Downloaded from YTS.MX
[gentle music]
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[groovy upbeat music]
♪ You deny existence of my soul ♪
♪ Much to love I've worn these chains ♪
♪ Much too long I've borne the pain ♪
♪ I hear the voice of my pride and rage ♪
♪ Much too long it's been in its grave ♪
♪ So look out, here I come ♪
♪ Look out, 'til you know that I'm the only one ♪
♪ Look out, here I come ♪
♪ Look out, 'til you know that I'm the only one ♪
♪ Welcome rest to honour me ♪
♪ No longer just a memory ♪
♪ So look out, look out, here I come now ♪
[groovy upbeat music continues]
♪ Aah aah-aah-aah-ah ♪
[aeroplane engines droning]
[air raid sirens screaming]
[bombs exploding]
[Man] My family lived in Arnold Grove in the 1940s.
The Liverpool Blitz was terrifying,
and I will never forget as a child
the drone of sirens and approaching bombers.
The Grove's a really neighbourly place
and we were always in and out of each other's homes.
What was strange for me was the music
coming out of the house at number 12,
the home with the Harrison family.
[gentle music]
[radio crackling]
George's mother Louise loved to listen to Indian music
on the radio.
I'm told that it helped to keep her calm
during her pregnancy.
[relaxing music]
[George] When I first heard Indian music,
I just couldn't really believe that it was so, so great.
And the more I heard of it, the more I liked it,
and it just got bigger and bigger, like a snowball.
[gentle Indian music]
[phone ringing]
One day, the telephone rang
and my father always answered it.
He had a particular sort of authentic Indian accent.
His Indian accent had remained unchanged
in all the 40 years he'd been here,
and he was shouting down the telephone,
"Ringo who, Ringo who?"
And apparently it was because Ringo
was on the other end of the line asking my father
whether he had a spare sitar string.
-[crowd cheering] -[upbeat music]
[Reporter] The return of the heroes to their native land.
They conquered the colony.
The Beatles, who originated as a small-time act
out of Liverpool,
now have no rivals as the kingpins of the teenage set.
[upbeat music]
[Reporter] The group had certainly turned Liverpool
into Britain's answer to any pop trends
from across the Atlantic.
-[crowd cheering] -[upbeat music]
[Reporter] On every side there is hero worship
that recall the heydays of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
Beatlemania has ceased to be a phenomenon
and seems to have become a way of life.
-[upbeat music] -[fans cheering]
My father had never heard of The Beatles
so he knew nothing about anything European or popular.
But what happened was that they'd broken a sitar string
while George was recording "Norwegian Wood"
in Abbey Road Studio.
EMI knew my father
because he was often the person they came to
when they required a group of musicians.
So, when the string broke,
they found my father and he did have one, amazingly,
he did have a set of sitar strings.
[gentle sitar music]
So the whole family got in the tiny little car
and they all drove to carry one string to Abbey Road
and there they handed it over
and they watched them recording.
[George] It started with the Indian music.
I like so many Indian instruments, but mainly sitar.
I'd used a little sitar on our records.
[crowd clapping]
The Beatles had already discovered Indian music,
I think when they were making "Help!"
which is, of course,
the story of a mystic Eastern religious group,
and they are after Ringo Starr's ring.
So they'd already discovered,
and there's that famous scene
about them going into a restaurant.
[gentle music]
On the set of how a sitar was used
in a sort of little group that's playing in the restaurant,
George picked it up and was playing with it
and sort of got interested in sitar because of that.
It was a very inappropriate film for most Indians
because that film really lived up
to all the stereotypes about India,
about bloodthirsty thug cult.
The goddess, which was named as Kylie,
was really based on a real goddess,
the Kali goddess, Hindus are very reverential to her.
So the whole film would be offending a lot of Indians.
[gentle music]
And then there was this book on the yoga.
While they're on shoot at Bahamas,
the suddenly come across this very diminutive yogi
who cycles up to where they are
and distributes this book.
This is Vishnudevananda,
the first illustrated book on yoga going across the West.
But I don't think The Beatles paid him much attention.
I think much later he thought back
and there was this sort of very mysterious connection.
-[crowd cheering] -[gentle music]
[Reporter] The palace of the Queen
has lived through many historic events,
and it's our privilege today
to witness one of the most earth shaking, The Beatles.
Fresh from an audience with the Queen,
they hold medals indicating they have been made members
of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
The Beatles, of course,
have proven to be one of Britain's prime exports.
They have brought in more foreign exchange
than many industries.
And the Queen saw fit to reward their economic contribution
-to the nation. -[fans screaming]
The award entitles The Beatles
to put the letters MBE after their names.
[John] That was the most miserable time of our lives,
was the MBE cop-out period.
We got an MBE, which is one of the biggest jokes
in the history of this island probably.
[exciting music]
[Reporter] The great cavalcade of empire
makes a grand spectacle.
One of the smallest countries on the map is responsible for
the mightiest Commonwealth of nations in history.
[upbeat music]
India was always in British lives because of the empire.
We knew about tea and we knew about, you know, rubber,
but the idea of its music
being, in any way, an influence
on anything from this country was simply not considered.
[sitar tuning]
[George] From the music that I play
to get better and better,
musicians generally, in the West,
progress into, say, modern jazz,
but when I first heard Indian music,
there was so much more freedom
and there was so much more in it compared to jazz.
[exciting sitar music]
I just couldn't really believe that it was so, so great.
I don't know, then I just started to listen to it
more and more, and to try and listen a bit closer.
And the more I heard of it, the more I liked it.
[upbeat music]
[people muttering indistinctly]
My mother meets The Beatles in India
well before I'm even born.
I think she, by virtue of being in the "Hindustan Times"
at that point,
being a preeminent journalist, being a chief reporter,
got the opportunity, but didn't really see,
my God, the magic of that moment.
And you know, I'm always asked,
what's the one thing about your mother
that you would have really wished you would do.
And she's been Indian first woman war correspondent.
She's done all kinds of crazy trailblazing thing.
And I always look at this photograph and I say,
"My God, I wish I had been that person
sitting between John and Paul."
[upbeat music continues]
This was the first time The Beatles had,
as a group, come to India.
And they symbolised to us, not just a new kind of music.
It was almost like symbolising a new kind of life.
They represented the whole sixties to us.
When I heard they were in Delhi,
I went to the Oberoi InterContinental,
and I sat in the lobby and everyone was circling
all the different entrances of the hotel,
waiting for The Beatles to come out by the kitchen entrance,
by various ways.
I sat near the lift and I waited for Brian Epstein to emerge
because I knew he was their manager.
And sure enough, after a few hours of waiting,
I saw him come down and I sidled up to him
and I said, "Excuse me, Mr. Epstein,
I am from All India Radio.
The government have scheduled an interview
with The Beatles."
And he stopped in his tracks and looks at me,
"How dare you!
The boys will not give an interview. How dare you!"
I said, "I'm just conveying the decision of the government
because this interview has been announced
and it would be very embarrassing if this didn't happen."
"I will not permit this," he said,
"well, I will give the interview."
I said, "Good enough for me, sir,
Brian Epstein, good enough for me."
[Kabir] Is there going to be any change
in the sort of work that they do?
Possibly, 'cause, as I've said before,
there's no dynamic or important change
but The Beatles have always progressed.
And to progress, they have to change.
[film reel whirring]
At seven o'clock I go up in the lift,
I get out and I walk to the end of the corridor.
I knock and there's Brian Epstein in a bathrobe, sweating.
He emerges, walks me across the length of the hotel,
opens the suite on the other side of the floor,
and then I was in with The Beatles, all four of them.
I asked them what they were doing
and they said they had an album coming out
in a month's time.
