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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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My family lived in
Arnold Grove in the 1940s.

4
00:02:03,600 --> 00:02:05,840
The Liverpool Blitz
was terrifying,

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00:02:05,920 --> 00:02:07,760
and I will never
forget as a child

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00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:10,440
the drone of sirens and
approaching bombers.

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00:02:12,200 --> 00:02:14,400
The Grove's a really
neighbourly place

8
00:02:14,480 --> 00:02:16,840
and we were always in and
out of each other's homes.

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00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:20,520
What was strange
for me was the music

10
00:02:20,600 --> 00:02:22,360
coming out of the
house at number 12,

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00:02:23,720 --> 00:02:25,120
the home with the
Harrison family.

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00:02:30,360 --> 00:02:33,280
George's mother Louise loved
to listen to Indian music

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00:02:33,360 --> 00:02:34,240
on the radio.

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00:02:35,760 --> 00:02:37,640
I'm told that it
helped to keep her calm

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00:02:37,720 --> 00:02:39,360
during her pregnancy.

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00:02:48,480 --> 00:02:51,800
When I first
heard Indian music,

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00:02:51,880 --> 00:02:55,800
I just couldn't really believe
that it was so, so great.

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00:02:55,880 --> 00:02:58,840
And the more I heard of
it, the more I liked it,

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00:02:58,920 --> 00:03:02,040
and it just got bigger and
bigger, like a snowball.

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00:03:16,800 --> 00:03:18,640
One day, the telephone rang

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00:03:18,720 --> 00:03:20,720
and my father
always answered it.

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00:03:20,800 --> 00:03:23,680
He had a particular sort
of authentic Indian accent.

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00:03:23,760 --> 00:03:25,600
His Indian accent had
remained unchanged

24
00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:27,280
in all the 40 years
he'd been here,

25
00:03:27,360 --> 00:03:28,880
and he was shouting
down the telephone,

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00:03:28,960 --> 00:03:31,680
"Ringo who, Ringo who?"

27
00:03:31,760 --> 00:03:33,720
And apparently it
was because Ringo

28
00:03:33,800 --> 00:03:36,640
was on the other end of
the line asking my father

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00:03:36,720 --> 00:03:38,440
whether he had a
spare sitar string.

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00:03:41,080 --> 00:03:42,960
The return of the
heroes to their native land.

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00:03:43,040 --> 00:03:44,720
They conquered the colony.

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00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:48,520
The Beatles, who originated
as a small-time act

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00:03:48,600 --> 00:03:50,160
out of Liverpool,

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00:03:50,240 --> 00:03:52,600
now have no rivals as the
kingpins of the teenage set.

35
00:03:55,640 --> 00:03:57,040
The group had
certainly turned Liverpool

36
00:03:57,120 --> 00:03:58,960
into Britain's answer
to any pop trends

37
00:03:59,040 --> 00:04:00,160
from across the Atlantic.

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00:04:03,040 --> 00:04:04,720
On every side
there is hero worship

39
00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:07,720
that recall the heydays of
Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.

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00:04:09,440 --> 00:04:11,320
Beatlemania has ceased
to be a phenomenon

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00:04:11,400 --> 00:04:13,520
and seems to have
become a way of life.

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00:04:16,520 --> 00:04:18,040
My father had never
heard of The Beatles

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00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:21,720
so he knew nothing about
anything European or popular.

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00:04:21,800 --> 00:04:24,440
But what happened was that
they'd broken a sitar string

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00:04:24,520 --> 00:04:26,240
while George was
recording "Norwegian Wood"

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00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:27,640
in Abbey Road Studio.

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00:04:27,720 --> 00:04:29,480
EMI knew my father

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00:04:29,560 --> 00:04:32,040
because he was often
the person they came to

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00:04:32,120 --> 00:04:33,640
when they required a
group of musicians.

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00:04:33,720 --> 00:04:35,520
So, when the string broke,

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00:04:35,600 --> 00:04:37,800
they found my father and
he did have one, amazingly,

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00:04:37,880 --> 00:04:40,600
he did have a set
of sitar strings.

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00:04:45,040 --> 00:04:47,400
So the whole family got
in the tiny little car

54
00:04:47,480 --> 00:04:50,840
and they all drove to carry
one string to Abbey Road

55
00:04:50,920 --> 00:04:52,400
and there they handed it over

56
00:04:52,480 --> 00:04:53,960
and they watched them recording.

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00:04:56,160 --> 00:04:59,160
It started
with the Indian music.

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00:04:59,240 --> 00:05:03,160
I like so many Indian
instruments, but mainly sitar.

59
00:05:04,480 --> 00:05:07,120
I'd used a little
sitar on our records.

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00:05:11,440 --> 00:05:14,720
The Beatles had already
discovered Indian music,

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00:05:14,800 --> 00:05:16,960
I think when they
were making "Help!"

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00:05:17,040 --> 00:05:18,280
which is, of course,

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00:05:18,360 --> 00:05:21,400
the story of a mystic
Eastern religious group,

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00:05:21,480 --> 00:05:23,680
and they are after
Ringo Starr's ring.

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00:05:23,760 --> 00:05:24,960
So they'd already discovered,

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00:05:25,040 --> 00:05:26,280
and there's that famous scene

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00:05:26,360 --> 00:05:28,600
about them going
into a restaurant.

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00:05:30,040 --> 00:05:32,520
On the set of how
a sitar was used

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00:05:32,600 --> 00:05:34,960
in a sort of little group that's
playing in the restaurant,

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00:05:35,040 --> 00:05:37,600
George picked it up
and was playing with it

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00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:42,160
and sort of got interested
in sitar because of that.

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00:05:42,240 --> 00:05:45,000
It was a very inappropriate
film for most Indians

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00:05:45,080 --> 00:05:46,480
because that film
really lived up

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00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:49,040
to all the stereotypes
about India,

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00:05:49,120 --> 00:05:51,800
about bloodthirsty thug cult.

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00:05:51,880 --> 00:05:54,400
The goddess, which
was named as Kylie,

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00:05:54,480 --> 00:05:57,080
was really based
on a real goddess,

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00:05:57,160 --> 00:05:59,680
the Kali goddess, Hindus
are very reverential to her.

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00:06:01,640 --> 00:06:05,240
So the whole film would be
offending a lot of Indians.

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00:06:09,160 --> 00:06:11,760
And then there was
this book on the yoga.

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00:06:11,840 --> 00:06:14,160
While they're on
shoot at Bahamas,

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00:06:14,240 --> 00:06:17,640
the suddenly come across
this very diminutive yogi

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00:06:17,720 --> 00:06:19,760
who cycles up to where they are

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00:06:19,840 --> 00:06:21,680
and distributes this book.

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00:06:21,760 --> 00:06:23,800
This is Vishnudevananda,

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00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:27,600
the first illustrated book on
yoga going across the West.

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00:06:27,680 --> 00:06:30,800
But I don't think The Beatles
paid him much attention.

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00:06:30,880 --> 00:06:33,320
I think much later
he thought back

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00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:36,080
and there was this sort of
very mysterious connection.

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00:06:38,520 --> 00:06:39,760
The
palace of the Queen

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00:06:39,840 --> 00:06:41,760
has lived through
many historic events,

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00:06:41,840 --> 00:06:43,400
and it's our privilege today

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00:06:43,480 --> 00:06:46,520
to witness one of the most
earth shaking, The Beatles.

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00:06:46,600 --> 00:06:48,320
Fresh from an audience
with the Queen,

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00:06:48,400 --> 00:06:51,000
they hold medals indicating
they have been made members

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00:06:51,080 --> 00:06:53,360
of The Most Excellent Order
of the British Empire.

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00:06:53,440 --> 00:06:54,720
The Beatles, of course,

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00:06:54,800 --> 00:06:57,400
have proven to be one of
Britain's prime exports.

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00:06:57,480 --> 00:06:59,200
They have brought in
more foreign exchange

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00:06:59,280 --> 00:07:00,800
than many industries.

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00:07:00,880 --> 00:07:03,280
And the Queen saw fit to reward
their economic contribution

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00:07:03,360 --> 00:07:04,240
-to the nation.

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00:07:04,320 --> 00:07:05,600
The award entitles The Beatles

104
00:07:05,680 --> 00:07:08,080
to put the letters
MBE after their names.

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00:07:10,240 --> 00:07:11,880
That was the most
miserable time of our lives,

106
00:07:11,960 --> 00:07:14,760
was the MBE cop-out period.

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00:07:14,840 --> 00:07:17,720
We got an MBE, which is
one of the biggest jokes

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00:07:17,800 --> 00:07:20,120
in the history of
this island probably.

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00:07:23,040 --> 00:07:24,440
The great
cavalcade of empire

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00:07:24,520 --> 00:07:26,160
makes a grand spectacle.

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00:07:26,240 --> 00:07:29,040
One of the smallest countries
on the map is responsible for

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00:07:29,120 --> 00:07:31,520
the mightiest Commonwealth
of nations in history.

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00:07:34,880 --> 00:07:37,880
India was always in British
lives because of the empire.

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00:07:37,960 --> 00:07:40,840
We knew about tea and we
knew about, you know, rubber,

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00:07:40,920 --> 00:07:42,960
but the idea of its music

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00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:44,760
being, in any way, an influence

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00:07:44,840 --> 00:07:48,800
on anything from this country
was simply not considered.

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00:07:54,680 --> 00:07:56,360
From the
music that I play

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00:07:56,440 --> 00:07:57,920
to get better and better,

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00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:00,120
musicians generally,
in the West,

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00:08:00,200 --> 00:08:03,400
progress into, say, modern jazz,

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00:08:03,480 --> 00:08:06,640
but when I first
heard Indian music,

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00:08:06,720 --> 00:08:09,080
there was so much more freedom

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00:08:09,160 --> 00:08:12,200
and there was so much more
in it compared to jazz.

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00:08:14,240 --> 00:08:18,080
I just couldn't really believe
that it was so, so great.

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00:08:18,160 --> 00:08:20,000
I don't know, then I just
started to listen to it

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00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:24,480
more and more, and to try
and listen a bit closer.

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00:08:24,560 --> 00:08:26,880
And the more I heard of
it, the more I liked it.

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00:08:45,160 --> 00:08:46,520
My mother meets The
Beatles in India

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00:08:46,600 --> 00:08:47,800
well before I'm even born.

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00:08:49,440 --> 00:08:52,000
I think she, by virtue of
being in the "Hindustan Times"

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00:08:52,080 --> 00:08:53,560
at that point,

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00:08:53,640 --> 00:08:55,600
being a preeminent journalist,
being a chief reporter,

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00:08:55,680 --> 00:08:58,960
got the opportunity,
but didn't really see,

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00:08:59,040 --> 00:09:00,560
my God, the magic
of that moment.

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00:09:02,520 --> 00:09:03,920
And you know, I'm always asked,

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00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:05,520
what's the one thing
about your mother

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00:09:05,600 --> 00:09:07,360
that you would have really
wished you would do.

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00:09:07,440 --> 00:09:09,800
And she's been Indian first
woman war correspondent.

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00:09:11,480 --> 00:09:13,480
She's done all kinds of
crazy trailblazing thing.

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00:09:13,560 --> 00:09:15,880
And I always look at this
photograph and I say,

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00:09:15,960 --> 00:09:18,760
"My God, I wish I
had been that person

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00:09:18,840 --> 00:09:21,120
sitting between John and Paul."

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This was the first
time The Beatles had,

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00:09:28,200 --> 00:09:29,480
as a group, come to India.

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00:09:31,400 --> 00:09:34,480
And they symbolised to us,
not just a new kind of music.

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00:09:34,560 --> 00:09:38,360
It was almost like symbolising
a new kind of life.

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They represented the
whole sixties to us.

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When I heard they were in Delhi,

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I went to the Oberoi
InterContinental,

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00:09:48,680 --> 00:09:51,000
and I sat in the lobby
and everyone was circling

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00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:53,000
all the different
entrances of the hotel,

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00:09:53,080 --> 00:09:54,880
waiting for The Beatles to come
out by the kitchen entrance,

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00:09:54,960 --> 00:09:56,600
by various ways.

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00:09:56,680 --> 00:10:01,520
I sat near the lift and I waited
for Brian Epstein to emerge

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00:10:01,600 --> 00:10:03,680
because I knew he
was their manager.

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00:10:05,280 --> 00:10:06,920
And sure enough, after
a few hours of waiting,

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00:10:07,000 --> 00:10:09,520
I saw him come down
and I sidled up to him

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00:10:09,600 --> 00:10:11,320
and I said, "Excuse
me, Mr. Epstein,

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00:10:11,400 --> 00:10:13,120
I am from All India Radio.

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00:10:13,200 --> 00:10:15,240
The government have
scheduled an interview

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00:10:15,320 --> 00:10:17,160
with The Beatles."

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00:10:17,240 --> 00:10:18,920
And he stopped in his
tracks and looks at me,

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00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:20,960
"How dare you!

165
00:10:21,040 --> 00:10:24,320
The boys will not give an
interview. How dare you!"

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00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:27,120
I said, "I'm just conveying
the decision of the government

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00:10:27,200 --> 00:10:29,280
because this interview
has been announced

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00:10:29,360 --> 00:10:33,080
and it would be
very embarrassing if
this didn't happen."

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00:10:33,160 --> 00:10:35,280
"I will not permit
this," he said,

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00:10:35,360 --> 00:10:38,240
"well, I will give
the interview."

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00:10:38,320 --> 00:10:39,520
I said, "Good
enough for me, sir,

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00:10:39,600 --> 00:10:41,600
Brian Epstein, good
enough for me."

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00:10:41,680 --> 00:10:43,000
Is there
going to be any change

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00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:44,400
in the sort of
work that they do?

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00:10:44,480 --> 00:10:47,160
Possibly, 'cause,
as I've said before,

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there's no dynamic
or important change

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00:10:50,680 --> 00:10:53,520
but The Beatles have
always progressed.

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00:10:53,600 --> 00:10:55,320
And to progress,
they have to change.

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00:10:56,960 --> 00:10:59,240
At seven o'clock I
go up in the lift,

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00:10:59,320 --> 00:11:02,320
I get out and I walk to
the end of the corridor.

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00:11:02,400 --> 00:11:07,240
I knock and there's Brian
Epstein in a bathrobe, sweating.

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00:11:07,320 --> 00:11:10,280
He emerges, walks me across
the length of the hotel,

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00:11:10,360 --> 00:11:13,320
opens the suite on the
other side of the floor,

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00:11:13,400 --> 00:11:16,320
and then I was in with The
Beatles, all four of them.

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00:11:16,400 --> 00:11:17,720
I asked them what
they were doing

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00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:19,560
and they said they had
an album coming out

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00:11:19,640 --> 00:11:21,160
in a month's time.

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00:11:21,240 --> 00:11:24,120
George Harrison mentioned that
he had an Indian influence

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00:11:24,200 --> 00:11:28,680
in one of the songs, which
turned out to be, "Love You To."

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00:11:28,760 --> 00:11:31,200
And Paul mentioned that he
had a classical arrangement

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00:11:31,280 --> 00:11:32,880
behind one of the songs,

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00:11:32,960 --> 00:11:35,680
which I think must have
been "Eleanor Rigby."

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00:11:35,760 --> 00:11:38,680
Even then, they were going
to be Indian influences

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00:11:38,760 --> 00:11:39,720
in their songs.

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00:11:41,440 --> 00:11:44,120
I personally hope there'll
be more Indian influences

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00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:46,600
just generally in any music
because it's worth it.

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00:11:46,680 --> 00:11:48,320
It's very good music.

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00:11:48,400 --> 00:11:49,960
I just like to see
it more popular,

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00:11:50,040 --> 00:11:51,680
more people appreciating it.

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00:11:55,960 --> 00:11:58,920
It was the 6th of July, 1966.

