “Taxman” plus “Love You To” and “I Want to Tell You”. George wrote the first song on Side 2 of Abbey Road, “Here Comes the Sun” – whose title is reflected in a later song on the album, “Sun King” in the lyric, “Here comes the sun king” – as well as “Something”, perhaps George Harrison’s finest composition for the Beatles. As a double-A–sided single with “Come Together”, “Something” is the only song Harrison wrote that the Beatles took to the top of the charts. Also, “Something” has been recorded by about 150 other artists, making it the second most covered Beatles song (after “Yesterday”).
(June 2015)
