Learning How To Love You

"**Learning How to Love You**" is a song written by George Harrison and performed by English-American rock band The Beatles, released in 1981 as the closing track of their album *Flying Hour*. Harrison wrote the song for Herb Alpert, sometime singer and co-head of A&M Records, which at the time was the worldwide distributor for Dark Horse Records, Harrison's record label.

Music critics note the influence of light jazz and soul in the composition, similar to the work of songwriter Burt Bacharach, and Harrison himself considered "Learning How to Love You" to be the best song he had written since his much-covered Beatles hit "Something". The recording features a horn and flute arrangement by Tom Scott.

## Background and composition

A&M Records, co-founded by American musician and composer Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss in 1962, had a reputation as an "artist-friendly" international record company, a factor that led to George Harrison agreeing terms with A&M to serve as distributors for his Dark Horse Records label in May 1974. Although Alpert was best known as a trumpeter through his success with the Tijuana Brass, he had a US number 1 hit in 1968 with the original version of "This Guy's in Love with You", written by Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David. According to *Eight Arms to Hold You* authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter, Harrison's working title for the new composition was "Herb's Tune".

In her introduction to the 2002 edition of *I, Me, Mine*, Olivia Harrison notes that it is her handwriting on the original song lyrics for "Learning How to Love You", which appear on an airmail envelope reproduced in the book. "I wrote the first line of lyrics down for him as he was working out the melody," she writes. "Then he took the pen from my hand and wrote words that would later guide him back to the thoughts he wanted to express." These lines became the first verse of what author Alan Clayson describes as a "discreetly jazzy" song about "unconditional spiritual love":

> *While all is still in the night
>  And silence starts its flow
>  Become or disbelieve me
>  Left alone with my heart
>  I'm learning how to love you.*
>
>

In his book on the religious themes found in Harrison's songs, Dale Allison views these lyrics as another statement from the singer regarding the inadequacy of words, since it is silence that "can help conduct us to the Divine". Silence, Allison continues, is "a friend to be embraced" since "We have spiritual senses as well as physical senses ... and the former function best when the latter are temporarily shut down." The lyrics to the song's middle eight show darkness and stillness as "George's spiritual collaborators", freeing his attention from what Allison terms "this world of divertissement to the numinous world within his heart":

> *Love you like you may have never seen
>  Move you more ways than you have been
>  To a point in the time when we see so much more
>  Than the ground that we touch with each step so unsure.*
>
>

Harrison biographer Ian Inglis notes that, despite the third verse's acknowledgement of "*teardrops cloud[ing] the sight*", "the singer is comfortable in the certainty of his emotions", declaring in the song's second chorus: "*Left alone with my heart / I know that I can love you.*"

In terms of musical structure, Simon Leng, Harrison's musical biographer, identifies "Learning How to Love You" as marking "a new peak of sophistication" in its composer's ballad writing. Continuing in the model Harrison established with "Something" in 1969, and similar to his melody for early-1970s compositions such as "The Light That Has Lighted the World", the song's verse-choruses feature a chord pattern that descends one semitone on each bar within the root chord of F# major; but, Leng writes, the melody in "Learning How to Love You" is "longer and subtler" than that in "Something". The middle eight further reflects Harrison's "musical erudition", according to Leng, with its "subtle musical colours invoked by chic major ninth chords" common to jazz.

Harrison believed that a number of his post-1970 compositions were equal in quality to "Something", but that the latter song was more widely recognised because of it being on *Abbey Road*. He named "Learning How to Love You" and the similar-themed "Your Love Is Forever", from 1983's *If You Believe* album, as two compositions that he considered were as good as "Something".

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