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00:11:59,000 --> 00:12:00,520
Some foreigner came,

202
00:12:00,600 --> 00:12:02,720
they never knew what the
name of the person were,

203
00:12:02,800 --> 00:12:05,960
but they were interested in
buying some sitars, harmoniums,

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00:12:06,040 --> 00:12:08,880
and tablas and sarod,
and that's all.

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00:12:10,120 --> 00:12:12,280
The huge crowd
assembled here outside

206
00:12:12,360 --> 00:12:15,480
looking the new face
of the English people,

207
00:12:15,560 --> 00:12:17,440
like the big hair and all that.

208
00:12:17,520 --> 00:12:18,520
It was a craze.

209
00:12:19,880 --> 00:12:22,040
My father and uncle
went to the hotel

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00:12:22,120 --> 00:12:25,560
and show an instrument,
and, later on,

211
00:12:25,640 --> 00:12:28,000
gave lesson to George
Harrison specially.

212
00:12:29,760 --> 00:12:32,760
After The Beatles, there
was a big craze for sitars,

213
00:12:32,840 --> 00:12:35,240
tablas, and other instruments.

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00:12:35,320 --> 00:12:38,760
In a day, in a month, we were
selling sitar like hotcake.

215
00:12:42,160 --> 00:12:46,000
The famous Beatles, they
came in 1966 to our stall.

216
00:12:46,080 --> 00:12:47,680
They were dressed
very differently

217
00:12:47,760 --> 00:12:50,880
so that the people there
could not recognise them.

218
00:12:50,960 --> 00:12:52,520
And they walked into the store

219
00:12:52,600 --> 00:12:55,320
and they started talking about
Indian musical instruments,

220
00:12:55,400 --> 00:12:58,120
especially the sitar, the
tambura, and the sarod,

221
00:12:58,200 --> 00:12:59,560
and also the tabla.

222
00:13:03,960 --> 00:13:05,840
He was a good sitar
player, my father,

223
00:13:05,920 --> 00:13:08,400
and he was showing
them how to play it

224
00:13:08,480 --> 00:13:10,440
and how the finger
movements are,

225
00:13:10,520 --> 00:13:13,440
how to coordinate both
left and right hand,

226
00:13:13,520 --> 00:13:16,320
and, you know, how to
strike the strings,

227
00:13:16,400 --> 00:13:17,680
how to pluck the strings.

228
00:13:19,040 --> 00:13:22,840
They asked him whom he
learned the sitar from,

229
00:13:22,920 --> 00:13:25,040
he said, "With Ravi Shankar."

230
00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:27,120
Pa-pa-pa-pa, ah. Like this.

231
00:13:32,680 --> 00:13:36,600
Ravi Shankar, as I see it, was
really the first ambassador

232
00:13:36,680 --> 00:13:40,080
for all musicians,
artists, singers, dancers

233
00:13:40,160 --> 00:13:41,680
from India to the West.

234
00:13:48,560 --> 00:13:49,840
Over the
last few years,

235
00:13:49,920 --> 00:13:53,480
I heard the name Ravi
Shankar mentioned.

236
00:13:55,240 --> 00:14:00,000
A good friend of mine told me
to buy a record, which I did.

237
00:14:01,360 --> 00:14:02,600
This was the first
time I'd ever heard

238
00:14:02,680 --> 00:14:04,560
Indian music properly.

239
00:14:07,520 --> 00:14:08,920
But when I first heard it,

240
00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:11,240
I couldn't really,
couldn't believe it really.

241
00:14:16,440 --> 00:14:18,040
He's also been turned
onto Ravi Shankar,

242
00:14:18,120 --> 00:14:21,240
by the, like, David Crosby and
Roger McGuinn from The Birds.

243
00:14:21,320 --> 00:14:22,720
'Cause Ravi Shankar
had appealed to,

244
00:14:22,800 --> 00:14:24,720
the sort of the Beat Generation,

245
00:14:24,800 --> 00:14:26,240
going back to the
fifties actually.

246
00:14:26,320 --> 00:14:29,400
It was all part of
that kind of ambiance.

247
00:14:29,480 --> 00:14:30,920
I'm sure you must
have been asked this

248
00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:32,080
lots of times before,

249
00:14:32,160 --> 00:14:33,800
but what's your opinion of,

250
00:14:33,880 --> 00:14:35,840
sort of, English pop groups
and American pop groups

251
00:14:35,920 --> 00:14:39,440
using the sitar and the Indian
influence in their records?

252
00:14:39,520 --> 00:14:42,880
It will make me very happy
if I see that some people

253
00:14:42,960 --> 00:14:45,880
take true interest
and learn properly.

254
00:14:45,960 --> 00:14:49,080
Because after having played
the sitar for 36 years,

255
00:14:49,160 --> 00:14:52,920
I feel that one has to give
some time to it .

256
00:14:53,000 --> 00:14:54,000
Indeed.

257
00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:01,320
My father and my
mother were running

258
00:15:01,400 --> 00:15:02,720
the Asian Music Circle.

259
00:15:04,240 --> 00:15:07,080
My father was quite successful
at getting musicians

260
00:15:07,160 --> 00:15:11,440
to come to this country and
he'd put on concerts for them.

261
00:15:11,520 --> 00:15:15,080
It was very much for
erudite English people,

262
00:15:15,160 --> 00:15:16,960
intellectuals who knew
about Indian music.

263
00:15:21,320 --> 00:15:23,400
Yehudi Menuhin, amazing man.

264
00:15:23,480 --> 00:15:26,120
He was the president to
the Asian Music Circle,

265
00:15:26,200 --> 00:15:29,200
and I think it was through him
that Ravi Shankar first came.

266
00:15:31,880 --> 00:15:34,720
And George was
fascinated by our family,

267
00:15:34,800 --> 00:15:38,920
and so he was invited round
to spend the afternoon.

268
00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:40,560
I think he came round for lunch.

269
00:15:40,640 --> 00:15:41,960
Pattie was there as well,

270
00:15:42,040 --> 00:15:44,400
and then George came
quite regularly.

271
00:15:44,480 --> 00:15:47,600
Eventually, I said, if
we could get Ravi free,

272
00:15:47,680 --> 00:15:49,400
and the time George was free,

273
00:15:49,480 --> 00:15:51,240
we'd invite them both
together and introduce them

274
00:15:51,320 --> 00:15:52,600
and see whether they got on.

275
00:15:53,960 --> 00:15:56,600
And the doorbell rang
and I rushed to the door

276
00:15:56,680 --> 00:15:59,160
and there wasn't
George, it was Paul.

277
00:15:59,240 --> 00:16:00,680
Then Paul said, "I'm
Paul McCartney."

278
00:16:00,760 --> 00:16:03,240
And I said, "I know."

279
00:16:03,320 --> 00:16:07,360
And he came in and a
little while after that,

280
00:16:07,440 --> 00:16:09,440
I think George arrived next.

281
00:16:09,520 --> 00:16:12,520
And finally
we met, very nicely,

282
00:16:12,600 --> 00:16:14,760
at somebody's house,
having dinner.

283
00:16:14,840 --> 00:16:17,120
We met just as two people

284
00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:20,080
instead of being a
big publicity gimmick.

285
00:16:21,560 --> 00:16:23,640
Ravi came in and we just said,

286
00:16:23,720 --> 00:16:25,880
"Ravi, this is George,
George this is Ravi."

287
00:16:27,560 --> 00:16:30,400
And we had a dinner there,
we just ate and talked.

288
00:16:31,760 --> 00:16:33,520
Paul was a little bit
on the outside actually,

289
00:16:33,600 --> 00:16:36,360
looking a little bit bored,
smoking like a chimney.

290
00:16:36,440 --> 00:16:39,160
My young sister went around
collecting the cigarette butts

291
00:16:39,240 --> 00:16:42,080
to take to school the next
day, the used cigarette butts.

292
00:16:45,440 --> 00:16:49,440
And from then
he offered to give me,

293
00:16:49,520 --> 00:16:54,000
to start me off on sitar with
a few lessons, which he did.

294
00:16:54,080 --> 00:16:57,680
He had many students in India,
very talented musicians.

295
00:16:57,760 --> 00:16:59,240
So to try to explain

296
00:16:59,320 --> 00:17:04,080
what drew George and
Ravi Shankar together

297
00:17:05,400 --> 00:17:07,720
is not easy because
it defies logic.

298
00:17:15,080 --> 00:17:17,560
When George
Harrison came to me,

299
00:17:17,640 --> 00:17:19,560
I didn't know what to think.

300
00:17:20,920 --> 00:17:24,000
But I found he really
wanted to learn.

301
00:17:27,600 --> 00:17:31,360
I never thought our meeting
would cause such an explosion.

302
00:17:33,560 --> 00:17:36,400
That Indian music could suddenly
appear on the pop scene.

303
00:17:39,560 --> 00:17:42,000
George said that, "I
want to learn the sitar,"

304
00:17:42,080 --> 00:17:44,840
and Ravi, he said,
"Yes, I can teach you,

305
00:17:44,920 --> 00:17:47,920
but it's a very difficult
instrument to learn,

306
00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:50,440
and you will have to
spend a lot of time

307
00:17:50,520 --> 00:17:53,240
and your fingers will hurt.

308
00:17:53,320 --> 00:17:56,400
It's going to be a difficult
thing for you to do,

309
00:17:56,480 --> 00:17:59,600
but I want you to come to India

310
00:17:59,680 --> 00:18:02,920
and I will teach
you over there."

311
00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:16,080
So when Ravi invited
George and me,

312
00:18:16,160 --> 00:18:17,480
I was thrilled to be going.

313
00:18:19,040 --> 00:18:20,800
You know, 22, I hadn't
really thought much about it.

314
00:18:20,880 --> 00:18:23,320
I thought of the King's
Road and you know, clothes.

315
00:18:24,680 --> 00:18:26,720
And we started off in Mumbai.

316
00:18:26,800 --> 00:18:29,520
Ravi took us to concerts,
private concerts,

317
00:18:29,600 --> 00:18:31,160
that he gave in people's houses,

318
00:18:31,240 --> 00:18:33,600
and then bigger concerts
in front of his students.

319
00:18:35,320 --> 00:18:39,040
George Harrison came with
his wife, September 1966.

320
00:18:39,120 --> 00:18:41,080
You know, Pandit Ravi
Shankar picks him up,

321
00:18:41,160 --> 00:18:44,800
he takes him to the Taj hotel
and within about four hours,

322
00:18:44,880 --> 00:18:47,680
the whole of the people in Taj,

323
00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:50,400
it was just filled with
people and media and fans,

324
00:18:50,480 --> 00:18:52,600
just coming in, shouting,
"George, George, George."

325
00:18:52,680 --> 00:18:55,520
So finally George got just
fed up and he told Pandit,

326
00:18:55,600 --> 00:18:57,360
"Let's give a press conference,

327
00:18:57,440 --> 00:18:58,960
Let's go and talk to the press."

328
00:18:59,040 --> 00:19:01,000
So, of course, Pandit Ravi
Shankar was the music director

329
00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:02,640
of All India Radio
for many years.

330
00:19:02,720 --> 00:19:05,280
So he said, let's go and do a
radio interview, studio one.

331
00:19:05,360 --> 00:19:07,960
This is where Pandit Ravi
Shankar and George Harrison

332
00:19:08,040 --> 00:19:08,800
did an interview.

333
00:19:10,080 --> 00:19:11,320
So we searched for it,

334
00:19:11,400 --> 00:19:12,800
and we actually opened
quite a few spools,

335
00:19:12,880 --> 00:19:15,600
dusty spool lying in
the side of a corner.

336
00:19:15,680 --> 00:19:17,920
And then we found
George Harrison, there
was a paper inside.

337
00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:19,480
It said "George
Harrison interview."

338
00:19:19,560 --> 00:19:22,520
The tape hadn't been
played in maybe 30 years.

339
00:19:22,600 --> 00:19:23,960
Good
afternoon, George.

340
00:19:24,040 --> 00:19:25,280
Good afternoon.

341
00:19:26,680 --> 00:19:28,280
We would
like to know from you,

342
00:19:28,360 --> 00:19:32,080
do you think you could not
make a public appearance?

343
00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:33,960
If I did want to
make a public appearance,

344
00:19:34,040 --> 00:19:35,920
I would have come
here to do a show,

345
00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:38,440
and I would've come with
John and Paul and Ringo.

346
00:19:38,520 --> 00:19:39,800
It's just like,

347
00:19:39,880 --> 00:19:42,400
all our fans who go to
school during the week.

348
00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:44,000
Well if they go on the holidays

349
00:19:44,080 --> 00:19:47,000
and suddenly somebody's
making them learn maths

350
00:19:47,080 --> 00:19:49,440
and learn English
and learn all this,

351
00:19:49,520 --> 00:19:52,480
then they don't like to do
that when it's their holiday.

352
00:19:52,560 --> 00:19:53,800
It's the same for me.

353
00:19:53,880 --> 00:19:56,040
I go around having
my photograph taken,

354
00:19:56,120 --> 00:19:58,640
signing autographs
and waving at people,

355
00:19:58,720 --> 00:20:01,720
and being a Beatle, and
when it comes to my holiday,

356
00:20:01,800 --> 00:20:05,040
then, naturally, I want to not
be a Beatle, I wanna be me.

357
00:20:09,360 --> 00:20:13,080
When I was
19, I went to India.

358
00:20:13,160 --> 00:20:16,440
My aunt greeted me at
the airport and said,

359
00:20:16,520 --> 00:20:19,720
"Do you know that
George Harrison is
staying at the hotel?"

360
00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:24,440
We asked around, you know,
"Where's Mr. Harrison,"

361
00:20:24,520 --> 00:20:25,880
and we weren't told,

362
00:20:25,960 --> 00:20:28,840
and then sort of hopped
onto the elevator,

363
00:20:28,920 --> 00:20:30,600
and we started going to floors,

364
00:20:30,680 --> 00:20:32,920
and then eventually
there was one floor

365
00:20:33,000 --> 00:20:36,680
where there was a waiter
standing outside a room.

366
00:20:36,760 --> 00:20:40,000
And I don't really know
what made me do it,

367
00:20:40,080 --> 00:20:42,520
but I sort of hobbled in

368
00:20:42,600 --> 00:20:45,520
and George Harrison asked
what I was doing there,

369
00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:47,160
and I just said,

370
00:20:47,240 --> 00:20:48,960
"I would like your
autograph, Mr. Harrison."

371
00:20:49,040 --> 00:20:51,400
And he said, you
know, he sort of,

372
00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:53,120
he wasn't too happy
about me being there.

373
00:20:53,200 --> 00:20:54,880
I also said to him,

374
00:20:54,960 --> 00:20:57,760
he had numerous fans
outside the hotel,

375
00:20:57,840 --> 00:21:00,200
and his words were, which
I've never, ever forgotten,

376
00:21:00,280 --> 00:21:03,720
"Tell your friends if they
like me, to keep away from me."

377
00:21:03,800 --> 00:21:05,000
Which I thought
was rather nasty,

378
00:21:05,080 --> 00:21:07,560
but I needed the autograph.

379
00:21:11,360 --> 00:21:13,120
Everything
that Ravi had shown us

380
00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:16,960
and told us about
him, introduced us
to, made an impact.

381
00:21:18,560 --> 00:21:22,240
He took us to the Ellora
Caves, fascinating.

382
00:21:23,560 --> 00:21:26,440
And we went to
Banaras, Varanasi.

383
00:21:28,680 --> 00:21:30,040
Banaras was unbelievable

384
00:21:30,120 --> 00:21:31,320
'cause we came by boat

385
00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:33,000
and Ravi had explained to us

386
00:21:33,080 --> 00:21:37,120
the whole reason for people
coming to Banaras to die.

387
00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:40,120
And they would request
that they'd be burnt.

388
00:21:40,200 --> 00:21:43,000
And I was fascinated by this.

389
00:21:44,640 --> 00:21:47,360
The pyres and then the family
or the wife or the husband

390
00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:50,000
taking it into the Ganges

391
00:21:50,080 --> 00:21:51,800
and letting their
ashes float away.

