Elvis Costello put together a
100 Greatest Beatles Songs list a few years ago for
Rolling Stone, and wrote brief but insightful comments for each selection. Worth reading if you're a Beatles fan. Here's what he had to say about his #98, "Long, Long, Long," a song I've always loved:
"Long, Long, Long" seems like a love song — "How I want you/How I love you/You know that I need you" — but the object of Harrison's affections was God. "I believe in the saying 'If there's a God, we must see him,'" Harrison said in 1969. He based the song on Bob Dylan's "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" — "those three chords and the way they moved." Though Lennon was blatantly enamored of Dylan early on, Harrison was the true Dylanphile. ("George quoted Bob like people quote Scripture," Tom Petty told Rolling Stone.) Soon after the White Album came out, Harrison was in Woodstock, New York, spending Thanksgiving with Dylan and the Band. He and Dylan wrote "I'd Have You Anytime," which became the first track on All Things Must Pass and the first step toward a lasting friendship.