George Harrison mentioned that he had an Indian influence
in one of the songs, which turned out to be, "Love You To."
And Paul mentioned that he had a classical arrangement
behind one of the songs,
which I think must have been "Eleanor Rigby."
Even then, they were going to be Indian influences
in their songs.
I personally hope there'll be more Indian influences
just generally in any music because it's worth it.
It's very good music.
I just like to see it more popular,
more people appreciating it.
[gentle music]
It was the 6th of July, 1966.
Some foreigner came,
they never knew what the name of the person were,
but they were interested in buying some sitars, harmoniums,
and tablas and sarod, and that's all.
The huge crowd assembled here outside
looking the new face of the English people,
like the big hair and all that.
It was a craze.
My father and uncle went to the hotel
and show an instrument, and, later on,
gave lesson to George Harrison specially.
After The Beatles, there was a big craze for sitars,
tablas, and other instruments.
In a day, in a month, we were selling sitar like hotcake.
[gentle music]
The famous Beatles, they came in 1966 to our stall.
They were dressed very differently
so that the people there could not recognise them.
And they walked into the store
and they started talking about Indian musical instruments,
especially the sitar, the tambura, and the sarod,
and also the tabla.
[gentle sitar music]
He was a good sitar player, my father,
and he was showing them how to play it
and how the finger movements are,
how to coordinate both left and right hand,
and, you know, how to strike the strings,
how to pluck the strings.
They asked him whom he learned the sitar from,
he said, "With Ravi Shankar."
Pa-pa-pa-pa, ah. Like this.
[energetic music]
Ravi Shankar, as I see it, was really the first ambassador
for all musicians, artists, singers, dancers
from India to the West.
[energetic Indian music]
[George] Over the last few years,
I heard the name Ravi Shankar mentioned.
A good friend of mine told me to buy a record, which I did.
This was the first time I'd ever heard
Indian music properly.
But when I first heard it,
I couldn't really, couldn't believe it really.
[energetic music continues]
♪ Ah, ah, ah, ah-ah ♪
[crowd cheering]
He's also been turned onto Ravi Shankar,
by the, like, David Crosby and Roger McGuinn from The Birds.
'Cause Ravi Shankar had appealed to,
the sort of the Beat Generation,
going back to the fifties actually.
It was all part of that kind of ambiance.
I'm sure you must have been asked this
lots of times before,
but what's your opinion of,
sort of, English pop groups and American pop groups
using the sitar and the Indian influence in their records?
It will make me very happy if I see that some people
take true interest and learn properly.
Because after having played the sitar for 36 years,
I feel that one has to give some time to it [chuckles].
[Jeff] Indeed.
[gentle sitar music]
My father and my mother were running
the Asian Music Circle.
My father was quite successful at getting musicians
to come to this country and he'd put on concerts for them.
It was very much for erudite English people,
intellectuals who knew about Indian music.
[exciting music]
Yehudi Menuhin, amazing man.
He was the president to the Asian Music Circle,
and I think it was through him that Ravi Shankar first came.
[soft music]
And George was fascinated by our family,
and so he was invited round to spend the afternoon.
I think he came round for lunch.
Pattie was there as well,
and then George came quite regularly.
Eventually, I said, if we could get Ravi free,
and the time George was free,
we'd invite them both together and introduce them
and see whether they got on.
And the doorbell rang and I rushed to the door
and there wasn't George, it was Paul.
Then Paul said, "I'm Paul McCartney."
And I said, "I know." [laughing]
And he came in and a little while after that,
I think George arrived next.
[George] And finally we met, very nicely,
at somebody's house, having dinner.
We met just as two people
instead of being a big publicity gimmick.
Ravi came in and we just said,
"Ravi, this is George, George this is Ravi."
And we had a dinner there, we just ate and talked.
Paul was a little bit on the outside actually,
looking a little bit bored, smoking like a chimney.
My young sister went around collecting the cigarette butts
to take to school the next day, the used cigarette butts.
[George] And from then he offered to give me,
to start me off on sitar with a few lessons, which he did.
He had many students in India, very talented musicians.
So to try to explain
what drew George and Ravi Shankar together
is not easy because it defies logic.
[gentle sitar music]
♪ Da ra ♪
[Ravi] When George Harrison came to me,
I didn't know what to think.
But I found he really wanted to learn.
[upbeat sitar music]
I never thought our meeting would cause such an explosion.
♪ Da-da, da-da-da ♪
That Indian music could suddenly appear on the pop scene.
George said that, "I want to learn the sitar,"
and Ravi, he said, "Yes, I can teach you,
but it's a very difficult instrument to learn,
and you will have to spend a lot of time
and your fingers will hurt.
It's going to be a difficult thing for you to do,
but I want you to come to India
and I will teach you over there."
[exciting music]
So when Ravi invited George and me,
I was thrilled to be going.
You know, 22, I hadn't really thought much about it.
I thought of the King's Road and you know, clothes.
And we started off in Mumbai.
Ravi took us to concerts, private concerts,
that he gave in people's houses,
and then bigger concerts in front of his students.
George Harrison came with his wife, September 1966.
You know, Pandit Ravi Shankar picks him up,
he takes him to the Taj hotel and within about four hours,
the whole of the people in Taj,
it was just filled with people and media and fans,
just coming in, shouting, "George, George, George."
So finally George got just fed up and he told Pandit,
"Let's give a press conference,
Let's go and talk to the press."
So, of course, Pandit Ravi Shankar was the music director
of All India Radio for many years.
So he said, let's go and do a radio interview, studio one.
This is where Pandit Ravi Shankar and George Harrison
did an interview.
So we searched for it,
and we actually opened quite a few spools,
dusty spool lying in the side of a corner.
And then we found George Harrison, there was a paper inside.
It said "George Harrison interview."
The tape hadn't been played in maybe 30 years.
[Interviewer] Good afternoon, George.
[George] Good afternoon.
[Interviewer] We would like to know from you,
do you think you could not make a public appearance?
[George] If I did want to make a public appearance,
I would have come here to do a show,
and I would've come with John and Paul and Ringo.
It's just like,
all our fans who go to school during the week.
Well if they go on the holidays
and suddenly somebody's making them learn maths
and learn English and learn all this,
then they don't like to do that when it's their holiday.
It's the same for me.
I go around having my photograph taken,
signing autographs and waving at people,
and being a Beatle, and when it comes to my holiday,
then, naturally, I want to not be a Beatle, I wanna be me.
[interviewer chuckles]
-[soft music] -[crowd cheering]
[Pat] When I was 19, I went to India.
My aunt greeted me at the airport and said,
"Do you know that George Harrison is staying at the hotel?"
We asked around, you know, "Where's Mr. Harrison,"
and we weren't told,
and then sort of hopped onto the elevator,
and we started going to floors,
and then eventually there was one floor
where there was a waiter standing outside a room.
And I don't really know what made me do it,
but I sort of hobbled in
and George Harrison asked what I was doing there,
and I just said,
"I would like your autograph, Mr. Harrison."
And he said, you know, he sort of,
he wasn't too happy about me being there.
I also said to him,
he had numerous fans outside the hotel,
and his words were, which I've never, ever forgotten,
"Tell your friends if they like me, to keep away from me."
Which I thought was rather nasty,
but I needed the autograph.
[train engine grumbling]
[Pattie] Everything that Ravi had shown us
and told us about him, introduced us to, made an impact.
He took us to the Ellora Caves, fascinating.
And we went to Banaras, Varanasi.
Banaras was unbelievable
'cause we came by boat
and Ravi had explained to us
the whole reason for people coming to Banaras to die.
And they would request that they'd be burnt.
And I was fascinated by this.
The pyres and then the family or the wife or the husband
taking it into the Ganges
and letting their ashes float away.
So Agra, we went to the Taj Mahal.
