page_title: Let It Down
section_title: Background and composition
hierarchical_section_title: Let It Down / Background and composition
context_page_description: "Let It Down" is a song by English musician George Harrison, released on his 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass. The recording was co-produced by Phil Spector and employs the latter's Wall of Sound production technique to lavish effect. Its brash opening and choruses contrast with the ethereal quality of the verses – a loud/soft approach that has been credited with influencing indie bands during the 1980s and 1990s.
  Harrison wrote the song in 1968 and offered it to the Beatles in January 1969 for inclusion on what became their Let It Be album, also produced by Spector. It is one of several Harrison compositions that were turned down by the band and subsequently found acclaim on his first solo release following their break-up. Harrison biographers recognise "Let It Down" as an erotic love song, perhaps written to a woman other than Pattie Boyd, his wife at the time. Separated by eighteen months, the song's conception and recording marked two periods of romantic intrigue involving Harrison, Boyd and their friend Eric Clapton. Author Ian Inglis describes "Let It Down" as "a dynamic and passionate depiction of lust and desire".
context_section_description: Harrison and Pattie Boyd were married in January 1966, having met two years before on the set of the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night, but by 1968, his dedication to meditation and Eastern mysticism had begun to divide the couple.
  Harrison wrote "Let It Down" in late 1968. The song features the same major-seventh chord voicings that intrigued Bob Dylan during that year's Thanksgiving holidays, when the two musicians collaborated on "I'd Have You Anytime" in upstate New York. In the absence of any discussion of the track by Harrison in his 1980 autobiography, commentators have identified "Let It Down" as a sensual love song.
  Harrison's musical biographer, Simon Leng, describes the lyrics as being among its composer's "most tactile", full of "sexual passion" and "images of sight and touch". The verses, he suggests, "[revel] in the kind of sensory luxury any Krishna devotee is required to reject". Leng also notes the "clear climactic overtones" evident in the choruses, where Harrison urges his lover to "Let your hair hang all around me ... / Let your love flow and astound me." Musically, the composition features contrasting moods between the ethereal, ballad-like verses and the more strident choruses.
  Author Ian Inglis terms "Let It Down" an "unashamedly erotic" song that most likely describes "an act, or acts, of infidelity". "Two lovers hide behind a veil of nonchalance, but both are equally aware of the other's intentions," Inglis suggests, with specific reference to the third verse:
  While you look so sweetly and divine 
   I can feel you here 
   See your eyes are busy kissing mine ...
  The message behind the verses' recurring lines "I do, I do" and "Should someone be looking at me" has invited conflicting interpretations. Leng suggests that in the first of these lines, Harrison might be restating his marriage vow, and that the second line is an early example of the singer viewing his life "as a battle with an unseen enemy waiting to pounce". To Inglis, the characters in "Let It Down" are engaged in an adulterous affair, with the "constant threat" of being discovered – hence the conclusion to verse one: "Hiding it all behind anything I see / Should someone be looking at me."
  Harrison biographer Gary Tillery observes of this period when the song was written: "Despite his spiritual hunger, [for Harrison] the temptations of a rock star were still too much to resist. He had affairs with other women, and he became less guarded about them with Pattie." One such affair took place shortly after the couple's return from New York, in December 1968, and involved Charlotte Martin, a French model who had just ended a relationship with Harrison's friend and occasional collaborator Eric Clapton. Harrison invited Martin to stay at Kinfauns, the home he shared with Boyd in Esher, south of London, whereupon, according to Boyd: "She didn't seem remotely upset about Eric ..."
caption: An illustration from the Gita Govinda showing Krishna surrounded by devoted gopis – a traditional depiction that inspired George Harrison around the time he wrote "Let It Down"
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