Across the Universe Read online

  AJOY BOSE

  Across the Universe

  The Beatles in India

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  CONTENTS

  Dramatis Personae

  Introduction

  India and the Beatles

  The Sitar Has Many Strings

  Karmic Connection

  Sex, Drugs and Rock Concerts

  Enter the Maharishi

  Life after Brian

  Arrival at Rishikesh

  Fool on the Hill

  Paradise Lost

  And in the End . . .

  Notes

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  To my beloved late sister-in-law, Ritoo, who adored the Beatles and whose

  songs brought her much comfort in her final months

  Dramatis Personae

  The Boys

  GEORGE HARRISON loved the music, culture and spirituality of India, leading the way for the Beatles to come to Rishikesh.

  JOHN LENNON went from drugs to ancient mantras to ease his inner demons but then he followed his heart to the girl he loved.

  PAUL McCARTNEY used his gift with words and concepts to build the Beatles brand but ended up as a fool who played it cool and made his world a little colder.

  RINGO STARR just wanted to play drums for the best band in the world, if only his mates could forget their giant egos.

  The Girls

  YOKO ONO, though not in Rishikesh, was in John’s heart and he went to her, forsaking family, bandmates and guru.

  CYNTHIA LENNON loved John dearly but he slipped away first into a psychedelic dimension and then into the arms of a Japanese avant-garde artiste.

  PATTIE HARRISON introduced George and the others to Transcendental Meditation but he later moved on to play Lord Krishna.

  JENNIFER BOYD was Pattie’s beautiful kid sister immortalized by a love song at Rishikesh comparing her to a Juniper tree.

  JANE ASHER was Paul’s steady girl till they went to India and he refused to take her to see the Taj Mahal.

  MAUREEN STARR got Ringo to take her back from the Rishikesh ashram after being chased by flying insects.

  The Gurus

  MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI was the giggling guru who captivated the Beatles with a secret mantra till he was exposed as Sexy Sadie.

  RAVI SHANKAR taught George the magic of the sitar and the mysteries of India.

  The Farrows

  MIA was the butterfly who flitted through the ashram entrancing the Maharishi.

  PRUDENCE inspired a Beatles song after locking herself in her room to furiously meditate, trying to be the first one to get to heaven.

  JOHNNY used to play in the Ganga with Pattie and was promised the director’s job on a Maharishi film that never got made.

  The Rock Stars

  MIKE LOVE dared to chew beef jerky in the Valley of Saints but the Beach Boys’ lead singer would become a strict vegetarian and a devoted Hindu.

  DONOVAN was a Scottish balladeer with a head full of dark curls, charming everyone, but he had eyes only for Jennifer.

  The Roadies

  MAL EVANS was a strapping Beatles crew member who cooked eggs at the ashram for Ringo.

  NEIL ASPINALL was astonished at the Maharishi’s business acumen and haggling skills while making a film deal with him on behalf of the Beatles.

  The Disciple

  NANCY COOKE DE HERRERA was the American socialite disciple of the Maharishi whom he put in charge of making the Beatles comfortable at the ashram.

  The Hunter

  RIK COOKE was rechristened Bungalow Bill by the Beatles in a song after he went on a tiger hunt taking a break from meditation.

  The Greek

  MAGIC ALEX was supposed to be an electronics whiz kid but came to Rishikesh to break up the Beatles’ picnic at the ashram.

  Introduction

  Countless books have been written about the Beatles but surprisingly few have focused on the path that brought them to India half a century ago. Many have of course mentioned in passing their Rishikesh trip to meditate at an ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas and the famous spat with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Yet there has been no serious attempt to piece together and put in perspective the fascinating saga that began with George Harrison curiously picking up a sitar while filming Help! and ended three years later with him and John Lennon walking out on their Indian guru.

  This three-year period was particularly momentous in the life of the band. This is when the Beatles transformed themselves from the world’s most famous pop stars into pioneering musical artistes, fathering the important and still popular musical genre of rock. Yet their musical genius is not the main reason the Fab Four still remain so alive in public memory. It is the interplay of their personal relationships and ideas with their music that has made them such endearing totems for generation after generation of fans. The growing affair with India alongside their experiments with psychedelic drugs is a crucial ingredient of the Beatles fable. Their stay at the ashram with its astonishing creative burst of songwriting, followed by the dramatic denouement, became all the more significant because it is from here that the band started unravelling.