It's beautiful, I love the story surrounding it.
It was more exquisite
than I could ever have described to anyone.
And then, towards the end of our trip, Kumbh Mela.
There were all these sadhus walking down the road,
and I said, "Ravi, what's they doing?"
He said, "They walk hundreds of miles
to come into this Kumbh Mela."
And I was just watching this spectacle,
and all these people, you know, families or groups
and sadhus, all of India, it seemed.
[gentle music]
He also told us about Indian culture and spirituality.
Ravi took us to meet his spiritual guru
and this man was over 100.
And obviously, we didn't know what they were saying,
but it wasn't very many words.
And Ravi is a reverential towards his guru.
[Ravi] Throughout my life
I look to the great yogi Taj Mirage, my spiritual guru.
As a Hindu, I believe blessing of guru
is the most priceless thing in life.
[gentle music]
[Pattie] It was very moving for me
to see somebody as powerful as Ravi, but George adored him.
And here he was humbled in front of his guru.
Ravi said that there was something
that I found in George, where he was so simple,
so down to earth, he looked upon me like a guru,
like a father, and he had absolutely no airs about him.
And that is something
-that we also observed- -That's true.
When he came to our home,
he was absolutely a simple person, not demanding anything.
[gentle sitar music]
I haven't learned to play the sitar,
I mean, Ravi Shankar hasn't learnt to play
and he's been playing in 35 years.
[press laughing]
He was not a sitar player or a star musician,
but I have not seen Ravi have so much time for someone.
This association, this link, I can only explain it
that they must've had some links in a previous life
that brought them together.
[gentle music]
When George and we got connected in '66,
it was like wildfire, you know.
He's like a son to me. Same thing.
[laughing] Sometimes I feel like his dad as well.
[all laughing]
He can be.
George Harrison, he loved India,
he loved Indian music, he loved Indian spirituality.
So this thing, you know, pushed Indian classical music
on the top, you know, fusion we can call it,
Western and Indian classical music.
And that was the biggest fusion ever happened.
[upbeat music]
And then Harrison came here to record "Wonderwall"
with Indian classical musicians.
He was interested in meeting local musicians.
The Beatles use the sitars in their record.
Somehow we were able to imagine The Beatles as our band,
as an Indian band.
[upbeat music continues]
And you know, India was a closed society
and a closed economy,
and it was a not very easy to get your hands on albums.
In 1962 or very early '63 on the international shortwave,
a group of people in Bangalore heard their music
and said, "Hey, wait a minute, this is very different."
What it did really was to liberate an entire generation
from the cultural shackles of the past.
The British had left in 1947,
this core was born in the late forties
or early fifties, mid fifties.
When they came of age,
they rejected the past and embraced the new.
In those days, most of the musicians were really from
the Anglo Indian Catholic Christian community
because they were the ones who were more trained in English.
The Jets was really the first beat band,
it wasn't so much rock music,
but it was known as beat music.
And the word beat was not far from Beatle.
We started to model our lives along the lines
of what The Beatles were doing at the time.
The musicians those days were more into singing
Jim Reeves, Everly Brothers, Pat Boone,
and then bang came The Beatles.
And it was like an electric breath of fresh air.
Whatever we were used to suddenly lost its relevance.
[upbeat music]
One day we just woke up
and we saw an image of the great Shammi Kapoor
with that Beatle wig in a Hindi film.
That spoke about the enormous power
and the clout of The Beatles.
My mother was a Indian classical musician.
And then she bought me my first 45,
which was, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."
Straight away and she bought me a British pop magazine
where I could read about what was happening in the UK
and the UK pop scene.
One day one of my classmates
came back to India after the holidays,
and he brought an album by The Beatles,
who we'd never heard of.
By 10 o'clock that night, I'd fallen in love with the music,
that I'd heard it three or four times,
that music grew into me
and I thought, "Wow, this is fabulous."
We used to play those records again and again and again,
you know, somebody listening to the words, you know,
somebody who's trying to figure out the chords-
-Yes, the solo. -And the solos,
and the most difficult part were the harmonies.
Beatles still remain one of the greatest,
you know, harmony groups, you know, ever.
We went to Calcutta, we stayed with a friend.
And the first night
he took us to a restaurant called Trinkers.
But when we walked in,
we were dressed in our Beatle clothes,
and everybody got up and started clapping.
I don't know why,
maybe they assumed we were some famous group but we weren't,
but the owner of the restaurant said,
"Hey, you know, the people wanna know if you guys sing?"
I said, "Yeah, we sing."
He said, "Would you do a couple of numbers?"
So we did, "She Loves You" and "Please, Please Me."
We brought the house down, shook our heads,
et cetera, et cetera.
The owner came and he said,
"Would you guys like a residency?"
And that's how our career started.
We were the first Western music performing group
to be ever recorded in India.
At the HMV studios, and a song which, of I'm not mistaken,
there was a song called "Pain" and "The Girl Next Door."
I think "The Girl Next Door" had some influences
of The Beatles.
Especially the harmonies.
-Especially the harmonies. -The harmonies, yes, yes.
I was planning to go west
because, you know, forget the Indian culture,
the Western culture was what we youngsters wanted.
By some strange paradox,
The Beatles, who lived in the culture I wanted,
were making their way to India.
[exciting music]
[gentle music]
LSD was really beginning to make its mark in London,
in the the circles that they moved in.
Some newspaperman came up and he said,
"Have you had LSD?"
So I thought, well, I'll either be cagey here
or I'll be honest, so I said, yes.
[Pattie] Oh God, well, I mean, the first time
was when George and Me, John and Cynthia
were invited for dinner by our dentist.
And that was a bit scary,
because, you know, what was happening to us.
Do you know what I mean?
It's just, everything is surreal.
And you look at your hand and you're like 500 years old.
And then I'd hear my voice and wonder where it came from.
And colours, and there's an intensity to it.
[George] When we took the notorious wonder, drug LSD,
we had it and we went out to a club and it was incredible.
[John] When I got onto acid, right,
you know the day that you're at a hundred percent potential
and you can handle whatever the situation is,
with acid, or just after acid,
the percent of good days as opposed to bad days
was just a bit better, you know.
They particularly got into drugs
and Indian music at the same time,
and it seemed like there was some kind of a connection
between the two, there wasn't of course,
because they both preexisted separately.
[Dick] There must be an intimate connection
between Indian music and drugs,
maybe because of the bizarre sound,
and there should be a drug connection he said that-
Just watch who you're calling bizarre, Dick.
[everyone laughing]
Yes, I have difficulty with the word bizarre.
I meant B-A-Z-A-A-R, the other...
No, wait a minute, there's no way I can get out of this.
To Western ears, the unusual sound
might suggest some sort of chemical intoxication.
I'm not blaming George,
but you know, somehow because of him,
the sitar became really popular among the young people.
[George] The hippies were the ones
who caught on to a new music,
and it just happens that most of them were,
you know, were smoking pot or something.
And, since then, the two got caught up together
but it's really a problem.
Yeah, I requests to my listeners to be in a clear mind,
because I like to put them, you know,
-make them high with the music. -Yourself.
Yes, and I feel rather cheated when they're already high.
[audience laughing]
LSD opened them up to experiences and awarenesses
of consciousness that they wouldn't have got
in any other way.
Eastern religion, I think, would have been opaque to them,
they wouldn't have been able to understand it at all,
but, having had that experience,
suddenly these things made sense.
George said that when he first took LSD,
he heard voices in the back of his head
saying yogis of the Himalayas.
[wind whistling]
Maharishi, good evening.
You once said even if only 1/10 of the adult population
meditated for short periods each day,
it would not take more than a few months
to remove the entire accumulation of tension in the world.
-These are your words? -I'm absolutely
convinced about it.