392
00:21:54,240 --> 00:21:56,640
So Agra, we went
to the Taj Mahal.

393
00:21:56,720 --> 00:21:59,720
It's beautiful, I love
the story surrounding it.

394
00:21:59,800 --> 00:22:01,800
It was more exquisite

395
00:22:01,880 --> 00:22:05,160
than I could ever have
described to anyone.

396
00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:07,880
And then, towards the end
of our trip, Kumbh Mela.

397
00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:11,560
There were all these sadhus
walking down the road,

398
00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:13,680
and I said, "Ravi,
what's they doing?"

399
00:22:13,760 --> 00:22:16,120
He said, "They walk
hundreds of miles

400
00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:17,800
to come into this Kumbh Mela."

401
00:22:17,880 --> 00:22:20,040
And I was just watching
this spectacle,

402
00:22:20,120 --> 00:22:22,960
and all these people, you
know, families or groups

403
00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:25,360
and sadhus, all of
India, it seemed.

404
00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:32,600
He also told us about Indian
culture and spirituality.

405
00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:37,280
Ravi took us to meet
his spiritual guru

406
00:22:37,360 --> 00:22:39,920
and this man was over 100.

407
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:41,920
And obviously, we didn't
know what they were saying,

408
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,800
but it wasn't very many words.

409
00:22:44,880 --> 00:22:47,360
And Ravi is a reverential
towards his guru.

410
00:22:49,360 --> 00:22:50,920
Throughout my life

411
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:55,520
I look to the great yogi Taj
Mirage, my spiritual guru.

412
00:22:56,800 --> 00:22:59,520
As a Hindu, I believe
blessing of guru

413
00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:02,800
is the most priceless
thing in life.

414
00:23:05,240 --> 00:23:07,120
It was
very moving for me

415
00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:11,960
to see somebody as powerful as
Ravi, but George adored him.

416
00:23:13,320 --> 00:23:14,640
And here he was humbled
in front of his guru.

417
00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:18,040
Ravi said that
there was something

418
00:23:18,120 --> 00:23:22,280
that I found in George,
where he was so simple,

419
00:23:22,360 --> 00:23:26,080
so down to earth, he
looked upon me like a guru,

420
00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:30,360
like a father, and he had
absolutely no airs about him.

421
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:31,520
And that is something

422
00:23:31,600 --> 00:23:32,600
-that we also observed-
-That's true.

423
00:23:32,680 --> 00:23:35,160
When he came to our home,

424
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:40,000
he was absolutely a simple
person, not demanding anything.

425
00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:43,440
I haven't learned
to play the sitar,

426
00:23:43,520 --> 00:23:45,600
I mean, Ravi Shankar
hasn't learnt to play

427
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:47,760
and he's been
playing in 35 years.

428
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:52,560
He was not a sitar player
or a star musician,

429
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:57,320
but I have not seen Ravi have
so much time for someone.

430
00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:01,400
This association, this
link, I can only explain it

431
00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:04,000
that they must've had some
links in a previous life

432
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:05,480
that brought them together.

433
00:24:08,040 --> 00:24:11,800
When George and we
got connected in '66,

434
00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:16,640
it was like wildfire, you know.

435
00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:19,960
He's like a son
to me. Same thing.

436
00:24:20,040 --> 00:24:22,200
Sometimes I
feel like his dad as well.

437
00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:24,720
He can be.

438
00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:33,840
George Harrison, he loved India,

439
00:24:33,920 --> 00:24:38,680
he loved Indian music, he
loved Indian spirituality.

440
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:44,000
So this thing, you know,
pushed Indian classical music

441
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:47,080
on the top, you know,
fusion we can call it,

442
00:24:47,160 --> 00:24:49,600
Western and Indian
classical music.

443
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:52,600
And that was the biggest
fusion ever happened.

444
00:24:59,880 --> 00:25:02,360
And then Harrison came
here to record "Wonderwall"

445
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:04,600
with Indian classical musicians.

446
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:08,760
He was interested in
meeting local musicians.

447
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:15,680
The Beatles use the
sitars in their record.

448
00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:20,320
Somehow we were able to imagine
The Beatles as our band,

449
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:22,040
as an Indian band.

450
00:25:24,360 --> 00:25:26,000
And you know, India
was a closed society

451
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:27,640
and a closed economy,

452
00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:31,440
and it was a not very easy
to get your hands on albums.

453
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:36,320
In 1962 or very early '63 on
the international shortwave,

454
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:41,200
a group of people in
Bangalore heard their music

455
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:43,920
and said, "Hey, wait a minute,
this is very different."

456
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:48,320
What it did really was to
liberate an entire generation

457
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:51,280
from the cultural
shackles of the past.

458
00:25:51,360 --> 00:25:53,760
The British had left in 1947,

459
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:56,800
this core was born
in the late forties

460
00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:59,160
or early fifties, mid fifties.

461
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:00,520
When they came of age,

462
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,320
they rejected the past
and embraced the new.

463
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,720
In those days, most of the
musicians were really from

464
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:12,480
the Anglo Indian Catholic
Christian community

465
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:16,360
because they were the ones who
were more trained in English.

466
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:19,440
The Jets was really
the first beat band,

467
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:21,000
it wasn't so much rock music,

468
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:23,040
but it was known as beat music.

469
00:26:23,120 --> 00:26:26,360
And the word beat was
not far from Beatle.

470
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:30,040
We started to model our
lives along the lines

471
00:26:30,120 --> 00:26:33,240
of what The Beatles
were doing at the time.

472
00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:35,880
The musicians those days
were more into singing

473
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:39,440
Jim Reeves, Everly
Brothers, Pat Boone,

474
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:42,000
and then bang came The Beatles.

475
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,040
And it was like an electric
breath of fresh air.

476
00:26:45,120 --> 00:26:48,400
Whatever we were used to
suddenly lost its relevance.

477
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:53,120
One day we just woke up

478
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:56,600
and we saw an image of
the great Shammi Kapoor

479
00:26:56,680 --> 00:26:59,520
with that Beatle
wig in a Hindi film.

480
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:02,240
That spoke about
the enormous power

481
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:03,960
and the clout of The Beatles.

482
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:07,600
My mother was a Indian
classical musician.

483
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:09,360
And then she bought
me my first 45,

484
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:11,680
which was, "I Wanna
Hold Your Hand."

485
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:14,200
Straight away and she bought
me a British pop magazine

486
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:16,520
where I could read about
what was happening in the UK

487
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:18,840
and the UK pop scene.

488
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:21,840
One day one of my classmates

489
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:24,120
came back to India
after the holidays,

490
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:26,000
and he brought an
album by The Beatles,

491
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:27,680
who we'd never heard of.

492
00:27:27,760 --> 00:27:30,640
By 10 o'clock that night, I'd
fallen in love with the music,

493
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:32,680
that I'd heard it
three or four times,

494
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:34,160
that music grew into me

495
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:36,080
and I thought, "Wow,
this is fabulous."

496
00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:40,720
We used to play those records
again and again and again,

497
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:43,040
you know, somebody listening
to the words, you know,

498
00:27:43,120 --> 00:27:45,040
somebody who's trying to
figure out the chords-

499
00:27:45,120 --> 00:27:47,400
-Yes, the solo.
-And the solos,

500
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:50,120
and the most difficult
part were the harmonies.

501
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:52,440
Beatles still remain
one of the greatest,

502
00:27:52,520 --> 00:27:55,640
you know, harmony
groups, you know, ever.

503
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,640
We went to Calcutta, we
stayed with a friend.

504
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:01,160
And the first night

505
00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:02,840
he took us to a restaurant
called Trinkers.

506
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:04,400
But when we walked in,

507
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:06,160
we were dressed in
our Beatle clothes,

508
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:08,400
and everybody got up
and started clapping.

509
00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:10,000
I don't know why,

510
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:12,640
maybe they assumed we were some
famous group but we weren't,

511
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:14,600
but the owner of
the restaurant said,

512
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:17,160
"Hey, you know, the people
wanna know if you guys sing?"

513
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:18,560
I said, "Yeah, we sing."

514
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:20,680
He said, "Would you do
a couple of numbers?"

515
00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:24,040
So we did, "She Loves You"
and "Please, Please Me."

516
00:28:24,120 --> 00:28:25,920
We brought the house
down, shook our heads,

517
00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:27,160
et cetera, et cetera.

518
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:29,000
The owner came and he said,

519
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,280
"Would you guys
like a residency?"

520
00:28:31,360 --> 00:28:33,040
And that's how our
career started.

521
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:37,560
We were the first Western
music performing group

522
00:28:37,640 --> 00:28:39,600
to be ever recorded in India.

523
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:43,200
At the HMV studios, and a song
which, of I'm not mistaken,

524
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:47,120
there was a song called "Pain"
and "The Girl Next Door."

525
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:49,400
I think "The Girl Next
Door" had some influences

526
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:50,520
of The Beatles.

527
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:52,200
Especially the harmonies.

528
00:28:52,280 --> 00:28:54,840
-Especially the harmonies.
-The harmonies, yes, yes.

529
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:56,640
I was planning to go west

530
00:28:56,720 --> 00:28:59,200
because, you know, forget
the Indian culture,

531
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:01,680
the Western culture was
what we youngsters wanted.

532
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:03,560
By some strange paradox,

533
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:06,320
The Beatles, who lived
in the culture I wanted,

534
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:08,280
were making their way to India.

535
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:24,040
LSD was really beginning
to make its mark in London,

536
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:26,240
in the the circles
that they moved in.

537
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:30,280
Some newspaperman
came up and he said,

538
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:31,960
"Have you had LSD?"

539
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:34,720
So I thought, well, I'll
either be cagey here

540
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:37,000
or I'll be honest,
so I said, yes.

541
00:29:41,080 --> 00:29:43,280
Oh God, well,
I mean, the first time

542
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:45,920
was when George and
Me, John and Cynthia

543
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:49,200
were invited for
dinner by our dentist.

544
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:50,600
And that was a bit scary,

545
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,480
because, you know, what
was happening to us.

546
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:54,640
Do you know what I mean?

547
00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:56,240
It's just, everything
is surreal.

548
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,480
And you look at your hand and
you're like 500 years old.

549
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:03,880
And then I'd hear my voice
and wonder where it came from.

550
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:07,120
And colours, and there's
an intensity to it.

551
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:13,880
When we took the
notorious wonder, drug LSD,

552
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:17,800
we had it and we went out to
a club and it was incredible.

553
00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:19,440
When I got
onto acid, right,

554
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:22,960
you know the day that you're
at a hundred percent potential

555
00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:25,160
and you can handle
whatever the situation is,

556
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:27,240
with acid, or just after acid,

557
00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:29,840
the percent of good days
as opposed to bad days

558
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:31,400
was just a bit better, you know.

559
00:30:33,720 --> 00:30:35,480
They particularly got into drugs

560
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:37,440
and Indian music
at the same time,

561
00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:39,880
and it seemed like there was
some kind of a connection

562
00:30:39,960 --> 00:30:41,560
between the two, there
wasn't of course,

563
00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:44,120
because they both
preexisted separately.

564
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:47,040
There must be
an intimate connection

565
00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:48,360
between Indian music and drugs,

566
00:30:48,440 --> 00:30:50,000
maybe because of
the bizarre sound,

567
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:51,640
and there should be a drug
connection he said that-

568
00:30:51,720 --> 00:30:53,760
Just watch who you're
calling bizarre, Dick.

569
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:56,800
Yes, I have difficulty
with the word bizarre.

570
00:30:56,880 --> 00:30:59,720
I meant B-A-Z-A-A-R,
the other...

571
00:30:59,800 --> 00:31:01,800
No, wait a minute, there's
no way I can get out of this.

572
00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:04,120
To Western ears,
the unusual sound

573
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:08,160
might suggest some sort
of chemical intoxication.

574
00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:09,440
I'm not blaming George,

575
00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:12,120
but you know, somehow
because of him,

576
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:16,000
the sitar became really
popular among the young people.

577
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:17,280
The hippies
were the ones

578
00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:18,760
who caught on to a new music,

579
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:20,520
and it just happens
that most of them were,

580
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:23,360
you know, were smoking
pot or something.

581
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:26,440
And, since then, the two
got caught up together

582
00:31:26,520 --> 00:31:27,840
but it's really a problem.

583
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:31,840
Yeah, I requests to my
listeners to be in a clear mind,

584
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:34,920
because I like to
put them, you know,

585
00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:37,120
-make them high with the music.
-Yourself.

586
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:40,160
Yes, and I feel rather cheated
when they're already high.

587
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:48,360
LSD opened them up to
experiences and awarenesses

588
00:31:48,440 --> 00:31:51,640
of consciousness that
they wouldn't have got

589
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:53,240
in any other way.

590
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:55,960
Eastern religion, I think,
would have been opaque to them,

591
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:57,920
they wouldn't have been able
to understand it at all,

592
00:31:58,000 --> 00:31:59,960
but, having had that experience,

593
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:02,080
suddenly these
things made sense.

594
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:05,720
George said that when
he first took LSD,

595
00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:08,760
he heard voices in
the back of his head

596
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:10,600
saying yogis of the Himalayas.

597
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:18,680
Maharishi, good evening.

598
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:22,280
You once said even if only
1/10 of the adult population

599
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:24,880
meditated for short
periods each day,

600
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:26,840
it would not take
more than a few months

601
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:29,880
to remove the entire
accumulation of
tension in the world.

602
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:31,120
-These are your words?
-I'm absolutely

603
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:32,720
convinced about it.

604
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:36,120
I saw an
advertisement in the paper

605
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:38,880
for transcendental
meditation classes.

606
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:40,440
So I went with a girlfriend.

607
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:44,040
England I've been
visiting once every year.

608
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:46,240
People do feel stress and strain

609
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:50,800
due to the greater
undertaking in their life.

610
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,880
Paul phoned
George and said,

611
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:55,520
"There's this man
called Maharishi

612
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:58,600
who's going to come to England
and talk about meditation"

613
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:00,280
And I said,

614
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:01,880
"Oh, that's the same guy
that, you know, I follow"

615
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:03,640
So in those days, when
one Beatle did something,

616
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:06,240
they all did it, so we all went.

617
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:07,400
Now you've been
travelling the world now

618
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:08,960
for many years.

619
00:33:09,040 --> 00:33:10,320
You've made, I think, something
like eight world tours.

620
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:12,240
Ninth, I returned this time.

621
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:16,240
This was
the ninth completed.

622
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:18,240
Maharishi was
the most powerful,

623
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:21,480
magnetically charismatic
person I've ever met.

624
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:24,360
He was also the happiest
person I ever met.

625
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:26,560
He was filled with this energy

626
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:29,200
that you wanted to be
near him all the time.

627
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:31,240
All of us who were on his staff,

628
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:33,680
we fought each other to
get into the room with him.

629
00:33:35,040 --> 00:33:36,280
It was just the
right time, anyway,

630
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:37,720
there we were
waiting for someone-

631
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:39,080
Waiting for a guru,

632
00:33:39,160 --> 00:33:40,520
-and he came.
-The great magic man to come,

633
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:41,800
and he came, you know.

634
00:33:41,880 --> 00:33:43,640
There he was, he's just
talking about it all

635
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:45,040
and he had great answers.

636
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:47,800
'Cause he's got that
kind of thing, you know,

637
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:49,840
and he got a twinkle in the eye.

638
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,120
They told Maharishi
that they'd been seeking

639
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:55,160
a spiritual experience.

640
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:56,840
They'd been trying to
do it through drugs,

641
00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:59,240
but it just didn't
work, you know?

642
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:02,480
And so he invited them to
come to Bangor, North Wales.

643
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:07,080
Where he would be doing a
meditation retreat for 10 days.

644
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:30,600
The
Beatles seem to be

645
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:32,640
among your supporters now,
how do you feel about that?

646
00:34:32,720 --> 00:34:35,720
They seem to be very
intelligent and I'm honoured.

