Reading up on l’affaire Redlands last night sent me back to “We Love You”… I was always fond of Satanic Majesties (a terrific example of the flawed but fascinating classic) from when I first heard it back in 1992, and I was similarly fond of “We Love You”, the attendant single that preceded it, when I finally heard it for the first time several years after that… remember the days when it could take you years to do that sort of thing rather than a few minutes with Youtube’s help? Good times…
Anyway, I’ve always felt since then, too, that it was a far weirder and more unsettling song than I ever saw it getting credit for being. I think many at the time (including the band themselves) viewed their brief psychedelic period as a moment of identity crisis and insincere trend-chasing, and I used to see “We Love You” be dismissed as pseudo-psych fluff. I don’t think it’s actually anything of the sort; starting with the sound effects of a jail door being locked (reference to the infamous drug bust), then going into Nicky Hopkins hammering out a thoroughly ominous piano riff, the slightly recessed falsetto vocals (featuring a certain Lennon and McCartney, the former of whom would later slam the song as a knock-off of “All You Need is Love”, and with all due respect, John, it really wasn’t), then Charlie coming in on drums and Brian grinding on a Mellotron that sounds like the tapes are being chewed up inside the machine… “we love you… of course we do,” Jesus, that sounds more like a threat than anything else. All finally collapsing into an Arabesque Mellotron freakout. More sarcastic and sour than this sort of thing tended to be, and I think a lot darker and stranger than it’s given credit for being.
I give you the original promo film:
Also the official lyric video… which has subtitles that differ from the lyrics in the video, so I still don’t know exactly what’s what… it still sounds murky as shit in this stereo mix as the mono single does:
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