[Pattie] I saw an advertisement in the paper
for transcendental meditation classes.
So I went with a girlfriend.
England I've been visiting once every year.
People do feel stress and strain
due to the greater undertaking in their life.
[Pattie] Paul phoned George and said,
"There's this man called Maharishi
who's going to come to England and talk about meditation"
And I said,
"Oh, that's the same guy that, you know, I follow"
So in those days, when one Beatle did something,
they all did it, so we all went.
[Interview] Now you've been travelling the world now
for many years.
You've made, I think, something like eight world tours.
Ninth, I returned this time.
[Interviewer] This was the ninth completed.
[Susan] Maharishi was the most powerful,
magnetically charismatic person I've ever met.
He was also the happiest person I ever met.
He was filled with this energy
that you wanted to be near him all the time.
All of us who were on his staff,
we fought each other to get into the room with him.
[Paul] It was just the right time, anyway,
there we were waiting for someone-
Waiting for a guru,
-and he came. -The great magic man to come,
and he came, you know.
There he was, he's just talking about it all
and he had great answers.
'Cause he's got that kind of thing, you know,
and he got a twinkle in the eye.
They told Maharishi that they'd been seeking
a spiritual experience.
They'd been trying to do it through drugs,
but it just didn't work, you know?
And so he invited them to come to Bangor, North Wales.
[crowd cheering]
Where he would be doing a meditation retreat for 10 days.
[airport announcements chattering]
[exciting music]
[Reporter] The Beatles seem to be
among your supporters now, how do you feel about that?
They seem to be very intelligent and I'm honoured.
And so you think that if The Beatles adopt your teaching,
then they can spread it
amongst other young people in England?
[Maharishi] And much more,
not only England, but around the world.
Because the word Beatle has gone on in all the continents,
and younger people are fascinated by their name.
[Reporter] What do you think of The Beatles?
[Maharishi] Very good, intelligent young boys,
and there's great potential.
[Reporter] And their music?
Music I haven't heard,
but because they are appreciated all over the world,
they must have something very grateful in their music.
[upbeat music]
[Paul] I think he's trying to say
is the things we're getting into aren't that important.
Money has taken over from God.
Instead of trying to get where God is,
we all try and get the biggest bank balance.
That's what it seems to mean.
[Maharishi] Peace of mind is like an ocean, very deep.
And the activity's only on the surface like that.
So if the waves of the ocean contact deeper level of water,
then the wave becomes stronger.
That means that we're going to be happier.
And much happier and much more creative also.
[sombre music]
He was found in his second floor bedroom,
just after two o'clock this afternoon by his housekeeper.
Mr. Epstein has been unwell now for some months.
And he's been in the habit of taking tablets
to help him sleep at night.
[Pattie] When Brian died, The Beatles clearly were lost.
They were like jelly, their manager, their best friend,
their man who they rely on totally for their fame,
for their fortune, you know, their guide in life,
was now gone.
John, where would you be today without Mr. Epstein?
I don't know.
I understand that Mr. Epstein was to be initiated here?
[John] Mmm.
When was he coming up?
Was he coming up in the afternoon?
Coming tomorrow. Just Monday, that's all we knew.
I spoke to him Wednesday evening,
then evening before we first saw Maharishi's lecture
and he was in great spirits.
[Pattie] I wanted Maharishi
to bring him back to life again.
You know, I, by this time,
I'm giving him so much power
and how extraordinary that they were with Maharishi,
who's now going to be, sort of, their spiritual guru,
but also that they could lean on him,
because they trusted him so much.
So, for that moment in time, he replaced Brian.
I understand that the Maharishi conferred with you all?
He told us not to get overwhelmed by grief,
and whatever thoughts we have of Brian, to keep 'em happy,
because any thoughts we have of him
will travel to him, wherever he is.
[upbeat music]
[birds calling]
I come to India because of I want to leave material world.
Come to a simple country.
Ganga is a holy river because it comes from Himalayas
and this place has much energy.
And it come down, no? Takes energy and comes here.
[Reporter] The ashrams or monasteries
of the various religious orders
glimmer over the smooth green water.
Though the sun is hot, the river is icy,
flowing from a glacier high up in the Himalayas,
the land of the Gods.
But Rishikesh, its name means place of the wise ones,
is far from being a remote or desert region.
Its one of the most celebrated centres of pilgrimage
in the whole of India.
[Reporter] In the cool clear air
of Rishikesh, North India,
the meditation retreat of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Flower-loving yogi told reporters
that his brand of peace of mind
could only be truly appreciated
by intelligent men of the world
with rewarding activities and high incomes.
The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness.
Anyone can find the way.
That's the basic teaching of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Are The Beatles really going to find happiness
here in Rishikesh?
Are they really going to become, as Maharishi hopes,
the practical philosophers of the age?
Or must they return home unsatisfied?
Eternal, rich, young men victims of a fad,
looking for something, anything,
to make their lives worth while.
[men chanting]
[bell ringing]
I was a reporter.
I'd heard that the best thing that a reporter can do
is to beat all the other reporters in getting to the news.
A friend of mine read
that The Beatles were coming to stay with the Maharishi.
And he said, "Saeed, do you know what it means?
The whole world and its media is going to be here."
[upbeat music]
The idea is to beat them.
How do you beat them?
"Ah," I said, "the idea is to become a disciple.
If I become an insider, I'll get the story."
So I walked in, you had to make some excuse
if you're a drug addict,
if you had failed, if you are a junkie,
he whispered a mantra, a chant, in my ear,
Which I'm not supposed to share with anybody.
Then I went in, and again, and again,
until all the sadhus
who were going to be his managers recognise me.
The password was jaguar will live,
you said jaguar will live then you were in.
[upbeat music]
From Hardwar, to Rishikesh,
across Lakshman Jhula.
[exciting music continues]
I was taking aback.
It was like a locust storm.
Journalist, after journalist, after journalist,
hundreds of them, "What's going on?
They're not letting us in."
I said, "They're not letting anybody in."
Overnight, I went off to Rishikesh,
with quite a few people from all over India.
And it was very difficult to even know where The Beatles,
where the ashram was, because it was so fortified.
Fortified in the sense that, you know,
there are a lot of police,
there was a lot of bundobust in there.
The whole day, we would just, early morning, wake up,
somebody said, "Hey, The Beatles are coming to the Ganga."
And so we'd all rush up there
and wait there for two, three hours,
but nothing would happen, you know.
But it was like a celebration, it was like an exhibition,
'cause, you know, there was so much of joy.
[gentle music]
[Nancy] One day, Maharishi called me in and he said,
"The Beatles are gonna be arriving in a few days,
but I want you to go fix up their rooms."
They put me in charge to make their [laughing] rooms nicer.
I would have them paint this,
they'd drop so much paint on the floor,
then they'd have to paint the floor.
Anyway, we had curtains put up.
We had mirrors, we even had toilet fixtures that worked.
They have mattresses on their beds.
There's a fan club of real beetles
waiting to welcome them,
but the hardest thing about the life they lead here
are the beds they'll sleep on.
A hard wooden base, a simple,
rather than a spartan existence.
[gentle music continues]
[Nancy] When they did arrive
he introduced them to me and said to them,
"If you want to anything, get a hold of Nancy.
Nancy will be my ears and eyes in case you need anything,
you let me know through her."
So I found my way and I went to the gate and I said,
"Jaguar will live."
"Ah," they said.
Oh, there was a hell of commotion outside.
"How did this bastard get in?"
I said, "I'm just a devotee of the Maharishi"
So anyway, I entered and there under the tree,
Maharishi, George, John Lennon, Paul,
their respective ladies, a whole galaxy.
I mean, I can't keep describing them.
I need a photograph.
