"Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" is a song by English rock musician George Harrison, released on his 1973 album Living in the Material World. It was scheduled to be issued as a single in September that year, as the follow-up to "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)", but the release was cancelled. Music critics have traditionally viewed "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" as a highlight of the Material World album, praising its pop qualities and production, with some considering the song worthy of hit status.
Harrison wrote and recorded "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" during a period marked by his heightened devotion to Hindu spirituality, which coincided with marital problems with his first wife, Pattie Boyd, and the financial complications affecting his Bangladesh aid project. The track is an upbeat love song in the tradition of early 1960s Brill Building songwriters. Its lyrics have invited debate among commentators as to whether Harrison is addressing a lover such as Boyd or, like the majority of his lyrics on Material World, God.
Although produced by Harrison alone, the recording employs aspects of the Wall of Sound production synonymous with his former collaborator Phil Spector – through the use of reverb, two drummers and multiple acoustic rhythm guitar parts. The musicians accompanying Harrison on the track are Gary Wright, Nicky Hopkins, Ringo Starr, Klaus Voormann and Jim Keltner. In November 1976, during the filming of their joint appearance on Saturday Night Live, Harrison performed "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" with singer Paul Simon, but the song did not appear in the broadcast.
Background As with all the new songs on his 1973 album Living in the Material World, George Harrison wrote "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" in 1971–72,Madinger & Easter, p. 439. a period of heightened devotion to Hindu spirituality on his part.Leng, p. 124.Huntley, pp. 87, 89. "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" is a love song,Allison, p. 141. and in light of problems in Harrison's marriage to Pattie Boyd at the time, Harrison biographer Elliot Huntley remarks: "it's interesting to speculate as to who it was written about ..."Huntley, p. 92. Author Jeff Walker suggests that the song's apparently non-devotional subject matter may have resulted from Harrison and Boyd's marital difficulties.
Against Harrison's wishes, Boyd had resumed her modelling career in May 1971,Greene, pp. 197–98. having long felt isolated by her husband's association with the Hare Krishna movement.Tillery, pp. 90–92. His Concert for Bangladesh aid project had then united the couple, according to their friend Chris O'Dell, who recalls Harrison as "attentive and affectionate" towards Boyd while planning the concerts that summer.O'Dell, pp. 193, 195–96, 201. The project's subsequent business and legal issues became a source of frustration for Harrison,The Editors of Rolling Stone, p. 43.Lavezzoli, pp. 193–94. as he spent much of 1972 negotiating with government departments for the release of the funds raised for the refugees.Doggett, pp. 180, 192. In February 1972, Harrison and Boyd were injured in an automobile accident in England,Badman, pp. 67–68.Tillery, pp. 118–19. after which, author Alan Clayson writes, "her recovery was impaired by George's pounding on a drum-kit that he'd set up in the next room."Clayson, p. 320.
In August that year, Harrison set off for a driving holiday around Europe without Boyd,Badman, p. 79. a trip that Huntley describes as "the first publicly visible signs" of problems in the Harrisons' marriage.Huntley, p. 85. While in Portugal, Harrison stayed with his musician friend Gary Wright, who, Huntley suggests, "play[ed] the diplomat" by telling the press:Huntley, pp. 85, 87. "He's writing lots of new things and he seems to be having a good time ... Sometimes he takes Pattie with him, but I feel he just felt like a holiday and wanted to get away."
Composition
In his book The Words and Music of George Harrison, Ian Inglis writes that "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" incorporates many of the elements of pop composition pioneered during the early 1960s at New York's Brill Building,Inglis, pp. 39–40. where songwriters such as Barry Mann, Carole King and Gerry Goffin began their careers.Romanowski & George-Warren, p. 542.Williams, pp. 58, 66–67. Inglis lists these "stock motifs" as "a repetitive and attractive melody", "a stereotypical choice of language", "the familiar topic of lost, or unrequited, love" and "the conventional form of address from a man to a woman, in the persistent use of 'baby'". These elements appear in the song's chorus, where Harrison sings: "How I love you / Baby, so don't let me wait too long."
Harrison biographer Simon Leng views "pop-soul music" as "the obvious root" of "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" and cites musical tension as one facet of the pop-soul style that Harrison adopts.Leng, pp. 128–29. This tension is evident in the "implie[d] dissonance" during the verses, Leng adds, when Harrison moves from an F major chord to D-flat major.Leng, p. 129. In reference to a lyric in the verses, Clayson suggests: "Although 'Don't Let Me Wait Too Long' betrayed that George's sublimation of lust [in favour of an ascetic path] was by no means total, its consummation was, nonetheless, 'like it came from above'."Clayson, p. 322.
Inglis writes that the message of "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" is "in the title".Inglis, p. 39. The theme of waiting is also central to a track that Harrison wrote in 1967 while in the Beatles, "Blue Jay Way", and a similar sentiment appears in his 1970–71 solo hit "My Sweet Lord", through the line "I really want to see you, Lord, but it takes so long". In the latter lyric, Harrison expresses his impatience to see and know God,Allison, pp. 6–7, 21.Inglis, p. 43. and Harrison biographer Geoffrey Giuliano interprets "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" as a further reflection of the singer's spiritual concerns.Giuliano, p. 140.
