DOWNLOAD THE SONGSHEET
The Book Of Love (WORD)
The Book Of Love (PDF)
You can play along in the same key as the Peter Gabriel recording (2nd video) in GCEA tuning, if you put your capo on the 1st fret. You can play the D7 and Dsus4 or you can just play D - your choice.
"The Book of Love" appears on the Magnetic Fields' 1999 three-volume concept album 69 Love Songs, which contains 69 tracks described as "love songs", 23 tracks in each of the three volumes.
When The Magnetic Fields appeared at The Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in January 2001 to play the whole of 69 Love Songs, they were joined by Peter Gabriel for an encore of "The Book of Love". He subsequently recorded the song for the soundtrack of the 2004 film Shall We Dance.
Gabriel's version also appeared on his 2010 album Scratch My Back. Gabriel originally intended to release Scratch My Back and And I'll Scratch Yours simultaneously. However, as completion of the latter dragged out, it was instead decided to release a series of double A-sided singles with one song from each album every new full moon during 2010 on iTunes. The first of such singles was actually "The Book of Love" — Gabriel's cover of a Magnetic Fields song, together with "Not One of Us" — Stephin Merritt's (The Magnetic Fields' frontman) cover of a Peter Gabriel song. The double A side single "The Book of Love" / "Not One of Us" was released on 30 January 2010, on the day of January 2010's full moon.