So I called the sadhus.
I said, "Look, I'm having difficulty
managing this on my own,
I immediately assumed the role of publicity manager
for the Maharishi."
So I said, "Here's a name, Raghu Rai.
You go outside, call him in.
[bright music]
This man came, who was from the ashram,
and he says, "Mr. Naqvi wants to see you."
I said, "Give me two minutes."
So I went in, I put a big zoom lens on my camera
and put it inside my labaada.
So when I'm walking nobody can see if I'm carrying a camera.
So I walked with him for about eight, 10 minutes.
One sadhu was standing there.
So he was standing next to him, so Saeed said, "Look there."
I was shocked.
Then I turned around
and I saw that guy sadhu standing next to us.
And I said [speaking in foreign language].
So he goes to get a glass of water for me,
and Saeed says, "Hurry up, hurry up."
In those days,
we didn't have auto focus, auto exposure cameras,
so you had to set the focus set
and the exposure, everything.
And I take just one picture, nicely focused and proper.
Under the tree, Maharishi Yogi and The Beatles.
[soft music]
[birds calling]
[Indra speaking in foreign language]
See this building, this is the building where they lived.
This room, I'll show you this side,
this is the room of John Lennon.
John Lennon stayed here.
Other Beatles were staying in these rooms,
along with their wives and family.
[gentle music]
So when Beatles came, I was a little kid.
We were enjoying the whole atmosphere and the jungles
and Beatles and the Maharishi, we were very close.
We never find he's a celebrity, or some big thing,
we should not go near him.
So this was the place where Maharishi
used to converse with Beatles and guests.
Straight we can see River Ganga, clear water and forest.
There was a raised platform, rectangular shape.
It was used for posing with the visitors and Beatles
for the group photographs.
[soft upbeat music]
[people chattering indistinctly]
[Indra speaking in foreign language]
[Reporter] Maharishi's disciples can wander in peace
amongst the trees and bungalows,
or meditate in some quiet spot overlooking the Ganges.
He doesn't require you to give anything up
except drugs and a week's salary,
in The Beatles case around 11,000 pounds a piece.
[Interviewer] What exactly have you been doing,
how do you meditate?
You sit down, you relax,
and then you repeat a sound to yourself, and it sounds daft,
but it's just a system of relaxation and that's all it is,
and there's nothing more to it.
By expanding the conscious capacity of the mind,
mental capacity will be stronger,
thought power will be great,
and when the thought power great,
then the thought will find their fulfilment more easily.
You go into do those interstellar spaces,
where the spaces ultimately shrink into your being.
Now, this gibberish goes on and on and on relentlessly,
and you have these people close their eyes.
And the more unintelligible it gets,
the more profoundly affected they pretend to be.
Because, I can't really imagine anyone being moved by words
which are patently and absolutely absurd.
His lectures were in the nature
of this kind of arcane nonsense.
Nothing succeeds like success, and it succeeded.
[Interviewer] Are you a business man?
I don't deal with money directly,
but I'm conducting the movement in 50 countries.
I can't be said to be no businessman,
even though I'm not dealing with money.
I was a young girl, 21 or 22,
so there I was in this beautiful ashram,
I was taken to meet the Maharishi.
He asked me to come close to him, I did, too close in fact.
He said, I'm going to whisper something in your ear,
the mantra, then he said,
"I want you to go down into my prayer room,
and I want you to concentrate upon that mantra
You're going to feel like a new person."
And I actually believed that this was going to happen to me.
It was a dark room and there was some incense burning
and there was some things hanging on the wall.
And I started repeating the mantra.
I repeated it,
and the only feeling that I remember
there was this intense desire to escape from that place.
I went near the Maharishi and he said,
"How do you feel my daughter?
Do you feel like a different person?"
I said, "Actually I don't."
He looked at me and he said,
"I going to whisper another mantra."
"Back you go, repeat that mantra.
You might have to spend a little longer."
By now, I was in control.
I repeated the mantra,
and within half an hour I came upstairs.
I gave him a glorious account
of how I felt like a totally new human being.
I felt like a different person all together.
That was the only way to escape.
And I walked out into freedom.
[inspiring music]
Maharishi really influenced
The Beatles songs and lyrics tremendously,
starting with "Across The Universe"
which is written right after The Beatles learned meditation.
In that song, it says "jai guru deva,"
and Maharishi used to use that expression all the time.
Now once more, [speaking in foreign language].
It is in praise of the guru.
So John Lennon put that into the song, jai guru deva.
And then he said, "om," and om is the primordial sound
that underlies and gives rise to the universe.
[man praying]
Just the exposure to mantras, I mean,
the idea was a repetitious sound could create
an altered state of consciousness
and you get it in, "Hello, Goodbye,"
you get in goo goo g'joob.
Repetitious sounds creeping into their songs,
whether deliberately or not.
[soft music]
[people chattering indistinctly]
[Indra speaking in foreign language]
[Indra singing in foreign language]
[gentle music]
[water rippling]
I lived for three days in a cottage
at a camp in Rishikesh,
just a hundred yards from The Beatles.
I remember sitting around a bonfire at night
with The Beatles, and Mike Love of The Beach Boys,
And Donovan, and others singing and playing the guitar.
It was a cold, cold evening, and at some point
I muttered to the person next to me, "I'm freezing."
A man seated just ahead of me,
wrapped in a huge brown grey blanket heard me.
He said, "Move up, love, come and share my blanket with me."
It was George Harrison.
I should have said yes,
but by then I had successfully cultivated
an air of nonchalance
and looked at George like he was a nobody and replied,
"No, thanks, George, I'm fine."
Four regrettable words that I could never take back,
and that have haunted me all my life
for what could have been, but never was.
The person who was actually sincere about meditation,
about Indian culture, Indian music was George Harrison.
Maharishi said of all The Beatles,
George is the most advanced, and this is his last life.
[Pattie] George wanted to understand
why he was chosen to be famous.
He found curious that he, a boy from Liverpool
who otherwise would have had a very menial job,
was selected and was famous.
And he wants to know the answer.
[gentle music]
[George] Really the only reason to be living
is to have complete full knowledge,
full bliss consciousness.
Everything else is just mundane and secondary.
The purpose is to transcend
from this relative state of consciousness
to an absolute state of consciousness.
Maharishi said, John Lennon has many more lives to go,
and he must not give into his weakness for women,
or it will ruin him.
[Reporter] Keeping company with himself,
it could be part of the treatment,
John stalked along the shady paths.
[Nancy] John Lennon when he first arrived, he was grey,
he'd been heavily into drugs, he just looked awful.
And then little by little,
you saw the change that came over this man,
he had pink cheeks, he started to be very sociable,
he was out playing his guitar, chatting with other people,
and he was having such a lovely time.
[John] Meditation worked all right, you know,
you can handle each day better
than I could handle it before.
I was mediating 8 hours a day and things like that.
And it was really some trip, like acid was nowhere.
Just sitting there just muttering some word in a room,
that's the biggest trip I've ever had in life.
[upbeat music]
[Susan] Ringo is always in meditation,
and he goes by feeling and heart.
Whereas the other Beatles too much brain is in the way.
[Reporter] Ringo enjoyed a peace of togetherness
with Mrs. Ringo, it was a very peaceful scene.
Ringo Starr, two or three days,
he sees all this and he declares,
"It's like a Butlin holiday camp," and disappears, he left.
And then there were three.
[Susan] Ringo and his wife, Maureen,
stayed at the ashram for 10 days.
Ringo's allergies cause problems with the ashram food.
He was allergic to so many things
that he took two suitcases to India.
One had his clothes and the other one
was stuffed with cans of Heinz beans.
But the primary reason that Ringo and Maureen left
is because they missed their kids.
