of experience within twelve hours". In addition, he credited LSD as being the catalyst for his interest in Indian classical music, particularly the work of Ravi Shankar, and Eastern spirituality. By the time Harrison wrote "It's All Too Much", in 1967, the Indian sitar had temporarily replaced the guitar as his main musical instrument, as he received tuition from Shankar and one of the latter's protégés, Shambhu Das. As with his other songs from this period, however, such as "Within You Without You" and "Blue Jay Way", Harrison composed the melody on a keyboard instrument. In the case of "It's All Too Much", his use of Hammond organ allowed him to replicate the drone-like sound of the harmonium commonly heard in Indian vocal pieces. Coinciding with the counterculture's preoccupation with enlightenment, 1967 marked the period when LSD use had become widespread among rock musicians and their audience. In a 1999 interview with Billboard magazine, Harrison said his aim had been "to write a rock'n'roll song about the whole psychedelic thing of the time". Composition and musical structure The song is in the key of G major and the time signature throughout is 4/4. The melody is restricted within a G pedal point, with a simple melodic emphasis on scale notes 2 (A) and 7 (F). As a defining characteristic of Indian classical music, such minimal harmonic movement features in many of Harrison's other Indian-style compositions, including "Within You Without You" and "Blue Jay Way". Aside from the song's intro and extended ending (or coda), the composition is structured into three patterns of verse and chorus, with the second and third patterns separated by an instrumental section. The song originally contained a fourth verse–chorus combination, but this would be omitted from the officially released recording. Among musicologists discussing "It's All Too Much", Walter Everett describes it as a two-chord composition, whereas Alan Pollack contends that the song's sole chord is G major, although he concedes that transcribers may well list fleeting changes to C major over the choruses. In Pollack's opinion, these sections appear to employ IV (C major) and ii (A minor) chords yet, rather than formal changes, "it all boils down to neighbor tone motion in the inner voices superimposed on to the pedal tone of G in the bass." AllMusic contributor Tom Maginnis writes that the lyrics "reflect the idealist optimism of the soon-to-be-labeled 'summer of love' and