It's Been a Long, Long, Long Time

While having a shower this evening, the Beatle's song "Long, Long, Long" came into my head for some reason. After my shower, I decided to do a little research into the song. Below are the lyrics and Figure 1 shows the lyrics along with the guitar chords.

Figure 1: source

It's been a long long long time

How could I ever have lost you

When I loved you

It took a long long long time

Now I'm so happy I found you

How I love you

So many tears I was searching

So many tears I was wasting, oh oh

Now I can see you, be you

How can I ever misplace you

How I want you

Oh I love you

You know that I need you

Ooh I love you

Oh

The song was written by George Harrison and the Wikipedia article provides some interesting details surrounding its creation. Here are the opening paragraphs from that article:

"Long, Long, Long" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 album The Beatles (also known as "the White Album"). It was written by George Harrison, the group's lead guitarist, while he and his bandmates were attending Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation course in Rishikesh, India, in early 1968. Although Harrison later stated that he was addressing God in the lyrics, it is the first of his compositions that invites interpretation as both a standard love song and a paean to his deity.

"Long, Long, Long" originated during a period in which Harrison emerged as a prolific songwriter, coinciding with his return to the guitar after two years of studying the Indian sitar. He based the chord pattern on "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" by Bob Dylan, while the song's understated arrangement partly reflects the influence of the Band's 1968 album Music from Big Pink. The Beatles recorded it in London towards the end of the White Album sessions, which were marked by acrimony among the band members in the fallout to their experiences in Rishikesh. An ambient and meditative ballad, it ends with a partly improvised segment that was inspired by the sound of a wine bottle vibrating on a speaker in the studio.

"Long, Long, Long" has received praise from several music critics. On release, William Mann of The Times rated it the equal of the album's best Lennon–McCartney compositions; Ian MacDonald later described it as Harrison's "touching token of exhausted, relieved reconciliation with God" and his "finest moment on The Beatles". Elliott Smith and Jim James are among the other artists who have recorded or performed the song.

The connection of the song to Dylan's "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" was a surprise. Reportedly, the only Western LP that Harrison took with him to Rishikesh was Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, which contains the eleven-minute "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". The Wikipedia article notes that:

In 1987, Daniel Amos vocalist Terry Scott Taylor recorded what Trouser Press admired as a "first-rate cover" of "Long, Long, Long" for his album A Briefing for the Ascent.

I quite like this cover and in fact YouTube Music has this to say about Terry Scott Taylor:

Terry Scott Taylor is an American songwriter, record producer, writer and founding member of the bands Daniel Amos and The Swirling Eddies. Taylor is also a member of the roots and alternative music group, Lost Dogs. He is currently based in San Jose, California, U.S. Taylor is highly regarded for his songwriting skills. These often include allusions to and reworkings of material ranging from Elizabethan poets to modern authors. Foremost among Taylor's influences is William Blake. The Daniel Amos album title Fearful Symmetry was drawn from Blake's poem "The Tyger," and numerous songs across The Alarma! Chronicles series of albums have Blake-inspired references. Some other poets who have influenced Taylor's work are T. S. Eliot and Christina Rossetti. Eliot's poetry inspired the song "Hollow Man" from the Doppelgänger album. "Where Dreams Come True" from Taylor's solo album, A Briefing for the Ascent, draws heavily from Rosetti's poem "Echo". The inspiration for many Daniel Amos and Taylor songs from the mid-1980s can be found in the book Behold, This Dreamer: Of Reverie, Night, Sleep, Dream, Love-Dreams, Nightmare, Death. 

To my mind, he has a similar voice to David Byrne and as well his cover of "Long, Long, Long" on his A Briefing for the Ascent, I also like "Changeless" that has the following, spiritually-aligned lyrics:

Once upon a lonely hilltop

Where my heart could find no sleep

Rest came down and filled my soul up

From the everlasting deep

Changeless are the stars that shine

Changeless morn' succeeds to even

Still the everlasting hill

Changeless watch the changeless heaven

I need your love

Your changeless love

I need you

I have climbed some lonely hilltops

I have touched the fleeting soul

Dreamt I saw a billion teardrops

Falling down like ice and snow

Changeless breaks the tide to shore

Changeless are the times and seasons

You are the same forever more

I will keep these changeless reasons

(Why)

No shadow of turning falls

No promise is broken

No nothing can turn my heart

From the words You have spoken

Changeless Your love

Deep as an ocean

Taylor was born on May 24th 1950 so he's only a year younger than me. He is a complex character musically as his Wikipedia biography attests. His music deserves further investigation. Getting back to George Harrison however, it can only be noted that his time in India in early 1968 corresponded to a time when Meher Baba was still alive. Baba of course was quite reclusive at that time and it would have been difficult to have an audience with Him. Harrison certainly seems to have been the most spiritually inclined of the Fabulous Four.