"Love You To" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. The song was written and sung by George Harrison and features Indian instrumentation such as sitar and tabla. Following Harrison's introduction of the sitar on "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" in 1965, it was the first Beatles song to fully reflect the influence of Indian classical music. The recording was made with minimal participation from Harrison's bandmates; instead, he created the track with tabla player Anil Bhagwat and other Indian musicians from the Asian Music Circle in London. The title references their first hit song; "Love Me Do".
The composition adheres to the pitches of the Indian equivalent of Dorian mode and emulates the khyal vocal tradition of Hindustani classical music. For musical inspiration, Harrison drew from the work of master sitarist Ravi Shankar, who became his sitar tutor shortly after the recording was completed. In its lyrical themes, "Love You To" is partly a love song to Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, while also incorporating philosophical concepts inspired by his experimentation with the hallucinogenic drug LSD. In the context of its release, the song served as one of the first examples of the Beatles expressing an ideology aligned with that of the emergent counterculture.
"Love You To" has been hailed by musicologists and critics as groundbreaking in its presentation of a non-Western musical form to rock audiences, particularly with regard to authenticity and avoidance of parody. Author Jonathan Gould describes the song's slow sitar introduction as "one of the most brazenly exotic acts of stylistic experimentation ever heard on a popular LP". Ronnie Montrose, Bongwater, Jim James and Cornershop are among the artists who have covered "Love You To".
Background and inspiration
On the 1965 album Rubber Soul, George Harrison had led the Beatles towards Indian classical music through his use of the Indian sitar on John Lennon's song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", while his own composition "If I Needed Someone" reflected the genre's influence in its melody and suggestion of drone. He subsequently wrote "Love You To" as a way to showcase the sitar, and to feature the tabla, a pair of Indian hand drums, for the first time. Music critic Richie Unterberger describes the song as the Beatles' "first all-out excursion" in raga rock, a genre that author Nicholas Schaffner says was "launched" by Harrison's use of sitar on "Norwegian Wood".
Harrison wrote "Love You To" in early 1966 while the Beatles were enjoying an unusually long period free of professional commitments, due to their inability to find a suitable film project. He used the available time to further explore his interest in Indian music and the sitar, which, journalist Maureen Cleave noted in a contemporary article, "has given new meaning to [his] life". Aside from honeymooning in Barbados with his wife, English model Pattie Boyd, Harrison's activities included receiving sitar tuition from an Indian musician at the Asian Music Circle (AMC) in north London, where he also attended music recitals, and seeing Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar perform at the Royal Festival Hall. Author Ian MacDonald views the subject matter as "part philosophical" and "part love-song" to Boyd.
Composition
Musical form
"Love You To" is in the key of C and adheres to the pitches of Kafi thaat, the Indian equivalent of Dorian mode. The composition emulates the khyal vocal tradition of Hindustani (or North Indian) classical music. Structurally, it comprises an opening alap; a gat section, which serves as the main portion of the song; and a short drut (fast) gat to close the piece.
The alap consists of sitar played in free tempo, during which the song's melody is previewed in the style of an Indian raga. Described by Harrison biographer Simon Leng as "essentially an adaptation of a blues lick", the seven-note motif that closes the alap serves as a recurring motif during the ensuing gat. The change of metre following the alap marks the first such example in the Beatles' work; it would shortly be repeated in Lennon's composition "She Said She Said", which Harrison helped complete by joining together three separate pieces that Lennon had written.
The gat is set in madhya laya (medium tempo) and features a driving rock rhythm accentuated by heavy tambura drone. This portion of the composition consists of eight-bar "A" sections and twelve-bar "B" sections, structured in an A-B-A-B pattern. The alap's lack of a distinct time signature is contrasted with a temporal reference in the lyrics to the opening verse: "Each day just goes so fast / I turn around, it's past". Throughout, the vocal line avoids the melodic embellishment typical of khyal, apart from the use of melisma over the last line in each of the A sections. In keeping with the minimal harmonic movement of Indian music, the composition's only deviation from its I chord of C is a series of implied VII chord changes, which occur in the B sections.
During the mid-song instrumental passage, the melody line of the sitar incorporates aspects of the alap, raising the melody previewed there by an octave. The song then returns to verses sung over the A and B sections, culminating in the line "I'll make love to you, if you want me to." The arrival of the drut gat follows Hindustani convention by ending the composition at an accelerated tempo, although the brevity of this segment marks a departure from the same tradition.
Lyrical interpretation
As with all of the songs written by Harrison or Lennon and recorded by the Beatles in 1966, the lyrics to "Love You To" marked a departure from the standard love-song themes that had defined the group's previous work. Harrison presents a worldview that variously reflects cynicism, sardonic humour and a degree of detachment with regard to personal relationships. According to music critic John Harris, the lines "There's people standing round / Who'll screw you in the ground / They'll fill you in with all the sins you'll see" serve as one of the first examples of the Beatles' ideology aligning with that of the emerging 1960s counterculture, by highlighting the division between traditional mores and an LSD-inspired perspective.