[Ringo] Maharishi, I thank him, you know,
all the time I thank him for giving me what it gave me.
So I'm glad I've got it
in case I ever wanna go into it again,
you know, you can't lose, if you learn something.
[upbeat music]
[animals calling]
Maharishi wanted to take them off on a trip
to the Himalayas.
A company, Ganja's Helicopter Services.
[helicopter blades whirring]
I'd always wanted to become a pilot.
I became the chief pilot for the Maharishi.
And I flew everybody, including the prime minister,
and Mahatma Gandhi also, and The Beatles.
Paul kept on saying, "Me, me, me,"
because he wanted to get in.
And John said, "No, me, me, me."
And anyway, finally, John just pushed him aside and went in.
I'm flying John on my left and the Maharishi on my right.
And the Maharishi lent across me,
as you know, he had a lot of hair and beard,
it was difficult for me to fly the helicopter.
[helicopter blades whirring]
He was telling John down there in the mountains,
people lived there, they never went down to the valleys,
and they're praying all the time.
So John said, "What are they're praying for?"
So the Maharishi said "They are praying that we crash."
And John said, "Goodness, why do they want us to crash?"
They said, "Well, they're on the mountaintop
with hardly any food.
And I'm in Rishikesh with all the celebrities there,
and all the money in the world."
So John said, "Maharishi, if you don't move
your head and hair their prayers will be answered."
And of course, I started laughing and everybody did.
He had a sense of humour.
[upbeat music continues]
[helicopter blades whirring]
[people chattering]
They were visiting Dehradun, George, John, and Paul.
He said this Saturday,
they're having celebration in the ashram
to celebrate the birth of George Harrison wife.
If I could could bring some other musicians along with me,
they'll be very happy.
So I said, I told them, "Okay, I can arrange it."
[soft upbeat music]
So we all sat down, Maharishi gave us a lecture,
and then I was asked to play.
There was a composition with George Harrison,
"With In, Without You," which was based on Dhrag Jhug,
so I decided to play that.
And then George was excited about it.
And I smiled at him, he smiled and he waved at me.
At that time, Nick sang with me,
and Nick was just a visiting teacher.
Now tell me where did that famous photo of us?
Was it in the middle or was it over here?
Here?
Okay.
-In this area, in this wall. -Okay.
[soft upbeat music]
I have such vivid memories of that birthday party
where so much music was played, so much glamour.
Pattie Harrison there in her mauve sari.
Part of our mission was to bring her
George Harrison's birthday present to her, the dilruba.
It was so relaxed coming from Britain.
The Beatles were impossible to see or touch or reach,
and here it was a completely different atmosphere.
They were absolutely natural, all the musicians there.
I think I spoke to Donovan, Mike Love, Paul Horn,
and of course, Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, John Lennon,
I don't think I spoke to George Harrison
because he was so tied up in both the occasion
of his wife's birthday and also the music.
He really was playing music and enjoying music
and absorbing Indian music.
There was no pretence about it. He was completely hooked.
The music started off being very Indian
and played on Indian instruments,
but then you could say it deteriorated into a birthday party
with the "Happy Birthday" song,
and the British national anthem for some curious reason.
As the evening went on and perhaps people got a bit fidgety,
we went outside and enjoyed fireworks.
Of course, I went away feeling
that perhaps the meditation was all a bit of a lark,
because they enjoyed themselves so much in the evening.
George Harrison was thinking
mostly of playing better, serious music,
which belonged to the world.
But John Lennon was a serious human being.
He was not very talkative,
but he's thinking was very beautiful.
So I was slightly more fascinated by John.
[soft music]
I think they gave me so much respect, you know.
They treated me very well, they called me, sir.
And I was feeling strange, you know.
I told them, "Don't call me, sir, no no no."
They could not have seen me at all,
there was no need for what they did.
Success had not gone to the head, you know.
They were simple human beings.
[bright music]
We came up the path here,
we were killing time and The Beatles meantime
had come back to their bungalow
and they were on the roof, not just The Beatles,
but many of the musicians were on the roof
of the bungalow playing music.
And it's the most memorable thing of my day here,
was hearing this music,
which was of course unrecorded music,
it was just being created at that time.
And we felt we were in the, you know,
witnessing the first time round,
the first version of this music.
[upbeat music]
The word was coming to the Maharishi
that they had suspended their meditations
and that they were sitting and composing music and things.
[Pattie] We were there for about six weeks,
and during that time was no pressure from the outside world.
There was no pressure of them being Beatles,
and their creative juices just overflowed.
They wrote all the songs from "The White Album."
They worked out gradually what they wanted us to do
for the rest of their time as Beatles.
Other than when they're we in the studio,
they didn't get to spend a lot of time together
So in India, they were suddenly together
like sort of mates again.
So they could sit out and play in the way that John and Paul
used to play in the council house where Paul had grown up.
And you've got Mike Love from The Beach Boys is there
so they've got that whole tributary of American music
that had influenced them,
and Donovan with this kind of folk tradition
and Paul Horn, who was a jazz flautist, he was there too,
so you've got a lot of interesting,
sort of, streams coming in.
[gentle music]
I'll show you the stairs here.
They'd sit here on these stairs.
There here was bamboo structure here,
as a fence, those days.
They'd come and they'd make new song there,
staying here, sitting on the stairs.
And that side, Prudence were living,
Maharishi told her to be inside, stay with their practises.
Mia Farrow's sister Prudence way ahead of anybody else.
As soon as she entered her thing,
she went into meditation and she has not emerged,
it's already 24 hours.
So she's serious.
They would invite her outside.
"Hello, Prudence, come out, come out, Prudence."
And she won't come.
And then they made a song, "Dear Prudence."
[Nancy] I think one that's kind of interesting
is when I came back from a tiger hunt with my eldest son,
when we came walking in, he said to Maharishi,
"I shot a tiger today, is that bad karma?"
Sitting there observing this was John Lennon,
and John said, "Don't you call that
slightly life destructive?"
And I said, "It was the tiger or us."
[gentle music]
[Susan] Maharishi glared at Nancy the whole time
they were talking about it.
Life destruction is life destruction, end of story.
That's how the song,
"The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill" originated.
It was John's answer to Nancy's paltry excuse.
Because Mike Love was there
and they knew The Beach Boys music,
it was this kind of friendly rivalry
of them wanting to top each other.
But "Back in the U.S.S.R."
is just like a parody of a Beach Boys song,
but instead of being about the USA, it's about Russia,
and it was a very novel idea at the time
to think of a rock and roll song
that appeared to be celebrating Russian culture
and had all these Russian names
and Russian places being mentioned.
[exciting music]
[Reporter] Opposition members today
demanded in inquiry into Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Alleging that Rishikesh have become a centre of conspirage.
The issue was raised by Mr. K. Anirudhan
after a radio transmitter was found on a bus
near the antibiotics factory in Rishikesh
belonging to a foreigner.
The furor broke out in parliament.
It was led by the communist, backed by the socialists,
and they said that there was a CIA camp in the ashram,
and the Maharishi were getting all these foreigners,
including The Beatles, to destabilise India.
I give the CIA total credit for sponsoring
and initiating the entire consciousness movement,
counterculture events of the 1960s.
[crowds cheering]
This was exactly the time when Indira Gandhi
was making friends with the Soviet Union.
Today we're going to show you a cases
of attempted espionage by agents
of the Sino-Soviet Intelligence System.
If you recognise the way a Sino or Soviet agent operates,
both in finding someone vulnerable to subversion,
as well as in their technique of ensnaring him
and applying pressure to get him to play ball.
The KGB sent their top man in India, Bezmenov,
to the ashram to check out the Maharishi.
[men singing in foreign language]
My function was to discover
what kind of people attend this school.
