Out of the four George Harrison songs that appear on The Beatles’ White Album, I would probably say that ‘Long, Long, Long’ is my favourite out of them. To that you’ll probably wonder, “Well, what about ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps?’“. And to that I’ll answer, I’ve never really enjoyed that track and I think that what ended up on the album pales in comparison to the demo that appeared on Anthology 3. ‘Piggies’, I like quite a bit, and ‘Savoy Truffle’ I feel neither here nor there about. Harrison wrote at least seven songs that could have been included on the double album, but as long as Lennon-McCartney were together he could never get a proper look in. Thankfully, ‘Long, Long, Long’ did make it considering it was one of the last songs the group made during the album sessions.

Coming in after the noisy ‘Helter Skelter’ on the tracklist, ‘Long, Long, Long’ has a much more dynamic approach, leading off with soothing acoustic verses backed by a ghostly organ played by Paul McCartney which are then followed by emphatic drum fills from Ringo Starr at occasional intervals. The song was written during the time the group were in India in the early part of 1968 for their Transcendental Meditation course and, according to Harrison, is about finding God, believing in him, wondering why did took so long to do so and never letting him go now that he has Him in his life. Though if you’re not into that sort of stuff, you can take it as a standard love song.

The band, excluding John Lennon who was doing God knows what somewhere else, pretty much pulled an all-nighter to get this song done. A session outtake that was made available on the 50th Anniversary issue of the album sees Harrison in somewhat high spirits but you can sense the tired atmosphere. He cracks jokes before the take and goes on a rambling monologue as the take leads to nowhere. He also messes up the intro, but gets right into it after a split second. I’ll link that below. It is certainly a song best suited for the night time or when it’s time to sleep, but the ending where every instrument rises to climactic roar is sure to wake you right up again.