647
00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:38,720
And so you think that if The
Beatles adopt your teaching,

648
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:40,040
then they can spread it

649
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:41,000
amongst other young
people in England?

650
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:42,280
And much more,

651
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:44,160
not only England,
but around the world.

652
00:34:44,240 --> 00:34:47,480
Because the word Beatle has
gone on in all the continents,

653
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:51,160
and younger people are
fascinated by their name.

654
00:34:51,240 --> 00:34:52,840
What do you
think of The Beatles?

655
00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:54,800
Very good,
intelligent young boys,

656
00:34:54,880 --> 00:34:56,360
and there's great potential.

657
00:34:56,440 --> 00:34:58,320
And their music?

658
00:34:58,400 --> 00:34:59,760
Music I haven't heard,

659
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:02,360
but because they are
appreciated all over the world,

660
00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:05,160
they must have something
very grateful in their music.

661
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:12,400
I think
he's trying to say

662
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:14,640
is the things we're getting
into aren't that important.

663
00:35:14,720 --> 00:35:16,640
Money has taken over from God.

664
00:35:16,720 --> 00:35:18,640
Instead of trying
to get where God is,

665
00:35:18,720 --> 00:35:20,960
we all try and get the
biggest bank balance.

666
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:22,360
That's what it seems to mean.

667
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:26,320
Peace of mind
is like an ocean, very deep.

668
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:29,960
And the activity's only
on the surface like that.

669
00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:33,800
So if the waves of the ocean
contact deeper level of water,

670
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:35,920
then the wave becomes stronger.

671
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:37,520
That means that we're
going to be happier.

672
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:42,280
And much happier and
much more creative also.

673
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:56,800
He was found in his
second floor bedroom,

674
00:35:56,880 --> 00:35:59,400
just after two o'clock this
afternoon by his housekeeper.

675
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:02,480
Mr. Epstein has been
unwell now for some months.

676
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:04,240
And he's been in the
habit of taking tablets

677
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:05,520
to help him sleep at night.

678
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,800
When Brian died, The
Beatles clearly were lost.

679
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:13,280
They were like jelly, their
manager, their best friend,

680
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:17,080
their man who they rely
on totally for their fame,

681
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:20,280
for their fortune, you
know, their guide in life,

682
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:21,400
was now gone.

683
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:27,880
John, where would you be
today without Mr. Epstein?

684
00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:29,160
I don't know.

685
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:33,360
I understand that Mr. Epstein
was to be initiated here?

686
00:36:33,440 --> 00:36:34,440
Mmm.

687
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:35,760
When was he coming up?

688
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:37,320
Was he coming up
in the afternoon?

689
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:39,240
Coming tomorrow. Just
Monday, that's all we knew.

690
00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:41,760
I spoke to him
Wednesday evening,

691
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:46,000
then evening before we first
saw Maharishi's lecture

692
00:36:46,080 --> 00:36:48,760
and he was in great spirits.

693
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:51,160
I wanted Maharishi

694
00:36:51,240 --> 00:36:52,400
to bring him back to life again.

695
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:54,400
You know, I, by this time,

696
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:56,240
I'm giving him so much power

697
00:36:56,320 --> 00:37:00,040
and how extraordinary that
they were with Maharishi,

698
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:03,640
who's now going to be, sort
of, their spiritual guru,

699
00:37:03,720 --> 00:37:06,200
but also that they
could lean on him,

700
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:07,840
because they
trusted him so much.

701
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:11,760
So, for that moment in
time, he replaced Brian.

702
00:37:13,320 --> 00:37:17,120
I understand that the Maharishi
conferred with you all?

703
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:21,720
He told us not to get
overwhelmed by grief,

704
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:25,320
and whatever thoughts we have
of Brian, to keep 'em happy,

705
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:26,760
because any thoughts
we have of him

706
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:28,760
will travel to him,
wherever he is.

707
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:49,560
I come to India because of I
want to leave material world.

708
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:51,520
Come to a simple country.

709
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:57,240
Ganga is a holy river because
it comes from Himalayas

710
00:37:58,480 --> 00:38:00,360
and this place has much energy.

711
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:06,000
And it come down, no? Takes
energy and comes here.

712
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:10,920
The
ashrams or monasteries

713
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:13,200
of the various religious orders

714
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:15,400
glimmer over the
smooth green water.

715
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:18,160
Though the sun is
hot, the river is icy,

716
00:38:18,240 --> 00:38:20,800
flowing from a glacier
high up in the Himalayas,

717
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:22,560
the land of the Gods.

718
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:26,320
But Rishikesh, its name
means place of the wise ones,

719
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:29,080
is far from being a
remote or desert region.

720
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:31,480
Its one of the most celebrated
centres of pilgrimage

721
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:32,560
in the whole of India.

722
00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:35,800
In the cool clear air

723
00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:37,960
of Rishikesh, North India,

724
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:41,560
the meditation retreat
of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

725
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:43,480
Flower-loving yogi
told reporters

726
00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:45,280
that his brand of peace of mind

727
00:38:45,360 --> 00:38:46,880
could only be truly appreciated

728
00:38:46,960 --> 00:38:48,760
by intelligent men of the world

729
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:52,240
with rewarding activities
and high incomes.

730
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:54,960
The purpose of life is the
expansion of happiness.

731
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:56,840
Anyone can find the way.

732
00:38:56,920 --> 00:38:59,760
That's the basic teaching
of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

733
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:01,600
Are The Beatles really
going to find happiness

734
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:03,200
here in Rishikesh?

735
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:05,200
Are they really going to
become, as Maharishi hopes,

736
00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:07,400
the practical
philosophers of the age?

737
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:10,360
Or must they return
home unsatisfied?

738
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:12,800
Eternal, rich, young
men victims of a fad,

739
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:14,560
looking for something, anything,

740
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:16,480
to make their lives worth while.

741
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:27,960
I was a reporter.

742
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:32,240
I'd heard that the best
thing that a reporter can do

743
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:35,760
is to beat all the
other reporters in
getting to the news.

744
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:39,080
A friend of mine read

745
00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:44,000
that The Beatles were coming
to stay with the Maharishi.

746
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:46,560
And he said, "Saeed, do
you know what it means?

747
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:51,360
The whole world and its
media is going to be here."

748
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:06,400
The idea is to beat them.

749
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:08,760
How do you beat them?

750
00:40:08,840 --> 00:40:13,680
"Ah," I said, "the idea
is to become a disciple.

751
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:18,120
If I become an insider,
I'll get the story."

752
00:40:18,200 --> 00:40:21,240
So I walked in, you
had to make some excuse

753
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:22,880
if you're a drug addict,

754
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:25,200
if you had failed,
if you are a junkie,

755
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:28,640
he whispered a mantra,
a chant, in my ear,

756
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:34,680
Which I'm not supposed
to share with anybody.

757
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:38,320
Then I went in, and
again, and again,

758
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:39,640
until all the sadhus

759
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:43,480
who were going to be his
managers recognise me.

760
00:40:43,560 --> 00:40:46,400
The password was
jaguar will live,

761
00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:48,400
you said jaguar will
live then you were in.

762
00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:55,200
From Hardwar, to Rishikesh,

763
00:40:56,760 --> 00:40:59,080
across Lakshman Jhula.

764
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:16,400
I was taking aback.

765
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:18,640
It was like a locust storm.

766
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:23,960
Journalist, after
journalist, after journalist,

767
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:26,640
hundreds of them,
"What's going on?

768
00:41:26,720 --> 00:41:28,840
They're not letting us in."

769
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:30,840
I said, "They're not
letting anybody in."

770
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:35,440
Overnight, I went
off to Rishikesh,

771
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:38,560
with quite a few people
from all over India.

772
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:41,640
And it was very difficult to
even know where The Beatles,

773
00:41:41,720 --> 00:41:44,520
where the ashram was,
because it was so fortified.

774
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:46,480
Fortified in the
sense that, you know,

775
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:47,800
there are a lot of police,

776
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:49,760
there was a lot of
bundobust in there.

777
00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:52,680
The whole day, we would
just, early morning, wake up,

778
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:56,160
somebody said, "Hey, The Beatles
are coming to the Ganga."

779
00:41:56,240 --> 00:41:58,040
And so we'd all rush up there

780
00:41:58,120 --> 00:41:59,520
and wait there for
two, three hours,

781
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:01,200
but nothing would
happen, you know.

782
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:04,880
But it was like a celebration,
it was like an exhibition,

783
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:07,960
'cause, you know, there
was so much of joy.

784
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:14,120
One day, Maharishi
called me in and he said,

785
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,400
"The Beatles are gonna be
arriving in a few days,

786
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:20,920
but I want you to go
fix up their rooms."

787
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:26,720
They put me in charge to make
their rooms nicer.

788
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:28,440
I would have them paint this,

789
00:42:28,520 --> 00:42:30,120
they'd drop so much
paint on the floor,

790
00:42:30,200 --> 00:42:32,040
then they'd have
to paint the floor.

791
00:42:32,120 --> 00:42:34,360
Anyway, we had curtains put up.

792
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:39,240
We had mirrors, we even had
toilet fixtures that worked.

793
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:41,480
They have mattresses
on their beds.

794
00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:45,200
There's a fan club
of real beetles

795
00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:47,160
waiting to welcome them,

796
00:42:47,240 --> 00:42:49,240
but the hardest thing about
the life they lead here

797
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:51,520
are the beds they'll sleep on.

798
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:54,760
A hard wooden base, a simple,

799
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:56,640
rather than a spartan existence.

800
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:01,560
When they did arrive

801
00:43:01,640 --> 00:43:05,000
he introduced them to
me and said to them,

802
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:08,120
"If you want to anything,
get a hold of Nancy.

803
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:11,280
Nancy will be my ears and eyes
in case you need anything,

804
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:12,680
you let me know through her."

805
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:29,160
So I found my way and I
went to the gate and I said,

806
00:43:29,240 --> 00:43:30,280
"Jaguar will live."

807
00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:33,080
"Ah," they said.

808
00:43:33,160 --> 00:43:35,680
Oh, there was a hell
of commotion outside.

809
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:37,960
"How did this bastard get in?"

810
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:41,640
I said, "I'm just a
devotee of the Maharishi"

811
00:43:41,720 --> 00:43:45,880
So anyway, I entered and
there under the tree,

812
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:50,440
Maharishi, George,
John Lennon, Paul,

813
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:53,840
their respective
ladies, a whole galaxy.

814
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:55,760
I mean, I can't keep
describing them.

815
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:57,360
I need a photograph.

816
00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:58,520
So I called the sadhus.

817
00:43:59,920 --> 00:44:02,760
I said, "Look, I'm
having difficulty

818
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:05,160
managing this on my own,

819
00:44:05,240 --> 00:44:08,280
I immediately assumed the
role of publicity manager

820
00:44:08,360 --> 00:44:10,120
for the Maharishi."

821
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:12,560
So I said, "Here's
a name, Raghu Rai.

822
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:14,720
You go outside, call him in.

823
00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:20,040
This man came, who
was from the ashram,

824
00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:23,360
and he says, "Mr. Naqvi
wants to see you."

825
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:25,240
I said, "Give me two minutes."

826
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:29,560
So I went in, I put a big
zoom lens on my camera

827
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:32,240
and put it inside my labaada.

828
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:37,040
So when I'm walking nobody can
see if I'm carrying a camera.

829
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:40,560
So I walked with him for
about eight, 10 minutes.

830
00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:42,760
One sadhu was standing there.

831
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:46,800
So he was standing next to him,
so Saeed said, "Look there."

832
00:44:47,840 --> 00:44:49,000
I was shocked.

833
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:51,640
Then I turned around

834
00:44:51,720 --> 00:44:54,960
and I saw that guy sadhu
standing next to us.

835
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:56,000
And I said .

836
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:03,600
So he goes to get a
glass of water for me,

837
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:05,480
and Saeed says,
"Hurry up, hurry up."

838
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:07,120
In those days,

839
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:10,360
we didn't have auto focus,
auto exposure cameras,

840
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:11,720
so you had to set the focus set

841
00:45:11,800 --> 00:45:14,080
and the exposure, everything.

842
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:18,960
And I take just one picture,
nicely focused and proper.

843
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:25,160
Under the tree, Maharishi
Yogi and The Beatles.

844
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:33,600
See this building, this is
the building where they lived.

845
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:37,600
This room, I'll
show you this side,

846
00:47:37,680 --> 00:47:40,800
this is the room of John Lennon.

847
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:42,400
John Lennon stayed here.

848
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:45,760
Other Beatles were
staying in these rooms,

849
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:48,680
along with their
wives and family.

850
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:57,560
So when Beatles came,
I was a little kid.

851
00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:01,160
We were enjoying the whole
atmosphere and the jungles

852
00:48:01,240 --> 00:48:04,280
and Beatles and the
Maharishi, we were very close.

853
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:06,680
We never find he's a
celebrity, or some big thing,

854
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:07,960
we should not go near him.

855
00:48:09,240 --> 00:48:11,280
So this was the
place where Maharishi

856
00:48:11,360 --> 00:48:13,800
used to converse with
Beatles and guests.

857
00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:18,560
Straight we can see River
Ganga, clear water and forest.

858
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:21,760
There was a raised
platform, rectangular shape.

859
00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:24,960
It was used for posing with
the visitors and Beatles

860
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:26,600
for the group photographs.

861
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:11,240
Maharishi's
disciples can wander in peace

862
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,120
amongst the trees and bungalows,

863
00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:17,480
or meditate in some quiet
spot overlooking the Ganges.

864
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:20,680
He doesn't require you
to give anything up

865
00:49:20,760 --> 00:49:23,000
except drugs and
a week's salary,

866
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:25,640
in The Beatles case around
11,000 pounds a piece.

867
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:28,960
What exactly
have you been doing,

868
00:49:29,040 --> 00:49:30,040
how do you meditate?

869
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:32,080
You sit down, you relax,

870
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:36,160
and then you repeat a sound to
yourself, and it sounds daft,

871
00:49:36,240 --> 00:49:39,520
but it's just a system of
relaxation and that's all it is,

872
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:41,040
and there's nothing more to it.

873
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:46,320
By expanding the conscious
capacity of the mind,

874
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:48,240
mental capacity
will be stronger,

875
00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:50,080
thought power will be great,

876
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:51,920
and when the
thought power great,

877
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:55,240
then the thought will find
their fulfilment more easily.

878
00:49:57,600 --> 00:50:01,560
You go into do those
interstellar spaces,

879
00:50:01,640 --> 00:50:05,440
where the spaces ultimately
shrink into your being.

880
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:10,280
Now, this gibberish goes on
and on and on relentlessly,

881
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:16,000
and you have these
people close their eyes.

882
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:20,200
And the more
unintelligible it gets,

883
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:24,720
the more profoundly
affected they pretend to be.

884
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:29,560
Because, I can't really imagine
anyone being moved by words

885
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:34,320
which are patently
and absolutely absurd.

886
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:36,520
His lectures were in the nature

887
00:50:36,600 --> 00:50:39,960
of this kind of arcane nonsense.

888
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:44,160
Nothing succeeds like
success, and it succeeded.

889
00:50:44,240 --> 00:50:45,480
Are
you a business man?

890
00:50:45,560 --> 00:50:49,400
I don't deal with
money directly,

891
00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:52,200
but I'm conducting the
movement in 50 countries.

892
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:54,240
I can't be said to
be no businessman,

893
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:56,080
even though I'm not
dealing with money.

894
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:00,920
I was a young girl, 21 or 22,

895
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:03,960
so there I was in
this beautiful ashram,

896
00:51:04,040 --> 00:51:07,120
I was taken to
meet the Maharishi.

897
00:51:07,200 --> 00:51:11,200
He asked me to come close to
him, I did, too close in fact.

898
00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:14,360
He said, I'm going to whisper
something in your ear,

899
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:16,640
the mantra, then he said,

900
00:51:16,720 --> 00:51:19,720
"I want you to go down
into my prayer room,

901
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:22,040
and I want you to
concentrate upon that mantra

902
00:51:22,120 --> 00:51:24,680
You're going to feel
like a new person."