Yes, there are some influential opinion makers
who come back with the crazy stories
about Indian philosophy.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a great spiritual leader,
or maybe a great charlatan and crook,
depending from which side you're looking at him.
Beatles were trained at his ashram, Mia Farrow,
and other useful idiots from Hollywood visited his school,
and they returned back to the United States,
absolutely zonked out of their minds with marijuana,
hashish and crazy ideas of meditation.
Maharishi used to always say,
"You can never create peace through signing treaties,
through legislation, through any kind of external means.
The only way to create world peace
is for people to meditate."
See, if you carefully look
at what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is teaching,
is that most of the problems,
most of the burning issues of today,
can be solved simply by meditating.
Don't rock the boat, don't get involved,
just sit down, look at your navel and meditate,
and things, due to some strange logic,
due to cosmic vibration will settle down by themselves.
The single aim of spiritually regenerating every man
everywhere in the world, and creating peace.
[John] You can get control of yourself
just by sitting quietly,
and by turning off from the external problems we have,
and all this society,
you can go inside yourself
where it's always calm and peaceful.
[soft music]
This is exactly what the KGB
and Marxist Lenin's propaganda want,
to distract their attention and mental energy
from real issues into non-issues, into non-existent harmony.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi obviously is not on the payroll
of the KGB, but whether he knows it or not,
he contributes greatly
to demoralisation of American society.
[gentle music]
Paul McCartney and his girlfriend, Jane Asher,
stayed for five weeks and they left
because Jane had a theatrical commitment back in London.
[Interviewer] This presumably
is your first big meditation,
and what effect has it had on you?
I think it calms you down.
It's hard to tell
because it was so different life out there.
It'd be easy to tell now that I'm back
and we're doing some ordinary thing
to see just what it does.
[camera reel clicking]
They were four working class guys from Liverpool.
They had an innate sense of not being taken advantage of.
So when they get together with Maharishi,
Maharishi is inevitably tempted to capitalise
on his sudden worldwide fame
because of The Beatles association.
They realise that maybe Maharishi
had been using them all along for publicity,
ever since the final record,
that was "by The Beatles Spiritual Teacher,"
it said on the album.
So John and George started a think something fishy is here.
He's using us for publicity.
So they began to hear little bits of news here and there,
from the grapevine of, you know,
your Maharishi's planning this and planning that,
and you're gonna be in it and they're going, "Are we?"
[Susan] Maharishi kept promising ABC
that he would do a special with The Beatles.
And The Beatles kept saying,
"We're not gonna do this special,"
but Maharishi kept promising it over and over.
There comes a time in late '67,
when Paul and George go to Sweden,
basically to tell the Maharishi to cool a bit, you know.
"Don't start making plans that involve us
without telling us first."
We're glad to have you here.
-Thank you. -Thank you.
We do appreciate your music and...
That's a posy, yes?
The smell of the flowers.
We only decided to come yesterday,
just to pop over to have a little chat.
Yes, yes.
And when The Beatles were in Rishikesh,
he, without their knowledge was having the discussions
with a Hollywood film company
called Four Star International.
[exciting music]
Maharishi promised them
that they could have exclusive rights
to make a film about Maharishi and about Maharishi's guru.
But unfortunately, Maharishi made the same promise
to someone else.
He had given rights to Four Star Productions.
The lawyer arrived in Rishikesh with a signed contract.
They gave exclusive rights to film Maharishi
for the next five years.
Some suits arrive from Hollywood and a crew,
and John and George were going,
"We didn't want this, you know we are here to meditate,
we don't want these film people here."
And there was a confrontation with Maharishi
about, "Why you're doing this, we told you not to"
In any case,
The Beatles became quite disillusioned about that.
The film was really kind of a deal breaker,
and they got very angry
because they had been granted exclusive rights
to do this film, and now another film company is there.
So the whole thing just fell apart.
[gentle music]
[Pattie] I don't know what happened, I still don't know.
But I know there many rumours around, but John said,
"That's it we're, we're going, were going."
But I know John wants to come back to England and see Yoko,
and so any little excuse and John was ready to go,
'cause we'd been there for weeks.
Well, it was only John who was upset.
John dragged George along.
And I still think it was when Magic Alex came
from the Apple Corps group.
[tense music]
Alexis Margas was one of The Beatles associates.
In fact, he was very close to John,
and sort of attached himself to John's hip,
and Cynthia really didn't like Alexis.
She was very concerned about this Svengali influence
that he was having on John.
John had introduced Alex as, "My new guru."
He was this electronics marvel.
Supposedly, he introduced himself
as somebody who is like Edison and Marconi combined,
but in fact, he was just a TV repairman.
He's just a friend of ours who's in electronics.
[John] Oh yeah.
He's called Alex, and he's great, he's a Greek fella.
-And he's invented things- -You know he's Greek.
He's invented incredible things.
[Pattie] He was a minx, yeah, naughty, little boy.
You see, he wanted to have power over John,
so he would, you know, create all these things,
pretending he's a scientist.
He said, "Oh, here's this one from new wallpaper,
but it's all speakers,
so the whole room will have this one big speaker."
So he loved all that, controlling John.
So clearly and obviously Maharishi was in the way.
One night, John and Maharishi
were having this wonderful rapport,
and I, you know how you can see sometimes
when a person let's the mask drop from their face,
and I could see this really dislike of Maharishi
on Magic Alex's face.
It disturbed me and I felt something was going wrong.
No one ever saw him meditating.
And as a matter of fact,
he admitted that he came to India
for the purpose of getting The Beatles away from Maharishi.
Alexis said, "Oh, it's because we don't want Maharishi
to have that much influence over the boys."
[Nancy] I'm totally convinced that Magic Alex
made a friend of one of the young women at the ashram,
and he got her to tell John Lennon
that she was having sex with Maharishi.
Is this just horrified all of us
when this whole thing happened.
I believe that Maharishi made a pass.
And the reason I believe it
is because he made a pass at many women that I knew.
Wasn't the first or the last one.
[Nancy] Well I remember Maharishi saying that, you know,
"If you haven't an ugly woman over here,
and a beautiful woman over there,
it's just easier for your attention
to go to the more beautiful."
[Susan] John and George didn't believe it at first,
but finally Alexis convinced them
and then went and got taxis for all of them
before they could change their mind.
While they were waiting for the taxis, John wrote,
"Maharishi, Maharishi, what have you done?
You made a fool of everyone."
The song had a lot of expletives in it,
and George said, "You can't say that, that's ridiculous"
So John changed the lyrics to "Sexy Sadie."
Yeah, "Sexy Sadie," it was actually called "Maharishi."
And it was a put down in the Maharishi
in very vicious terms.
I don't think the chance of it getting out
with the words that John had originally,
but basically denounces him
and says he was a bit of a rogue.
[tense music]
[Nancy] John dragged George along
and then he just bolted from the ashram.
[John] I think Maharishi was a mistake.
[Reporter] What do you mean he was a mistake?
We made a mistake.
We thought there was more to him than there was,
you know, but he's human,
and for a while we thought he wasn't,
you know, thought he was a.
[tense music continues]
♪ The devil was released ♪
♪ Back home they got a postcard in the mail ♪
[upbeat music]
♪ But that was in the good old days ♪
♪ Along the Hippie Trail ♪
The Beatles, they were opening us up
to different experiences in various ways, you know.
Indian philosophy and Indian music.
And then when they went to Rishikesh,
you know, it was the idea of Indian travel.
It's like, "Wow, looks nice over there, you know,
they're enjoying themselves in the sunshine."
There'd been a hippie trail, an embryonic hippie trail,
in the early sixties, a few people had gone out.
The whole point being that you drove over land,
the ultimate destination was in fact Katmandu in Nepal.
