page_title: Long, Long, Long
section_title: Cover versions
hierarchical_section_title: Long, Long, Long / Cover versions
caption_attribution_description: English: "i got an email one afternoon, around 4pm, from the owner of lit, asking me if i wouldn't mind coming down to shoot a small, 'secret' show by elliott smith that night. i grabbed my camera and ran. the basement of lit holds about 100 people crammed in tight. there was no stage, just the floor and a chair and a mike. everyone was sitting on the floor, and was reverentially quiet. sad to say he barely got through an entire song. i could actually smell him from where i sat, and it smelled like a bar at last call. his girlfriend had to physically support him to get him to the chair. it was a long way from the last time i had seen him, on the xo tour, with quasi. that was exquisite. this, i was just happy to commune with him, albeit briefly, if only to remember how much his music meant to me, and how good it was when he played it well. we were all just really happy to be there."
context_page_description: "Long, Long, Long" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 album The Beatles. 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.
context_section_description: 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. By contrast, Sean Carruthers of AllMusic considers singer Tom Hooper's 2002 cover to be a version that "manages to drain the life" out of the song. Elliott Smith included "Long, Long, Long" in his live performances. His biographer Benjamin Nugent writes that it appealed to Smith amid his struggles with depression and drug addiction, as "a ballad about trying to get rid of self-imposed suffering and returning to a place where you can relate to other people".
  A recording by Tanya Donelly appeared on her 2006 album This Hungry Life and later on the CD accompanying Uncut's feature article on Harrison's career, in the August 2008 issue of the magazine. My Morning Jacket lead singer Jim James opened his 2009 EP of Harrison compositions, Tribute To, with "Long, Long, Long" – a cover that Drowned in Sound praised as "not only the standout moment, but also one of the most beautiful and arresting songs of the year". Having recorded the EP within days of Harrison's death in November 2001, James said he decided to release it eight years later partly as a result of attending the David Lynch Foundation's Transcendental Meditation awareness concert, "Change Begins Within", where "George's name came up a lot ... his spirit was very big at that event."
caption: Elliott Smith, pictured at a concert in January 2003, covered the song in his live performances.
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