Whereas Huntley, Inglis and Walker consider that Harrison is addressing a lover in "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long", other commentators, like Giuliano, view the lyrics as being consistent with the predominant theme of Living in the Material World – namely, Harrison's spiritual search amid the temptations of the physical world.Tillery, p. 111. Of these commentators, Nicholas Schaffner and Bob Woffinden highlight "Sue Me, Sue You Blues" as the album's only song with a non-religious subject matter.Woffinden, pp. 69–70.Schaffner, p. 159.
A Christian theologian, Dale Allison has identified a number of Harrison compositions where he finds it "impossible" to discern whether Harrison is proffering love for a woman or his deity, yet he views "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" as a secular love song.Allison, pp. 11–12, 141. Author Chris Ingham similarly writes that, along with the Material World tracks "Who Can See It" and "That Is All", Harrison's expression of love in this song "seems directed as much to an earthly relationship as to any God".Ingham, p. 134.
Recording The sessions for most of the basic tracks for Living in the Material World took place over October and November 1972, with engineer Phil McDonald, but without Harrison's intended co-producer from All Things Must Pass and The Concert for Bangladesh, Phil Spector.Spizer, p. 254. According to the album credits, the location for the recording was the Beatles' Apple Studio in London, although bassist Klaus Voormann has stated that the true venue was Harrison's new home studio, FPSHOT, in Oxfordshire.Leng, pp. 124, 126.
Aside from Harrison on acoustic guitars, the musicians on the basic track for "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" were Nicky Hopkins (piano), Wright (keyboards), Voormann (bass), and Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner (both on drums).Leng, p. 128. The Starr–Keltner combination followed their pairing at the Concert for Bangladesh shows;Rodriguez, p. 79. this song was one of three tracks on Material World to which Starr contributed,Leng, pp. 128, 130, 134. in between his film work on That'll Be the Day and Son of Dracula.Badman, p. 83. In addition, Pete Ham and Tom Evans of the Apple group Badfinger attended some of the sessions in October, playing acoustic rhythm guitar as they had on much of All Things Must Pass.Matovina, pp. 90–91, 190. As with Ham's playing on the 1971-recorded "Try Some, Buy Some",Spizer, p. 255. however, any contribution they might have made to "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" went uncredited on the official release.Rodriguez, p. 260.Castleman & Podrazik, p. 197.
Following the completion of the main recording sessions, Harrison carried out overdubbing on the basic tracks through to the end of February 1973. On "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long", the overdubs included his vocals and slide guitar part.Madinger & Easter, p. 441. Of the last of these, Walker comments that Harrison's playing prior to the refrain further develops the melodic tension evident in the composition.Walker, p. 197.
Phil Spector's influence
Despite Spector's absence, the song's production incorporates aspects of his signature Wall of Sound, through the use of reverberation, multiple drummers and layers of rhythm instruments such as acoustic guitars and keyboards. Part of a sound commonly associated with Harrison during the early 1970s,Leng, p. 159. these characteristics were also elements of his 1971 production of Badfinger's "Day After Day" and Lon & Derrek Van Eaton's "Sweet Music".Rodriguez, p. 93.
Author Robert Rodriguez describes the recording as "Spector-esque (in a girl group sense)",Rodriguez, pp. 156–57. Harrison having long been an admirer of Spector's work with the Ronettes and the Crystals during the 1960s.Schaffner, pp. 136, 137. Leng writes of "over-the-top tympani" as another Spector influence on "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long"'s "Motown 'orchestration'", while labelling the musical arrangement "English pop". Among other later examples, Harrison revived his version of Spector's Wall of Sound for his 1974 single "Ding Dong, Ding Dong"Inglis, p. 46. and the song "If You Believe", from his 1979 album George Harrison.Leng, pp. 153, 209.
Release Apple Records released Living in the Material World on 30 May 1973 in America.Castleman & Podrazik, p. 125. "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" was sequenced on side one of the LP, between the ballads "The Light That Has Lighted the World" and "Who Can See It".Spizer, pp. 253, 254. The album continued Harrison's run of commercial success following the Beatles' break-up in 1970,Doggett, p. 207.Madinger & Easter, pp. 419, 439. topping Billboards albums chart in the USCastleman & Podrazik, p. 364. and peaking at number 2 in Britain, behind the soundtrack to That'll Be the Day. Amid this success, Rodriguez writes, Harrison and Boyd's relationship "finally reached breaking point" in summer 1973,Rodriguez, p. 142. the start of a period through to 1975 that Harrison would describe as his "naughty" years.Tillery, p. 116.
Planned single release "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" was scheduled to be the A-side of a second single from the album, as a follow-up to Harrison's US number 1 hit "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)".The Editors of Rolling Stone, p. 44. The intended release date was 24 September 1973; an acetate of the single was created, and a US catalogue number assigned (Apple 1866).Madinger & Easter, p. 440. The release was cancelled at the last minute,Leng, p. 129fn. for undisclosed reasons.