903
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:29,480
And I actually believed that
this was going to happen to me.

904
00:51:31,120 --> 00:51:35,080
It was a dark room and there
was some incense burning

905
00:51:35,160 --> 00:51:37,760
and there was some things
hanging on the wall.

906
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:39,920
And I started
repeating the mantra.

907
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:40,880
I repeated it,

908
00:51:42,200 --> 00:51:44,400
and the only feeling
that I remember

909
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:47,800
there was this intense desire
to escape from that place.

910
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:52,160
I went near the
Maharishi and he said,

911
00:51:52,240 --> 00:51:54,360
"How do you feel my daughter?

912
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:56,680
Do you feel like a
different person?"

913
00:51:56,760 --> 00:51:58,640
I said, "Actually I don't."

914
00:51:58,720 --> 00:52:02,120
He looked at me and he said,

915
00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:03,840
"I going to whisper
another mantra."

916
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:08,280
"Back you go,
repeat that mantra.

917
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:10,240
You might have to
spend a little longer."

918
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:13,280
By now, I was in control.

919
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:16,720
I repeated the mantra,

920
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:19,560
and within half an
hour I came upstairs.

921
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:21,960
I gave him a glorious account

922
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:25,360
of how I felt like a
totally new human being.

923
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:27,480
I felt like a different
person all together.

924
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:30,320
That was the only way to escape.

925
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:33,080
And I walked out into freedom.

926
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:41,000
Maharishi really influenced

927
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:44,680
The Beatles songs and
lyrics tremendously,

928
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:46,480
starting with
"Across The Universe"

929
00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:50,600
which is written right after
The Beatles learned meditation.

930
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:53,800
In that song, it
says "jai guru deva,"

931
00:52:53,880 --> 00:52:57,120
and Maharishi used to use
that expression all the time.

932
00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:00,560
Now once more, .

933
00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:06,480
It is in praise of the guru.

934
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:10,240
So John Lennon put that into
the song, jai guru deva.

935
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:13,600
And then he said, "om," and
om is the primordial sound

936
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:16,160
that underlies and gives
rise to the universe.

937
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:23,160
Just the exposure
to mantras, I mean,

938
00:53:23,240 --> 00:53:24,840
the idea was a repetitious
sound could create

939
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:26,560
an altered state
of consciousness

940
00:53:26,640 --> 00:53:28,560
and you get it in,
"Hello, Goodbye,"

941
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:30,080
you get in goo goo g'joob.

942
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:33,000
Repetitious sounds
creeping into their songs,

943
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:34,560
whether deliberately or not.

944
00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:18,680
I lived for three
days in a cottage

945
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:20,240
at a camp in Rishikesh,

946
00:55:20,320 --> 00:55:23,000
just a hundred yards
from The Beatles.

947
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:25,760
I remember sitting
around a bonfire at night

948
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:28,880
with The Beatles, and Mike
Love of The Beach Boys,

949
00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:32,160
And Donovan, and others
singing and playing the guitar.

950
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:36,600
It was a cold, cold
evening, and at some point

951
00:55:36,680 --> 00:55:39,960
I muttered to the person
next to me, "I'm freezing."

952
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:42,400
A man seated just ahead of me,

953
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:46,200
wrapped in a huge brown
grey blanket heard me.

954
00:55:46,280 --> 00:55:50,360
He said, "Move up, love, come
and share my blanket with me."

955
00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:52,400
It was George Harrison.

956
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:53,760
I should have said yes,

957
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:56,080
but by then I had
successfully cultivated

958
00:55:56,160 --> 00:55:57,920
an air of nonchalance

959
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:01,680
and looked at George like
he was a nobody and replied,

960
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:04,560
"No, thanks, George, I'm fine."

961
00:56:04,640 --> 00:56:07,920
Four regrettable words that
I could never take back,

962
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:11,720
and that have haunted
me all my life

963
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:13,800
for what could have
been, but never was.

964
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:22,240
The person who was actually
sincere about meditation,

965
00:56:22,320 --> 00:56:27,080
about Indian culture, Indian
music was George Harrison.

966
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,360
Maharishi said of
all The Beatles,

967
00:56:31,440 --> 00:56:34,920
George is the most advanced,
and this is his last life.

968
00:56:36,240 --> 00:56:38,360
George
wanted to understand

969
00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:41,400
why he was chosen to be famous.

970
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:44,960
He found curious that
he, a boy from Liverpool

971
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:47,560
who otherwise would have
had a very menial job,

972
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:50,440
was selected and was famous.

973
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:52,600
And he wants to know the answer.

974
00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:57,120
Really the
only reason to be living

975
00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:00,240
is to have complete
full knowledge,

976
00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:02,120
full bliss consciousness.

977
00:57:02,200 --> 00:57:05,520
Everything else is just
mundane and secondary.

978
00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:07,400
The purpose is to transcend

979
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:09,760
from this relative
state of consciousness

980
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:11,680
to an absolute state
of consciousness.

981
00:57:14,360 --> 00:57:19,120
Maharishi said, John Lennon
has many more lives to go,

982
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:23,240
and he must not give into
his weakness for women,

983
00:57:23,320 --> 00:57:24,800
or it will ruin him.

984
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:27,640
Keeping
company with himself,

985
00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:29,360
it could be part
of the treatment,

986
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:31,120
John stalked along
the shady paths.

987
00:57:33,440 --> 00:57:36,040
John Lennon when he
first arrived, he was grey,

988
00:57:36,120 --> 00:57:38,840
he'd been heavily into
drugs, he just looked awful.

989
00:57:38,920 --> 00:57:41,040
And then little by little,

990
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:43,200
you saw the change that
came over this man,

991
00:57:43,280 --> 00:57:46,360
he had pink cheeks, he
started to be very sociable,

992
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:49,240
he was out playing his guitar,
chatting with other people,

993
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:50,960
and he was having
such a lovely time.

994
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:54,320
Meditation worked
all right, you know,

995
00:57:54,400 --> 00:57:57,040
you can handle each day better

996
00:57:57,120 --> 00:57:58,720
than I could handle it before.

997
00:57:58,800 --> 00:58:01,280
I was mediating 8 hours a
day and things like that.

998
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:04,560
And it was really some
trip, like acid was nowhere.

999
00:58:04,640 --> 00:58:07,280
Just sitting there just
muttering some word in a room,

1000
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:09,520
that's the biggest trip
I've ever had in life.

1001
00:58:11,880 --> 00:58:15,480
Ringo is
always in meditation,

1002
00:58:15,560 --> 00:58:17,960
and he goes by
feeling and heart.

1003
00:58:18,040 --> 00:58:21,640
Whereas the other Beatles
too much brain is in the way.

1004
00:58:23,600 --> 00:58:25,520
Ringo enjoyed
a peace of togetherness

1005
00:58:25,600 --> 00:58:28,880
with Mrs. Ringo, it was
a very peaceful scene.

1006
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:30,680
Ringo Starr, two or three days,

1007
00:58:30,760 --> 00:58:33,040
he sees all this
and he declares,

1008
00:58:33,120 --> 00:58:37,880
"It's like a Butlin holiday
camp," and disappears, he left.

1009
00:58:38,880 --> 00:58:40,600
And then there were three.

1010
00:58:42,120 --> 00:58:43,800
Ringo and
his wife, Maureen,

1011
00:58:43,880 --> 00:58:46,360
stayed at the
ashram for 10 days.

1012
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:49,960
Ringo's allergies cause
problems with the ashram food.

1013
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:51,400
He was allergic
to so many things

1014
00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:54,000
that he took two
suitcases to India.

1015
00:58:54,080 --> 00:58:56,840
One had his clothes
and the other one

1016
00:58:56,920 --> 00:58:59,480
was stuffed with
cans of Heinz beans.

1017
00:59:01,080 --> 00:59:03,840
But the primary reason
that Ringo and Maureen left

1018
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:06,640
is because they
missed their kids.

1019
00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:08,800
Maharishi, I
thank him, you know,

1020
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:10,920
all the time I thank him for
giving me what it gave me.

1021
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:12,400
So I'm glad I've got it

1022
00:59:12,480 --> 00:59:14,360
in case I ever wanna
go into it again,

1023
00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:16,320
you know, you can't lose,
if you learn something.

1024
00:59:32,640 --> 00:59:35,400
Maharishi wanted to
take them off on a trip

1025
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:37,320
to the Himalayas.

1026
00:59:37,400 --> 00:59:40,680
A company, Ganja's
Helicopter Services.

1027
00:59:45,080 --> 00:59:47,320
I'd always wanted
to become a pilot.

1028
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:50,400
I became the chief
pilot for the Maharishi.

1029
00:59:51,960 --> 00:59:55,800
And I flew everybody,
including the prime minister,

1030
00:59:55,880 --> 01:00:00,560
and Mahatma Gandhi
also, and The Beatles.

1031
01:00:00,640 --> 01:00:02,120
Paul kept on saying,
"Me, me, me,"

1032
01:00:02,200 --> 01:00:03,600
because he wanted to get in.

1033
01:00:03,680 --> 01:00:05,280
And John said, "No, me, me, me."

1034
01:00:05,360 --> 01:00:08,640
And anyway, finally, John just
pushed him aside and went in.

1035
01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:13,160
I'm flying John on my left
and the Maharishi on my right.

1036
01:00:13,240 --> 01:00:16,040
And the Maharishi
lent across me,

1037
01:00:16,120 --> 01:00:19,080
as you know, he had a
lot of hair and beard,

1038
01:00:19,160 --> 01:00:21,280
it was difficult for me
to fly the helicopter.

1039
01:00:22,720 --> 01:00:25,840
He was telling John down
there in the mountains,

1040
01:00:25,920 --> 01:00:29,160
people lived there, they never
went down to the valleys,

1041
01:00:29,240 --> 01:00:31,240
and they're praying
all the time.

1042
01:00:31,320 --> 01:00:33,440
So John said, "What are
they're praying for?"

1043
01:00:33,520 --> 01:00:36,200
So the Maharishi said "They
are praying that we crash."

1044
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:38,640
And John said, "Goodness, why
do they want us to crash?"

1045
01:00:38,720 --> 01:00:40,720
They said, "Well, they're
on the mountaintop

1046
01:00:40,800 --> 01:00:43,200
with hardly any food.

1047
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:46,480
And I'm in Rishikesh with
all the celebrities there,

1048
01:00:46,560 --> 01:00:48,160
and all the money in the world."

1049
01:00:48,240 --> 01:00:52,400
So John said, "Maharishi,
if you don't move

1050
01:00:52,480 --> 01:00:56,800
your head and hair their
prayers will be answered."

1051
01:00:56,880 --> 01:01:00,720
And of course, I started
laughing and everybody did.

1052
01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:02,120
He had a sense of humour.

1053
01:01:22,600 --> 01:01:27,000
They were visiting Dehradun,
George, John, and Paul.

1054
01:01:27,080 --> 01:01:29,440
He said this Saturday,

1055
01:01:29,520 --> 01:01:32,720
they're having
celebration in the ashram

1056
01:01:32,800 --> 01:01:37,160
to celebrate the birth
of George Harrison wife.

1057
01:01:37,240 --> 01:01:41,040
If I could could bring some
other musicians along with me,

1058
01:01:41,120 --> 01:01:42,680
they'll be very happy.

1059
01:01:42,760 --> 01:01:45,600
So I said, I told them,
"Okay, I can arrange it."

1060
01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:55,240
So we all sat down,
Maharishi gave us a lecture,

1061
01:01:55,320 --> 01:01:57,400
and then I was asked to play.

1062
01:01:57,480 --> 01:01:59,760
There was a composition
with George Harrison,

1063
01:01:59,840 --> 01:02:04,040
"With In, Without You," which
was based on Dhrag Jhug,

1064
01:02:04,120 --> 01:02:06,600
so I decided to play that.

1065
01:02:06,680 --> 01:02:09,080
And then George was
excited about it.

1066
01:02:10,760 --> 01:02:12,760
And I smiled at him, he
smiled and he waved at me.

1067
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:17,880
At that time, Nick sang with me,

1068
01:02:17,960 --> 01:02:20,840
and Nick was just
a visiting teacher.

1069
01:02:20,920 --> 01:02:23,160
Now tell me where did
that famous photo of us?

1070
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:25,040
Was it in the middle
or was it over here?

1071
01:02:25,120 --> 01:02:26,080
Here?

1072
01:02:26,160 --> 01:02:27,360
Okay.

1073
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:28,640
-In this area, in this wall.
-Okay.

1074
01:02:32,720 --> 01:02:35,800
I have such vivid memories
of that birthday party

1075
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:39,480
where so much music was
played, so much glamour.

1076
01:02:39,560 --> 01:02:42,600
Pattie Harrison there
in her mauve sari.

1077
01:02:42,680 --> 01:02:45,360
Part of our mission
was to bring her

1078
01:02:45,440 --> 01:02:48,920
George Harrison's birthday
present to her, the dilruba.

1079
01:02:49,000 --> 01:02:51,600
It was so relaxed
coming from Britain.

1080
01:02:51,680 --> 01:02:56,080
The Beatles were impossible
to see or touch or reach,

1081
01:02:56,160 --> 01:02:58,440
and here it was a completely
different atmosphere.

1082
01:03:00,040 --> 01:03:03,040
They were absolutely natural,
all the musicians there.

1083
01:03:03,120 --> 01:03:07,840
I think I spoke to Donovan,
Mike Love, Paul Horn,

1084
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:11,240
and of course, Paul McCartney,
Jane Asher, John Lennon,

1085
01:03:11,320 --> 01:03:13,000
I don't think I spoke
to George Harrison

1086
01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:16,200
because he was so tied
up in both the occasion

1087
01:03:16,280 --> 01:03:19,080
of his wife's birthday
and also the music.

1088
01:03:19,160 --> 01:03:22,480
He really was playing
music and enjoying music

1089
01:03:22,560 --> 01:03:25,080
and absorbing Indian music.

1090
01:03:25,160 --> 01:03:27,800
There was no pretence about
it. He was completely hooked.

1091
01:03:30,560 --> 01:03:33,920
The music started
off being very Indian

1092
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:36,480
and played on
Indian instruments,

1093
01:03:36,560 --> 01:03:39,920
but then you could
say it deteriorated
into a birthday party

1094
01:03:40,000 --> 01:03:41,800
with the "Happy Birthday" song,

1095
01:03:41,880 --> 01:03:45,920
and the British national
anthem for some curious reason.

1096
01:03:46,000 --> 01:03:49,840
As the evening went
on and perhaps people
got a bit fidgety,

1097
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:52,120
we went outside and
enjoyed fireworks.

1098
01:03:52,200 --> 01:03:53,720
Of course, I went away feeling

1099
01:03:53,800 --> 01:03:56,600
that perhaps the meditation
was all a bit of a lark,

1100
01:03:56,680 --> 01:03:59,240
because they enjoyed themselves
so much in the evening.

1101
01:04:02,440 --> 01:04:05,320
George Harrison was thinking

1102
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:08,800
mostly of playing
better, serious music,

1103
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:10,840
which belonged to the world.

1104
01:04:10,920 --> 01:04:13,800
But John Lennon was a
serious human being.

1105
01:04:13,880 --> 01:04:15,840
He was not very talkative,

1106
01:04:15,920 --> 01:04:18,640
but he's thinking
was very beautiful.

1107
01:04:18,720 --> 01:04:22,720
So I was slightly more
fascinated by John.

1108
01:04:25,600 --> 01:04:28,360
I think they gave me so
much respect, you know.

1109
01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:30,800
They treated me very
well, they called me, sir.

1110
01:04:30,880 --> 01:04:33,720
And I was feeling
strange, you know.

1111
01:04:33,800 --> 01:04:35,840
I told them, "Don't
call me, sir, no no no."