I'm sure The Beatles inspired lots of people to go,
because this little trickle of people
on the hippie trail beforehand suddenly turned into a flood.
[relaxed music]
[Interviewer] Did you enjoy the trip over to India?
Yes, The journey was terrible, but the trip was all right.
[Interviewer] There was a report that we get
-we got a very bad report- -Yeah its true,
we smashed him.
[everyone laughing]
[Interviewer] You didn't like him,
or you didn't have the patience and decided to go home.
We were there four month so, George and I were.
[Interviewer] Did you think this man was on the level?
I don't know what level he's on,
but we had a nice holiday in India and came back and rested.
[Susan] Maharishi looked visibly frail
and without his usual effervescence.
His brilliant and beautiful yogic radiance
was reduced to grey and to ashen.
He became physically sick
when the chorus moved from Rishikesh to Kashmir.
He's still a nice fella, and everybody's fine,
but we don't go out with him anymore.
When the Rishikesh experience finished,
Paul,, John and Ringo just kind of carried on,
resumed with their lives,
but for George, India was never a five minute thing.
India was a lifetime devotion.
And he wasn't just gonna give it up
because of the way that Rishikesh finished
with a bit of a sour taste.
India for him was something that he continued to push.
[Pattie] George didn't want to go back to London.
George was still in meditation mode,
and he didn't want to go straight back to see the press.
So he said, "Let's go down to Kerala, just for a week."
And it was very calm then, and then, you know,
he wanted to slowly come back into the business life,
as it were, in London, slowly, in his way.
[train bell ringing]
I mean, because everybody,
all of a sudden became an individual.
John, Paul, Ringo and George.
The Maharishi phase faded out, you know,
but the Indian aesthetics and the etiquettes
remained with everybody.
Using the influence of Indian music and the culture.
[upbeat music]
You know, when you look back at The Beatles story
on their return to the UK in the spring of 1968,
there was still the comradery
that saw them through the madness of Beatlemania.
Soon to dissolve as the fraught sessions
of "The White Album" began.
Working separately most of the time and not as a unit,
and with Ringo quitting the band for a short period,
remarkably, they delivered what many would call
one of their greatest albums.
When The Beatles were in India,
Maharishi told them,
if they don't continue meditating regularly
their band would break up.
[Interviewer] Now, does this mean a business
or emotional split within The Beatles?
I should think a bit of both.
It's probably to do with growing up and to do with
there was a time when there were just four of them
but now they're married and there are children.
[gentle music]
I was born in 1971.
Same time around when Beatles broke up.
I mean, even like,
I guess it's about 50 odd years or something,
it still sounds fresh.
It sounds amazing.
The world would have been like,
so shit without them, you know?
The world is so much better to live in
with that music around.
The songs that they made in India, in Rishikesh,
I had no idea and out of them
some of the songs like "Blackbird," like "Dear Prudence,"
like these are some of the songs
that I used to perform in my old band in Chennai.
To have known that they have written these songs in India,
it just gave it so much more meaning
because I used to connect to these songs
as a classical musician,
more than a person who loves English music.
I was born in '74,
so for me to get to know The Beatles happened much later.
We were not really born at the time when the dressing,
how a Beatles haircut or the dress that they wore
really attracted us, I mean, we didn't see that.
We only heard the music. It's purely the music.
It sounded very simple, very catchy,
and you could, you know, have a high recall.
So whenever you heard a song, you would remember it.
But when you sat down to work on it,
to try and see if you can sing that song,
that is when you realise the complexity of it.
I don't know how it was appreciated when it was released,
but it's something that is still relevant today.
[gentle music]
[slow upbeat music]
They came to see, in the fullness of time,
in particular, in George's case,
George discovered from gathering evidence
what exactly happened at the end of their stay in Rishikesh,
and how Alexis Margas,
Magic Alex had cooked up this whole thing.
[Nancy] George always loved Maharishi,
and toward the end of his life
he went back to see Maharishi.
[Susan] George said to Maharishi,
"I came to apologise"
and Maharishi asked "For what?"
And George replied, "You know, for what."
Maharishi apparently said to George,
he believed that The Beatles were angels on earth
and that they were not guilty of any crime themselves.
So when George came away from that meeting,
he felt cleansed of his guilt
of the method of their departure back in 1968.
I got into India,
I think that was the one thing in my life
that I could have done without everything else,
but that one thing of getting in touch with what's inside
through Maharishi and Ravi Shankar and indie music.
And as for the others, well they all warmed again
to the culture and the spirituality of India.
The only way we can change the system
is by changing it non-violently,
because they've done the violent for millions of years.
I think the only way to do it is Gandhi's way,
and that's nonviolent, passive, positive,
or whatever they call it these days.
[gentle music]
John Lennon spoke kindly of Maharishi in other interviews.
Ringo and Paul have both said the same,
everything became okay again, in the end.
Years ago, we studied meditation with the Maharishi.
He was one of the ones that wasn't a fake.
There were a lot of them around that time
who were into Rolls Royces and chicks.
He wasn't one of them.
I actually met him quite recently.
He lives in the Netherlands now,
and I took Stella, my daughter and James, my son with me.
And he is a spry old codger,
he in his eighties and he's still working,
he's still going.
[wind whistling]
[water splashing]
The day when Maharishi died, there was a big storm.
[water splashing]
The water from the river Ganges came whirling up
and it showered in this area.
The local folks who came here to pay
their tributes to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
were amazed to see this supernatural thing.
It was a power of Maharishi
which brought Gunga on this top of mountain.
[soft music]
When I first came here 10 years ago,
this was just jungle, ruins and jungle.
And we would sneak in through the back,
there were cracks in the wall,
and you would smoke pot and see leopards at night.
[giggles] This is what people did.
So I take tourists into the ashram, I show them everything,
and I'm trying to bring them back into 1968
and give them some of the experience of The Beatles here.
Tourists that come here, they really appreciate it.
They really appreciate to have the sense for The Beatles
as a historical entity.
My experience when I went to The Beatles ashram
was super magical.
These huge superstars,
you wouldn't really think that they'd go to a really simple,
no-frills ashram in Rishikesh.
[gentle music]
The most exciting thing about music
is the way that it has the capacity to shift cultural norms
and expand people's minds,
and in India, that's exactly what The Beatles did
by bridging the gap between East and West
in a country that was very much under this, you know,
dark cloud of colonial rule.
Which in many ways created a culture of apology
for being Indian and a reverence for whatever was foreign.
That what was so powerful
is for the most powerful band in the world
to come and revere our culture.
They had descended in our part of the country,
and they had embraced the spiritual narrative of India,
and they had come to Rishikesh,
and there were images of them with Mahesh Yogi
and then suddenly we look, they are one of us.
As kids, as Indian kids, you know,
we're always rebelling against our culture.
And then you realise that like something
that is so influential in pop culture,
took a lot of influence from India.
My introduction to them was I happened to be part
of the age of illegal downloading,
at the time of like Napster and stuff.
We used to have "The White Album" on CD.
That was my first introduction to The Beatles.
We still felt it's influence
even though we were born like in the eighties and nineties.
India is considered this place where you could go
for a spiritual awakening, for meditation,
so I think The Beatles came to India to look for that.
And in some ways they really did find that.
I guess that's a small gift that India gave the world
through The Beatles.
[gentle uplifting music]
[John] The happiest time in life,
one of the happiest times was in India.
I mean, it was just such a groove.
And it was such a pure thing,
everything is slightly more in perspective.
[George] The whole of life
should be a spiritual experience
because we are spirits who are just encased in bodies.
People forget that and think they're just this body,
but we're actually spirits in bodies.
[upbeat music]
[bright upbeat music]
[bright upbeat music continues]
[gentle music]
[bright upbeat music]
[bright upbeat music continues]