The Story Behind “I Want To Tell You” By The Beatles

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr have used the years after The Beatles’ breakup to educate the audience about their time in the band and to let the stories behind the surface of their songs. Countless stories behind their songs have seen been revealed to the public, which came out of the Fab Four’s mouths themselves.

Apart from the usual songwriting partnership of Lennon-McCartney, Harrison also became an integral part of the Beatles catalog, penning classic tunes that go down in the annals of music history. Among those is “I Want to Tell You” which belonged to the Revolver album; he revealed where he got the inspiration from in his autobiographical book, I, Me, Mine.

Because most rock artists in the 1960s were also experimenting with hallucinogens like LSD, George Harrison did the same in advance of composing and recording the song. Along with using drugs, the “shy Beatle” was also studying everything there is to know about Indian culture; the singer became one of the well-known personalities who encourage more to explore God and spirituality. Harrison spoke of his time on LSD in his book, saying, “you could spend the rest of your life trying to explain what it made you feel and think.”

Lyrically, “I Want to Tell You” is about “the avalanche of thoughts that are so hard to write down or say or transmit.”

Listen to the song below.