1112
01:04:37,920 --> 01:04:40,080
They could not have
seen me at all,

1113
01:04:40,160 --> 01:04:42,960
there was no need
for what they did.

1114
01:04:43,040 --> 01:04:45,880
Success had not gone
to the head, you know.

1115
01:04:45,960 --> 01:04:47,920
They were simple human beings.

1116
01:04:52,120 --> 01:04:53,320
We came up the path here,

1117
01:04:53,400 --> 01:04:55,800
we were killing time
and The Beatles meantime

1118
01:04:55,880 --> 01:04:57,840
had come back to their bungalow

1119
01:04:57,920 --> 01:04:59,920
and they were on the roof,
not just The Beatles,

1120
01:05:00,000 --> 01:05:01,600
but many of the musicians
were on the roof

1121
01:05:01,680 --> 01:05:04,000
of the bungalow playing music.

1122
01:05:04,080 --> 01:05:07,680
And it's the most memorable
thing of my day here,

1123
01:05:07,760 --> 01:05:09,320
was hearing this music,

1124
01:05:09,400 --> 01:05:11,280
which was of course
unrecorded music,

1125
01:05:11,360 --> 01:05:15,160
it was just being
created at that time.

1126
01:05:15,240 --> 01:05:16,800
And we felt we were
in the, you know,

1127
01:05:16,880 --> 01:05:18,680
witnessing the first time round,

1128
01:05:18,760 --> 01:05:20,560
the first version of this music.

1129
01:05:34,960 --> 01:05:37,880
The word was coming
to the Maharishi

1130
01:05:37,960 --> 01:05:40,840
that they had suspended
their meditations

1131
01:05:40,920 --> 01:05:44,480
and that they were sitting and
composing music and things.

1132
01:05:46,120 --> 01:05:48,040
We were there
for about six weeks,

1133
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:52,480
and during that time was no
pressure from the outside world.

1134
01:05:52,560 --> 01:05:55,120
There was no pressure
of them being Beatles,

1135
01:05:55,200 --> 01:05:58,000
and their creative
juices just overflowed.

1136
01:05:59,400 --> 01:06:02,160
They wrote all the songs
from "The White Album."

1137
01:06:02,240 --> 01:06:05,000
They worked out gradually
what they wanted us to do

1138
01:06:05,080 --> 01:06:07,480
for the rest of their
time as Beatles.

1139
01:06:09,560 --> 01:06:10,800
Other than when they're
we in the studio,

1140
01:06:10,880 --> 01:06:12,800
they didn't get to spend
a lot of time together

1141
01:06:12,880 --> 01:06:14,560
So in India, they
were suddenly together

1142
01:06:14,640 --> 01:06:16,360
like sort of mates again.

1143
01:06:16,440 --> 01:06:19,800
So they could sit out and play
in the way that John and Paul

1144
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:22,960
used to play in the council
house where Paul had grown up.

1145
01:06:24,880 --> 01:06:27,200
And you've got Mike Love
from The Beach Boys is there

1146
01:06:27,280 --> 01:06:29,880
so they've got that whole
tributary of American music

1147
01:06:29,960 --> 01:06:31,240
that had influenced them,

1148
01:06:31,320 --> 01:06:33,280
and Donovan with this
kind of folk tradition

1149
01:06:33,360 --> 01:06:36,000
and Paul Horn, who was a jazz
flautist, he was there too,

1150
01:06:36,080 --> 01:06:38,000
so you've got a
lot of interesting,

1151
01:06:38,080 --> 01:06:39,520
sort of, streams coming in.

1152
01:06:44,160 --> 01:06:45,720
I'll show you the stairs here.

1153
01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:50,560
They'd sit here on these stairs.

1154
01:06:50,640 --> 01:06:53,240
There here was bamboo
structure here,

1155
01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:55,040
as a fence, those days.

1156
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:57,360
They'd come and they'd
make new song there,

1157
01:06:57,440 --> 01:07:00,400
staying here, sitting
on the stairs.

1158
01:07:00,480 --> 01:07:03,560
And that side,
Prudence were living,

1159
01:07:03,640 --> 01:07:08,040
Maharishi told her to be inside,
stay with their practises.

1160
01:07:10,160 --> 01:07:14,920
Mia Farrow's sister Prudence
way ahead of anybody else.

1161
01:07:16,240 --> 01:07:18,360
As soon as she
entered her thing,

1162
01:07:18,440 --> 01:07:23,240
she went into meditation
and she has not emerged,

1163
01:07:24,080 --> 01:07:26,480
it's already 24 hours.

1164
01:07:26,560 --> 01:07:27,840
So she's serious.

1165
01:07:29,080 --> 01:07:31,840
They would invite her outside.

1166
01:07:31,920 --> 01:07:34,560
"Hello, Prudence, come
out, come out, Prudence."

1167
01:07:34,640 --> 01:07:35,880
And she won't come.

1168
01:07:35,960 --> 01:07:38,920
And then they made a
song, "Dear Prudence."

1169
01:07:42,480 --> 01:07:44,120
I think one
that's kind of interesting

1170
01:07:44,200 --> 01:07:48,320
is when I came back from a
tiger hunt with my eldest son,

1171
01:07:48,400 --> 01:07:51,240
when we came walking in,
he said to Maharishi,

1172
01:07:51,320 --> 01:07:55,520
"I shot a tiger today,
is that bad karma?"

1173
01:07:55,600 --> 01:07:58,520
Sitting there observing
this was John Lennon,

1174
01:07:58,600 --> 01:08:00,640
and John said,
"Don't you call that

1175
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:02,600
slightly life destructive?"

1176
01:08:02,680 --> 01:08:05,000
And I said, "It was
the tiger or us."

1177
01:08:08,320 --> 01:08:10,600
Maharishi glared
at Nancy the whole time

1178
01:08:10,680 --> 01:08:12,320
they were talking about it.

1179
01:08:12,400 --> 01:08:15,720
Life destruction is life
destruction, end of story.

1180
01:08:15,800 --> 01:08:17,720
That's how the song,

1181
01:08:17,800 --> 01:08:21,680
"The Continuing Story Of
Bungalow Bill" originated.

1182
01:08:21,760 --> 01:08:25,640
It was John's answer to
Nancy's paltry excuse.

1183
01:08:27,720 --> 01:08:29,080
Because Mike Love was there

1184
01:08:29,160 --> 01:08:30,520
and they knew The
Beach Boys music,

1185
01:08:30,600 --> 01:08:33,000
it was this kind
of friendly rivalry

1186
01:08:33,080 --> 01:08:34,480
of them wanting
to top each other.

1187
01:08:34,560 --> 01:08:35,840
But "Back in the U.S.S.R."

1188
01:08:35,920 --> 01:08:38,040
is just like a parody
of a Beach Boys song,

1189
01:08:38,120 --> 01:08:40,560
but instead of being about
the USA, it's about Russia,

1190
01:08:40,640 --> 01:08:42,760
and it was a very
novel idea at the time

1191
01:08:42,840 --> 01:08:44,280
to think of a rock and roll song

1192
01:08:44,360 --> 01:08:46,080
that appeared to be
celebrating Russian culture

1193
01:08:46,160 --> 01:08:47,880
and had all these Russian names

1194
01:08:47,960 --> 01:08:49,800
and Russian places
being mentioned.

1195
01:08:53,160 --> 01:08:54,480
Opposition
members today

1196
01:08:54,560 --> 01:08:58,000
demanded in inquiry into
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

1197
01:08:58,080 --> 01:09:01,800
Alleging that Rishikesh have
become a centre of conspirage.

1198
01:09:01,880 --> 01:09:04,000
The issue was raised
by Mr. K. Anirudhan

1199
01:09:04,080 --> 01:09:07,520
after a radio transmitter
was found on a bus

1200
01:09:07,600 --> 01:09:10,240
near the antibiotics
factory in Rishikesh

1201
01:09:10,320 --> 01:09:12,920
belonging to a foreigner.

1202
01:09:13,000 --> 01:09:15,560
The furor broke
out in parliament.

1203
01:09:15,640 --> 01:09:19,000
It was led by the communist,
backed by the socialists,

1204
01:09:19,080 --> 01:09:23,760
and they said that there was
a CIA camp in the ashram,

1205
01:09:23,840 --> 01:09:26,600
and the Maharishi were
getting all these foreigners,

1206
01:09:26,680 --> 01:09:29,520
including The Beatles,
to destabilise India.

1207
01:09:31,720 --> 01:09:35,480
I give the CIA total
credit for sponsoring

1208
01:09:35,560 --> 01:09:38,840
and initiating the entire
consciousness movement,

1209
01:09:38,920 --> 01:09:41,640
counterculture
events of the 1960s.

1210
01:09:43,440 --> 01:09:46,960
This was exactly the
time when Indira Gandhi

1211
01:09:47,040 --> 01:09:49,040
was making friends
with the Soviet Union.

1212
01:09:52,000 --> 01:09:53,560
Today we're going
to show you a cases

1213
01:09:53,640 --> 01:09:55,560
of attempted espionage by agents

1214
01:09:55,640 --> 01:09:58,680
of the Sino-Soviet
Intelligence System.

1215
01:09:58,760 --> 01:10:02,560
If you recognise the way a
Sino or Soviet agent operates,

1216
01:10:02,640 --> 01:10:05,760
both in finding someone
vulnerable to subversion,

1217
01:10:05,840 --> 01:10:08,320
as well as in their
technique of ensnaring him

1218
01:10:08,400 --> 01:10:10,560
and applying pressure
to get him to play ball.

1219
01:10:12,160 --> 01:10:16,760
The KGB sent their top
man in India, Bezmenov,

1220
01:10:16,840 --> 01:10:19,520
to the ashram to check
out the Maharishi.

1221
01:10:21,840 --> 01:10:23,200
My function was to discover

1222
01:10:23,280 --> 01:10:26,720
what kind of people
attend this school.

1223
01:10:26,800 --> 01:10:30,480
Yes, there are some
influential opinion makers

1224
01:10:30,560 --> 01:10:32,320
who come back with
the crazy stories

1225
01:10:32,400 --> 01:10:34,040
about Indian philosophy.

1226
01:10:35,800 --> 01:10:38,840
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a
great spiritual leader,

1227
01:10:38,920 --> 01:10:41,160
or maybe a great
charlatan and crook,

1228
01:10:41,240 --> 01:10:43,760
depending from which side
you're looking at him.

1229
01:10:43,840 --> 01:10:47,200
Beatles were trained at
his ashram, Mia Farrow,

1230
01:10:47,280 --> 01:10:51,120
and other useful idiots from
Hollywood visited his school,

1231
01:10:51,200 --> 01:10:53,360
and they returned back
to the United States,

1232
01:10:53,440 --> 01:10:56,200
absolutely zonked out of
their minds with marijuana,

1233
01:10:56,280 --> 01:10:59,040
hashish and crazy
ideas of meditation.

1234
01:11:01,080 --> 01:11:02,840
Maharishi used to always say,

1235
01:11:02,920 --> 01:11:06,480
"You can never create peace
through signing treaties,

1236
01:11:06,560 --> 01:11:10,760
through legislation, through
any kind of external means.

1237
01:11:10,840 --> 01:11:12,560
The only way to
create world peace

1238
01:11:12,640 --> 01:11:15,440
is for people to meditate."

1239
01:11:15,520 --> 01:11:16,760
See, if you carefully look

1240
01:11:16,840 --> 01:11:19,160
at what Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi is teaching,

1241
01:11:19,240 --> 01:11:21,120
is that most of the problems,

1242
01:11:21,200 --> 01:11:23,560
most of the burning
issues of today,

1243
01:11:23,640 --> 01:11:26,600
can be solved simply
by meditating.

1244
01:11:26,680 --> 01:11:30,400
Don't rock the boat,
don't get involved,

1245
01:11:30,480 --> 01:11:33,120
just sit down, look at
your navel and meditate,

1246
01:11:33,200 --> 01:11:35,760
and things, due to
some strange logic,

1247
01:11:35,840 --> 01:11:40,000
due to cosmic vibration will
settle down by themselves.

1248
01:11:41,560 --> 01:11:46,240
The single aim of spiritually
regenerating every man

1249
01:11:46,320 --> 01:11:49,440
everywhere in the world,
and creating peace.

1250
01:11:52,360 --> 01:11:54,080
You can get
control of yourself

1251
01:11:54,160 --> 01:11:56,080
just by sitting quietly,

1252
01:11:56,160 --> 01:12:00,680
and by turning off from the
external problems we have,

1253
01:12:00,760 --> 01:12:02,640
and all this society,

1254
01:12:02,720 --> 01:12:04,800
you can go inside yourself

1255
01:12:04,880 --> 01:12:06,640
where it's always
calm and peaceful.

1256
01:12:07,960 --> 01:12:09,960
This is exactly what the KGB

1257
01:12:10,040 --> 01:12:12,000
and Marxist Lenin's
propaganda want,

1258
01:12:12,080 --> 01:12:15,280
to distract their
attention and mental energy

1259
01:12:15,360 --> 01:12:20,120
from real issues
into non-issues, into
non-existent harmony.

1260
01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:23,920
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
obviously is not on the payroll

1261
01:12:24,000 --> 01:12:27,640
of the KGB, but whether
he knows it or not,

1262
01:12:27,720 --> 01:12:28,960
he contributes greatly

1263
01:12:29,040 --> 01:12:31,440
to demoralisation
of American society.

1264
01:12:39,360 --> 01:12:42,440
Paul McCartney and his
girlfriend, Jane Asher,

1265
01:12:42,520 --> 01:12:44,960
stayed for five
weeks and they left

1266
01:12:45,040 --> 01:12:48,400
because Jane had a theatrical
commitment back in London.

1267
01:12:50,800 --> 01:12:51,680
This presumably

1268
01:12:51,760 --> 01:12:53,680
is your first big meditation,

1269
01:12:53,760 --> 01:12:56,040
and what effect
has it had on you?

1270
01:12:56,120 --> 01:12:57,680
I think it calms you down.

1271
01:12:57,760 --> 01:12:59,240
It's hard to tell

1272
01:12:59,320 --> 01:13:01,360
because it was so
different life out there.

1273
01:13:01,440 --> 01:13:03,040
It'd be easy to tell
now that I'm back

1274
01:13:03,120 --> 01:13:04,880
and we're doing
some ordinary thing

1275
01:13:04,960 --> 01:13:06,880
to see just what it does.

1276
01:13:09,560 --> 01:13:12,520
They were four working
class guys from Liverpool.

1277
01:13:12,600 --> 01:13:16,240
They had an innate sense of
not being taken advantage of.

1278
01:13:16,320 --> 01:13:17,960
So when they get
together with Maharishi,

1279
01:13:18,040 --> 01:13:21,720
Maharishi is inevitably
tempted to capitalise

1280
01:13:21,800 --> 01:13:25,160
on his sudden worldwide fame

1281
01:13:25,240 --> 01:13:26,920
because of The
Beatles association.

1282
01:13:28,280 --> 01:13:30,440
They realise that
maybe Maharishi

1283
01:13:30,520 --> 01:13:33,080
had been using them all
along for publicity,

1284
01:13:33,160 --> 01:13:35,080
ever since the final record,

1285
01:13:35,160 --> 01:13:38,200
that was "by The Beatles
Spiritual Teacher,"

1286
01:13:38,280 --> 01:13:40,120
it said on the album.

1287
01:13:40,200 --> 01:13:44,240
So John and George started a
think something fishy is here.

1288
01:13:44,320 --> 01:13:46,080
He's using us for publicity.

1289
01:13:47,800 --> 01:13:51,360
So they began to hear little
bits of news here and there,

1290
01:13:51,440 --> 01:13:53,000
from the grapevine of, you know,

1291
01:13:53,080 --> 01:13:55,440
your Maharishi's planning
this and planning that,

1292
01:13:55,520 --> 01:13:58,600
and you're gonna be in it
and they're going, "Are we?"

1293
01:13:58,680 --> 01:14:02,000
Maharishi
kept promising ABC

1294
01:14:02,080 --> 01:14:04,880
that he would do a
special with The Beatles.

1295
01:14:04,960 --> 01:14:06,320
And The Beatles kept saying,

1296
01:14:06,400 --> 01:14:08,040
"We're not gonna
do this special,"

1297
01:14:08,120 --> 01:14:11,680
but Maharishi kept
promising it over and over.

1298
01:14:11,760 --> 01:14:13,600
There comes a time in late '67,

1299
01:14:13,680 --> 01:14:15,680
when Paul and
George go to Sweden,

1300
01:14:15,760 --> 01:14:18,680
basically to tell the Maharishi
to cool a bit, you know.

1301
01:14:18,760 --> 01:14:21,000
"Don't start making
plans that involve us

1302
01:14:21,080 --> 01:14:22,640
without telling us first."

1303
01:14:22,720 --> 01:14:24,080
We're glad to have you here.

1304
01:14:24,160 --> 01:14:25,400
-Thank you.
-Thank you.

1305
01:14:25,480 --> 01:14:28,080
We do appreciate
your music and...

1306
01:14:29,560 --> 01:14:30,440
That's a posy, yes?

1307
01:14:30,520 --> 01:14:32,520
The smell of the flowers.

1308
01:14:32,600 --> 01:14:34,960
We only decided
to come yesterday,

1309
01:14:35,040 --> 01:14:37,560
just to pop over to
have a little chat.

1310
01:14:37,640 --> 01:14:38,920
Yes, yes.

1311
01:14:39,000 --> 01:14:41,040
And when The Beatles
were in Rishikesh,

1312
01:14:41,120 --> 01:14:44,400
he, without their knowledge
was having the discussions

1313
01:14:44,480 --> 01:14:45,920
with a Hollywood film company

1314
01:14:46,000 --> 01:14:48,320
called Four Star International.

1315
01:14:52,320 --> 01:14:54,240
Maharishi promised them

1316
01:14:54,320 --> 01:14:56,440
that they could have
exclusive rights

1317
01:14:56,520 --> 01:15:00,560
to make a film about Maharishi
and about Maharishi's guru.

1318
01:15:00,640 --> 01:15:03,080
But unfortunately, Maharishi
made the same promise

1319
01:15:03,160 --> 01:15:04,560
to someone else.

1320
01:15:04,640 --> 01:15:08,040
He had given rights to
Four Star Productions.

1321
01:15:08,120 --> 01:15:12,000
The lawyer arrived in Rishikesh
with a signed contract.

1322
01:15:12,080 --> 01:15:15,040
They gave exclusive
rights to film Maharishi

1323
01:15:15,120 --> 01:15:17,480
for the next five years.

1324
01:15:19,160 --> 01:15:22,400
Some suits arrive from
Hollywood and a crew,

1325
01:15:22,480 --> 01:15:24,680
and John and George were going,

1326
01:15:24,760 --> 01:15:27,080
"We didn't want this, you
know we are here to meditate,

1327
01:15:27,160 --> 01:15:29,240
we don't want these
film people here."

1328
01:15:29,320 --> 01:15:31,480
And there was a
confrontation with Maharishi

1329
01:15:31,560 --> 01:15:33,840
about, "Why you're doing
this, we told you not to"

1330
01:15:35,320 --> 01:15:36,920
In any case,

1331
01:15:37,000 --> 01:15:39,120
The Beatles became quite
disillusioned about that.

1332
01:15:39,200 --> 01:15:41,920
The film was really
kind of a deal breaker,

1333
01:15:42,000 --> 01:15:43,440
and they got very angry

1334
01:15:43,520 --> 01:15:46,520
because they had been
granted exclusive rights

1335
01:15:46,600 --> 01:15:49,520
to do this film, and now
another film company is there.

1336
01:15:49,600 --> 01:15:51,160
So the whole thing
just fell apart.

1337
01:15:56,280 --> 01:15:58,160
I don't know what
happened, I still don't know.

1338
01:15:58,240 --> 01:16:01,400
But I know there many rumours
around, but John said,

1339
01:16:01,480 --> 01:16:04,480
"That's it we're, we're
going, were going."

1340
01:16:04,560 --> 01:16:08,400
But I know John wants to come
back to England and see Yoko,

1341
01:16:08,480 --> 01:16:11,800
and so any little excuse
and John was ready to go,

1342
01:16:11,880 --> 01:16:13,360
'cause we'd been
there for weeks.

1343
01:16:14,720 --> 01:16:16,880
Well, it was only
John who was upset.

1344
01:16:16,960 --> 01:16:19,280
John dragged George along.

1345
01:16:19,360 --> 01:16:22,000
And I still think it
was when Magic Alex came

1346
01:16:22,080 --> 01:16:23,520
from the Apple Corps group.

1347
01:16:27,440 --> 01:16:30,960
Alexis Margas was one of
The Beatles associates.

1348
01:16:31,040 --> 01:16:33,120
In fact, he was
very close to John,

1349
01:16:33,200 --> 01:16:35,760
and sort of attached
himself to John's hip,

1350
01:16:35,840 --> 01:16:38,520
and Cynthia really
didn't like Alexis.

1351
01:16:38,600 --> 01:16:42,120
She was very concerned about
this Svengali influence

1352
01:16:42,200 --> 01:16:44,560
that he was having on John.

1353
01:16:44,640 --> 01:16:48,480
John had introduced
Alex as, "My new guru."

1354
01:16:48,560 --> 01:16:51,560
He was this electronics marvel.

1355
01:16:51,640 --> 01:16:53,840
Supposedly, he
introduced himself

1356
01:16:53,920 --> 01:16:57,400
as somebody who is like
Edison and Marconi combined,

1357
01:16:57,480 --> 01:17:00,600
but in fact, he was
just a TV repairman.

1358
01:17:00,680 --> 01:17:02,520
He's just a friend of
ours who's in electronics.

1359
01:17:02,600 --> 01:17:04,240
Oh yeah.

1360
01:17:04,320 --> 01:17:06,600
He's called Alex, and he's
great, he's a Greek fella.

1361
01:17:06,680 --> 01:17:08,000
-And he's invented things-
-You know he's Greek.

1362
01:17:08,080 --> 01:17:10,040
He's invented incredible things.

1363
01:17:11,720 --> 01:17:13,560
He was a minx,
yeah, naughty, little boy.

1364
01:17:13,640 --> 01:17:16,000
You see, he wanted to
have power over John,

1365
01:17:16,080 --> 01:17:18,920
so he would, you know,
create all these things,

1366
01:17:19,000 --> 01:17:20,560
pretending he's a scientist.

1367
01:17:20,640 --> 01:17:22,720
He said, "Oh, here's this
one from new wallpaper,

1368
01:17:22,800 --> 01:17:24,280
but it's all speakers,

1369
01:17:24,360 --> 01:17:27,640
so the whole room will
have this one big speaker."

1370
01:17:27,720 --> 01:17:30,640
So he loved all that,
controlling John.

1371
01:17:30,720 --> 01:17:33,880
So clearly and obviously
Maharishi was in the way.

1372
01:17:34,880 --> 01:17:36,480
One night, John and Maharishi

1373
01:17:36,560 --> 01:17:38,440
were having this
wonderful rapport,

1374
01:17:38,520 --> 01:17:40,960
and I, you know how
you can see sometimes

1375
01:17:41,040 --> 01:17:43,880
when a person let's the
mask drop from their face,

1376
01:17:43,960 --> 01:17:47,560
and I could see this
really dislike of Maharishi

1377
01:17:47,640 --> 01:17:49,600
on Magic Alex's face.

1378
01:17:49,680 --> 01:17:52,760
It disturbed me and I felt
something was going wrong.

1379
01:17:54,040 --> 01:17:56,440
No one ever saw him meditating.

1380
01:17:56,520 --> 01:17:57,640
And as a matter of fact,

1381
01:17:57,720 --> 01:18:00,240
he admitted that
he came to India

1382
01:18:00,320 --> 01:18:04,120
for the purpose of getting The
Beatles away from Maharishi.

1383
01:18:04,200 --> 01:18:09,000
Alexis said, "Oh, it's because
we don't want Maharishi

1384
01:18:10,760 --> 01:18:14,280
to have that much
influence over the boys."

1385
01:18:16,400 --> 01:18:19,280
I'm totally
convinced that Magic Alex

1386
01:18:19,360 --> 01:18:22,440
made a friend of one of the
young women at the ashram,

1387
01:18:22,520 --> 01:18:25,600
and he got her to
tell John Lennon

1388
01:18:25,680 --> 01:18:28,160
that she was having
sex with Maharishi.

1389
01:18:28,240 --> 01:18:30,320
Is this just horrified all of us

1390
01:18:30,400 --> 01:18:31,800
when this whole thing happened.

1391
01:18:33,120 --> 01:18:35,960
I believe that
Maharishi made a pass.

1392
01:18:36,040 --> 01:18:37,640
And the reason I believe it

1393
01:18:37,720 --> 01:18:41,160
is because he made a pass
at many women that I knew.

1394
01:18:41,240 --> 01:18:43,360
Wasn't the first
or the last one.

1395
01:18:44,920 --> 01:18:46,800
Well I remember
Maharishi saying that, you know,

1396
01:18:46,880 --> 01:18:48,400
"If you haven't an
ugly woman over here,

1397
01:18:48,480 --> 01:18:50,560
and a beautiful
woman over there,

1398
01:18:50,640 --> 01:18:52,080
it's just easier
for your attention

1399
01:18:52,160 --> 01:18:53,480
to go to the more beautiful."

1400
01:18:56,640 --> 01:18:59,040
John and George
didn't believe it at first,

1401
01:18:59,120 --> 01:19:01,160
but finally Alexis
convinced them

1402
01:19:02,560 --> 01:19:04,760
and then went and got
taxis for all of them

1403
01:19:04,840 --> 01:19:06,640
before they could
change their mind.

1404
01:19:08,320 --> 01:19:10,960
While they were waiting
for the taxis, John wrote,

1405
01:19:11,040 --> 01:19:13,720
"Maharishi, Maharishi,
what have you done?

1406
01:19:13,800 --> 01:19:16,000
You made a fool of everyone."

1407
01:19:16,080 --> 01:19:18,960
The song had a lot
of expletives in it,

1408
01:19:19,040 --> 01:19:23,200
and George said, "You can't
say that, that's ridiculous"

1409
01:19:23,280 --> 01:19:26,640
So John changed the
lyrics to "Sexy Sadie."

1410
01:19:28,320 --> 01:19:30,520
Yeah, "Sexy Sadie," it was
actually called "Maharishi."

1411
01:19:30,600 --> 01:19:32,440
And it was a put
down in the Maharishi

1412
01:19:32,520 --> 01:19:34,560
in very vicious terms.

1413
01:19:34,640 --> 01:19:36,360
I don't think the
chance of it getting out

1414
01:19:36,440 --> 01:19:39,080
with the words that
John had originally,

1415
01:19:39,160 --> 01:19:40,760
but basically denounces him

1416
01:19:40,840 --> 01:19:42,160
and says he was
a bit of a rogue.

1417
01:19:44,640 --> 01:19:46,920
John
dragged George along

1418
01:19:47,000 --> 01:19:50,160
and then he just
bolted from the ashram.

1419
01:19:50,240 --> 01:19:52,120
I think
Maharishi was a mistake.

1420
01:19:52,200 --> 01:19:53,520
What do you
mean he was a mistake?

1421
01:19:53,600 --> 01:19:55,240
We made a mistake.

1422
01:19:55,320 --> 01:19:57,040
We thought there was more
to him than there was,

1423
01:19:57,120 --> 01:19:59,840
you know, but he's human,

1424
01:19:59,920 --> 01:20:01,320
and for a while we
thought he wasn't,

1425
01:20:01,400 --> 01:20:02,960
you know, thought he was a.

1426
01:20:35,200 --> 01:20:36,920
The Beatles, they
were opening us up

1427
01:20:37,000 --> 01:20:40,160
to different experiences
in various ways, you know.

1428
01:20:40,240 --> 01:20:43,280
Indian philosophy
and Indian music.

1429
01:20:43,360 --> 01:20:44,920
And then when they
went to Rishikesh,

1430
01:20:45,000 --> 01:20:47,600
you know, it was the
idea of Indian travel.

1431
01:20:47,680 --> 01:20:51,120
It's like, "Wow, looks
nice over there, you know,

1432
01:20:51,200 --> 01:20:53,400
they're enjoying themselves
in the sunshine."

1433
01:20:55,720 --> 01:20:58,840
There'd been a hippie trail,
an embryonic hippie trail,

1434
01:20:58,920 --> 01:21:01,360
in the early sixties, a
few people had gone out.

1435
01:21:01,440 --> 01:21:04,240
The whole point being
that you drove over land,

1436
01:21:04,320 --> 01:21:08,000
the ultimate destination was
in fact Katmandu in Nepal.

1437
01:21:08,080 --> 01:21:11,280
I'm sure The Beatles inspired
lots of people to go,

1438
01:21:11,360 --> 01:21:13,440
because this little
trickle of people

1439
01:21:13,520 --> 01:21:16,680
on the hippie trail beforehand
suddenly turned into a flood.

1440
01:21:20,400 --> 01:21:22,600
Did you enjoy
the trip over to India?

1441
01:21:22,680 --> 01:21:26,880
Yes, The journey was terrible,
but the trip was all right.

1442
01:21:26,960 --> 01:21:28,880
There was
a report that we get

1443
01:21:28,960 --> 01:21:29,720
-we got a very bad report-
-Yeah its true,

1444
01:21:29,800 --> 01:21:30,800
we smashed him.

1445
01:21:32,600 --> 01:21:34,040
You
didn't like him,

1446
01:21:34,120 --> 01:21:35,720
or you didn't have the patience
and decided to go home.

1447
01:21:35,800 --> 01:21:38,360
We were there four month
so, George and I were.

1448
01:21:38,440 --> 01:21:40,640
Did you think
this man was on the level?

1449
01:21:40,720 --> 01:21:42,400
I don't know what level he's on,

1450
01:21:42,480 --> 01:21:46,200
but we had a nice holiday in
India and came back and rested.

1451
01:21:48,600 --> 01:21:51,120
Maharishi
looked visibly frail

1452
01:21:51,200 --> 01:21:53,960
and without his
usual effervescence.

1453
01:21:55,280 --> 01:21:57,800
His brilliant and
beautiful yogic radiance

1454
01:21:57,880 --> 01:22:01,040
was reduced to
grey and to ashen.

1455
01:22:01,120 --> 01:22:02,680
He became physically sick

1456
01:22:02,760 --> 01:22:06,200
when the chorus moved
from Rishikesh to Kashmir.

1457
01:22:07,560 --> 01:22:09,560
He's still a nice fella,
and everybody's fine,

1458
01:22:09,640 --> 01:22:11,720
but we don't go out
with him anymore.

1459
01:22:13,280 --> 01:22:15,760
When the Rishikesh
experience finished,

1460
01:22:15,840 --> 01:22:18,520
Paul,, John and Ringo
just kind of carried on,

1461
01:22:18,600 --> 01:22:20,280
resumed with their lives,

1462
01:22:20,360 --> 01:22:23,440
but for George, India was
never a five minute thing.

1463
01:22:23,520 --> 01:22:26,080
India was a lifetime devotion.

1464
01:22:26,160 --> 01:22:27,560
And he wasn't just
gonna give it up

1465
01:22:27,640 --> 01:22:29,640
because of the way
that Rishikesh finished

1466
01:22:29,720 --> 01:22:31,480
with a bit of a sour taste.

1467
01:22:31,560 --> 01:22:34,000
India for him was something
that he continued to push.

1468
01:22:36,600 --> 01:22:38,880
George didn't
want to go back to London.

1469
01:22:38,960 --> 01:22:41,040
George was still
in meditation mode,

1470
01:22:41,120 --> 01:22:43,840
and he didn't want to go
straight back to see the press.

1471
01:22:43,920 --> 01:22:46,680
So he said, "Let's go down
to Kerala, just for a week."

1472
01:22:48,280 --> 01:22:50,320
And it was very calm
then, and then, you know,

1473
01:22:50,400 --> 01:22:54,520
he wanted to slowly come
back into the business life,

1474
01:22:54,600 --> 01:22:57,960
as it were, in London,
slowly, in his way.

1475
01:23:01,120 --> 01:23:02,360
I mean, because everybody,

1476
01:23:02,440 --> 01:23:04,800
all of a sudden
became an individual.

1477
01:23:04,880 --> 01:23:08,520
John, Paul, Ringo and George.

1478
01:23:08,600 --> 01:23:12,120
The Maharishi phase
faded out, you know,

1479
01:23:12,200 --> 01:23:15,560
but the Indian aesthetics
and the etiquettes

1480
01:23:15,640 --> 01:23:17,280
remained with everybody.

1481
01:23:17,360 --> 01:23:20,400
Using the influence of
Indian music and the culture.

1482
01:23:22,280 --> 01:23:24,840
You know, when you look
back at The Beatles story

1483
01:23:24,920 --> 01:23:28,600
on their return to the
UK in the spring of 1968,

1484
01:23:28,680 --> 01:23:30,320
there was still the comradery

1485
01:23:30,400 --> 01:23:33,440
that saw them through the
madness of Beatlemania.

1486
01:23:33,520 --> 01:23:35,800
Soon to dissolve as
the fraught sessions

1487
01:23:35,880 --> 01:23:37,960
of "The White Album" began.

1488
01:23:38,040 --> 01:23:41,480
Working separately most of
the time and not as a unit,

1489
01:23:41,560 --> 01:23:44,440
and with Ringo quitting the
band for a short period,

1490
01:23:44,520 --> 01:23:47,520
remarkably, they delivered
what many would call

1491
01:23:47,600 --> 01:23:49,200
one of their greatest albums.

1492
01:23:50,760 --> 01:23:52,120
When The Beatles were in India,

1493
01:23:52,200 --> 01:23:54,080
Maharishi told them,

1494
01:23:54,160 --> 01:23:57,240
if they don't continue
meditating regularly

1495
01:23:57,320 --> 01:23:58,880
their band would break up.

1496
01:24:03,320 --> 01:24:05,520
Now, does
this mean a business

1497
01:24:05,600 --> 01:24:08,400
or emotional split
within The Beatles?

1498
01:24:08,480 --> 01:24:10,040
I should think a bit of both.

1499
01:24:10,120 --> 01:24:12,120
It's probably to do with
growing up and to do with

1500
01:24:12,200 --> 01:24:13,640
there was a time when there
were just four of them

1501
01:24:13,720 --> 01:24:16,120
but now they're married
and there are children.

1502
01:24:26,160 --> 01:24:29,440
I was born in 1971.

1503
01:24:29,520 --> 01:24:33,360
Same time around when
Beatles broke up.

1504
01:24:33,440 --> 01:24:34,720
I mean, even like,

1505
01:24:34,800 --> 01:24:38,400
I guess it's about 50
odd years or something,

1506
01:24:38,480 --> 01:24:40,600
it still sounds fresh.

1507
01:24:40,680 --> 01:24:42,280
It sounds amazing.

1508
01:24:43,400 --> 01:24:44,720
The world would have been like,

1509
01:24:44,800 --> 01:24:47,360
so shit without them, you know?

1510
01:24:47,440 --> 01:24:49,680
The world is so much
better to live in

1511
01:24:49,760 --> 01:24:51,000
with that music around.

1512
01:24:52,600 --> 01:24:54,560
The songs that they made
in India, in Rishikesh,

1513
01:24:54,640 --> 01:24:56,880
I had no idea and out of them

1514
01:24:56,960 --> 01:24:59,800
some of the songs
like "Blackbird,"
like "Dear Prudence,"

1515
01:24:59,880 --> 01:25:01,440
like these are some of the songs

1516
01:25:01,520 --> 01:25:04,800
that I used to perform in
my old band in Chennai.

1517
01:25:04,880 --> 01:25:07,560
To have known that they have
written these songs in India,

1518
01:25:07,640 --> 01:25:09,600
it just gave it so
much more meaning

1519
01:25:09,680 --> 01:25:11,920
because I used to
connect to these songs

1520
01:25:12,000 --> 01:25:13,560
as a classical musician,

1521
01:25:13,640 --> 01:25:16,600
more than a person who
loves English music.

1522
01:25:18,160 --> 01:25:19,760
I was born in '74,

1523
01:25:19,840 --> 01:25:22,680
so for me to get to know The
Beatles happened much later.

1524
01:25:22,760 --> 01:25:25,480
We were not really born at
the time when the dressing,

1525
01:25:25,560 --> 01:25:27,960
how a Beatles haircut or
the dress that they wore

1526
01:25:28,040 --> 01:25:30,840
really attracted us, I
mean, we didn't see that.

1527
01:25:30,920 --> 01:25:33,920
We only heard the music.
It's purely the music.

1528
01:25:34,000 --> 01:25:37,080
It sounded very
simple, very catchy,

1529
01:25:37,160 --> 01:25:39,640
and you could, you know,
have a high recall.

1530
01:25:39,720 --> 01:25:42,120
So whenever you heard a
song, you would remember it.

1531
01:25:42,200 --> 01:25:44,720
But when you sat
down to work on it,

1532
01:25:44,800 --> 01:25:47,080
to try and see if you
can sing that song,

1533
01:25:47,160 --> 01:25:50,400
that is when you realise
the complexity of it.

1534
01:25:50,480 --> 01:25:52,880
I don't know how it
was appreciated when
it was released,

1535
01:25:52,960 --> 01:25:55,920
but it's something that
is still relevant today.

1536
01:26:05,240 --> 01:26:07,520
They came to see, in
the fullness of time,

1537
01:26:07,600 --> 01:26:09,040
in particular, in George's case,

1538
01:26:09,120 --> 01:26:12,120
George discovered from
gathering evidence

1539
01:26:12,200 --> 01:26:15,320
what exactly happened at the
end of their stay in Rishikesh,

1540
01:26:15,400 --> 01:26:17,040
and how Alexis Margas,

1541
01:26:17,120 --> 01:26:19,960
Magic Alex had cooked
up this whole thing.

1542
01:26:21,240 --> 01:26:23,360
George always
loved Maharishi,

1543
01:26:23,440 --> 01:26:25,000
and toward the end of his life

1544
01:26:25,080 --> 01:26:26,800
he went back to see Maharishi.

1545
01:26:28,120 --> 01:26:30,200
George
said to Maharishi,

1546
01:26:30,280 --> 01:26:32,480
"I came to apologise"

1547
01:26:32,560 --> 01:26:35,920
and Maharishi asked "For what?"

1548
01:26:36,000 --> 01:26:38,720
And George replied,
"You know, for what."

1549
01:26:40,200 --> 01:26:42,600
Maharishi apparently
said to George,

1550
01:26:42,680 --> 01:26:46,040
he believed that The
Beatles were angels on earth

1551
01:26:46,120 --> 01:26:48,880
and that they were not guilty
of any crime themselves.

1552
01:26:48,960 --> 01:26:51,040
So when George came
away from that meeting,

1553
01:26:51,120 --> 01:26:53,520
he felt cleansed of his guilt

1554
01:26:53,600 --> 01:26:56,880
of the method of their
departure back in 1968.

1555
01:26:59,000 --> 01:27:00,360
I got into India,

1556
01:27:00,440 --> 01:27:02,800
I think that was the
one thing in my life

1557
01:27:02,880 --> 01:27:05,120
that I could have done
without everything else,

1558
01:27:05,200 --> 01:27:10,120
but that one thing of getting
in touch with what's inside

1559
01:27:10,200 --> 01:27:13,360
through Maharishi and Ravi
Shankar and indie music.

1560
01:27:15,680 --> 01:27:18,520
And as for the others,
well they all warmed again

1561
01:27:18,600 --> 01:27:22,040
to the culture and the
spirituality of India.

1562
01:27:22,120 --> 01:27:23,640
The only way we can
change the system

1563
01:27:23,720 --> 01:27:25,720
is by changing it non-violently,

1564
01:27:25,800 --> 01:27:28,160
because they've done the
violent for millions of years.

1565
01:27:28,240 --> 01:27:30,560
I think the only way to
do it is Gandhi's way,

1566
01:27:30,640 --> 01:27:33,160
and that's nonviolent,
passive, positive,

1567
01:27:33,240 --> 01:27:34,600
or whatever they
call it these days.

1568
01:27:36,600 --> 01:27:40,400
John Lennon spoke kindly of
Maharishi in other interviews.

1569
01:27:40,480 --> 01:27:43,000
Ringo and Paul have
both said the same,

1570
01:27:43,080 --> 01:27:46,000
everything became okay
again, in the end.

1571
01:27:47,560 --> 01:27:50,200
Years ago, we studied
meditation with the Maharishi.

1572
01:27:50,280 --> 01:27:51,960
He was one of the ones
that wasn't a fake.

1573
01:27:52,040 --> 01:27:53,320
There were a lot of
them around that time

1574
01:27:53,400 --> 01:27:55,360
who were into Rolls
Royces and chicks.

1575
01:27:55,440 --> 01:27:57,120
He wasn't one of them.

1576
01:27:57,200 --> 01:27:59,000
I actually met him
quite recently.

1577
01:27:59,080 --> 01:28:00,600
He lives in the Netherlands now,

1578
01:28:00,680 --> 01:28:05,400
and I took Stella, my daughter
and James, my son with me.

1579
01:28:06,400 --> 01:28:07,800
And he is a spry old codger,

1580
01:28:07,880 --> 01:28:09,880
he in his eighties and
he's still working,

1581
01:28:09,960 --> 01:28:10,920
he's still going.

1582
01:28:19,920 --> 01:28:23,480
The day when Maharishi
died, there was a big storm.

1583
01:28:26,000 --> 01:28:29,240
The water from the river
Ganges came whirling up

1584
01:28:30,680 --> 01:28:33,320
and it showered in this area.

1585
01:28:33,400 --> 01:28:35,240
The local folks who
came here to pay

1586
01:28:35,320 --> 01:28:37,320
their tributes to
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

1587
01:28:37,400 --> 01:28:39,160
were amazed to see this
supernatural thing.

1588
01:28:39,240 --> 01:28:41,840
It was a power of Maharishi

1589
01:28:41,920 --> 01:28:45,320
which brought Gunga on
this top of mountain.

1590
01:28:54,400 --> 01:28:56,160
When I first came
here 10 years ago,

1591
01:28:56,240 --> 01:28:59,160
this was just jungle,
ruins and jungle.

1592
01:28:59,240 --> 01:29:00,560
And we would sneak
in through the back,

1593
01:29:00,640 --> 01:29:02,200
there were cracks in the wall,

1594
01:29:02,280 --> 01:29:04,680
and you would smoke pot
and see leopards at night.

1595
01:29:04,760 --> 01:29:07,240
This is
what people did.

1596
01:29:07,320 --> 01:29:10,040
So I take tourists into the
ashram, I show them everything,

1597
01:29:10,120 --> 01:29:13,120
and I'm trying to bring
them back into 1968

1598
01:29:13,200 --> 01:29:15,800
and give them some of the
experience of The Beatles here.

1599
01:29:17,480 --> 01:29:19,120
Tourists that come here,
they really appreciate it.

1600
01:29:19,200 --> 01:29:22,080
They really appreciate to
have the sense for The Beatles

1601
01:29:22,160 --> 01:29:24,960
as a historical entity.

1602
01:29:28,240 --> 01:29:30,560
My experience when I went
to The Beatles ashram

1603
01:29:30,640 --> 01:29:32,520
was super magical.

1604
01:29:32,600 --> 01:29:34,680
These huge superstars,

1605
01:29:34,760 --> 01:29:37,720
you wouldn't really think that
they'd go to a really simple,

1606
01:29:37,800 --> 01:29:41,120
no-frills ashram in Rishikesh.

1607
01:29:44,040 --> 01:29:46,000
The most exciting
thing about music

1608
01:29:46,080 --> 01:29:49,840
is the way that it has the
capacity to shift cultural norms

1609
01:29:49,920 --> 01:29:51,640
and expand people's minds,

1610
01:29:51,720 --> 01:29:54,360
and in India, that's
exactly what The Beatles did

1611
01:29:54,440 --> 01:29:57,200
by bridging the gap
between East and West

1612
01:29:57,280 --> 01:30:00,120
in a country that was very
much under this, you know,

1613
01:30:00,200 --> 01:30:03,320
dark cloud of colonial rule.

1614
01:30:03,400 --> 01:30:07,160
Which in many ways created
a culture of apology

1615
01:30:07,240 --> 01:30:11,720
for being Indian and a reverence
for whatever was foreign.

1616
01:30:11,800 --> 01:30:13,560
That what was so powerful

1617
01:30:13,640 --> 01:30:17,400
is for the most powerful
band in the world

1618
01:30:17,480 --> 01:30:19,800
to come and revere our culture.

1619
01:30:21,280 --> 01:30:23,600
They had descended in
our part of the country,

1620
01:30:23,680 --> 01:30:27,000
and they had embraced the
spiritual narrative of India,

1621
01:30:27,080 --> 01:30:28,320
and they had come to Rishikesh,

1622
01:30:28,400 --> 01:30:32,120
and there were images
of them with Mahesh Yogi

1623
01:30:32,200 --> 01:30:37,000
and then suddenly we
look, they are one of us.

1624
01:30:39,200 --> 01:30:40,480
As kids, as Indian
kids, you know,

1625
01:30:40,560 --> 01:30:42,240
we're always rebelling
against our culture.

1626
01:30:42,320 --> 01:30:43,640
And then you realise
that like something

1627
01:30:43,720 --> 01:30:45,960
that is so influential
in pop culture,

1628
01:30:46,040 --> 01:30:48,160
took a lot of
influence from India.

1629
01:30:48,240 --> 01:30:51,560
My introduction to them
was I happened to be part

1630
01:30:51,640 --> 01:30:54,240
of the age of
illegal downloading,

1631
01:30:54,320 --> 01:30:56,200
at the time of like
Napster and stuff.

1632
01:30:56,280 --> 01:30:59,040
We used to have "The
White Album" on CD.

1633
01:30:59,120 --> 01:31:01,080
That was my first
introduction to The Beatles.

1634
01:31:01,160 --> 01:31:03,240
We still felt it's influence

1635
01:31:03,320 --> 01:31:06,960
even though we were born like
in the eighties and nineties.

1636
01:31:07,040 --> 01:31:09,440
India is considered this
place where you could go

1637
01:31:09,520 --> 01:31:12,360
for a spiritual
awakening, for meditation,

1638
01:31:12,440 --> 01:31:14,960
so I think The Beatles came
to India to look for that.

1639
01:31:15,040 --> 01:31:17,000
And in some ways they
really did find that.

1640
01:31:21,240 --> 01:31:23,600
I guess that's a small gift
that India gave the world

1641
01:31:23,680 --> 01:31:25,200
through The Beatles.

1642
01:31:29,200 --> 01:31:30,680
The happiest
time in life,

1643
01:31:30,760 --> 01:31:33,280
one of the happiest
times was in India.

1644
01:31:33,360 --> 01:31:35,640
I mean, it was
just such a groove.

1645
01:31:35,720 --> 01:31:37,520
And it was such a pure thing,

1646
01:31:37,600 --> 01:31:40,280
everything is slightly
more in perspective.

1647
01:31:41,360 --> 01:31:42,240
The whole of life

1648
01:31:42,320 --> 01:31:43,880
should be a spiritual experience

1649
01:31:43,960 --> 01:31:48,000
because we are spirits who
are just encased in bodies.

1650
01:31:48,080 --> 01:31:50,480
People forget that and think
they're just this body,

1651
01:31:50,560 --> 01:31:53,600
but we're actually
spirits in bodies.