  The journey of the lads from Liverpool to Rishikesh also brings into play two extraordinary Indian luminaries in the tale. Pandit Ravi Shankar, the sitar legend, described by George as the ‘godfather of international music’ left his special imprint by opening the door to Indian culture and faith for his protégé and, thereby, his bandmates. The unique, if somewhat dubious, personality of the Maharishi, perhaps the most influential of the several Indian gurus who reached out to the West, presents an interesting contrast. The pageant of other colourful characters that flit across this shadow play on the Beatles in Rishikesh I am about to present includes Hollywood actress Mia Farrow, Japanese avant-garde artiste Yoko Ono and of course the controversial Greek Magic Alex, who, according to some, played the role of the serpent in the Himalayan paradise. It is truly an international cast drawn from across the universe.

  Many of the key personalities in the story of the Beatles in India are no longer with us. The two surviving members of the band, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, were not available for an interview. But I did manage to track down in London Pattie Boyd, formerly married to George. It was she who had first led the Beatles to the Maharishi. Pattie was kind enough to spend more than an hour with me, recounting her memories of not just the excursion to Rishikesh but also the cultural voyage across India on which she and her husband were taken by Ravi Shankar two years before that. Indeed, it was this experience that deepened George’s bond with India, drawing him into its embrace, and would make him urge his bandmates to follow him in search of ancient wisdom.

  In Rishikesh there is nobody to talk about what happened so many years ago; the ashram lies in ruins with the Maharishi and his people having abandoned the place several decades ago. But I was fortunate to find in the nearby town of Dehra Dun, the wizened octogenarian Ajit Singh, veena player and owner of Pratap Music Shop, who had become friends with John and George when they were at the ashram. He shared vivid and very pleasant memories of performing at birthday parties for both George and Pattie at the ashram, playing music and chatting with the two Beatles in their cottage and making musical instruments for them.

  I am also grateful to Sukanya Shankar, widow of Ravi Shankar, and the Bharat Ram brothers, Vinay, Arun and Vivek, for their insights into the relationship between the sitar maestro and George. My long chats with Saeed Naqvi, the only journalist to have managed to embed himself inside the ashram while the Beatles were there, were invaluable.

  Although not many eyewitness accounts of the Beatles’ passage to India are available any more, the big advantage of writing on the band is to be able to delve into the incredible amount of material written and recorded over the decades about their musical career as well as their personal lives. Beatles history, including the minutest trivia, remains a major industry. Most of the direct quotes by members of the band are attributed to three major sources: The Beatles Anthology, a six-hour-long television documentary participated in by Paul, George and Ringo; John’s two interviews to Rolling Stone magazine, later compiled into a book, Lennon Remembers; and Paul’s recollections to his friend Barry Miles, carried in the latter’s book Many Years from Now. Other convenient second-hand sources are the Beatles Bible and the impressive two-volume The Beatles: Off the Record by Keith Badman that has reprinted a variety of quotes of the Beatles and those relevant to their story from the early days till the band fell apart.

  Of the many books analysing the Beatles’ music and their meaning, the most authoritative by far is Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head. On the other hand, there is none better than The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles by their senior manager Peter Brown when it comes to the inside story of the complex and often troubled personal lives of the band members and their relationships with each other, their partners and their team.

  As for the Beatles’ sojourn in Rishikesh, there are hardly any detailed accounts of what actually went down in the ashram. Of the four Beatles, Paul’s reminiscences recorded by Miles are the most descriptive, while books written by Pattie and Cynthia also provide insights. But the most comprehensive journal of the happenings in the Maharishi’s meditation camp is undoubtedly All You Need Is Love: An Eyewitness Account of When Spirituality Spread from the East to the West by Nancy Cooke de Herrera, American socialite disciple of the Maharishi whom he had put in charge of the Beatles and their entourage. Memories record
ed in books and interviews by the two rock stars also present at the ashram—Mike Love of the Beach Boys and Scottish balladeer Donovan—provide more first-hand feedback of those days.

  Finally, there is The Beatles in India, a chronicle by a casual observer, Paul Saltzman, the young Canadian film-maker who almost accidentally befriended the Beatles while nursing a broken heart at the ashram, highlighted by his iconic amateur photographs of members of the band there. Journalist Lewis Lapham, sent out to cover the Beatles in meditation mode, presents a far more acerbic version of the goings-on at the Himalayan retreat in his With the Beatles.

  The Beatles story has been told and retold again and again in myriad ways. It is one fairy tale that will never go stale. The fiftieth anniversary of their trip to Rishikesh is perhaps a better occasion than any other to remember how and when India cast its spell on this legendary band as it reached its pinnacle of success and glory. This book is a tribute to the Beatles for the first groundbreaking engagement between the fast-changing Western culture of the 1960s and an emerging postcolonial generation in India that brought us to the much closer world we live in today.

  New Delhi

  14 November 2017

  INDIA AND THE BEATLES

  Diary of an Indian teenage Beatles fan

  It was the mother of all scabs. It was ugly as hell but it made me famous for a while. It was four inches long and three inches wide. And it grew just below my elbow and fell off after 52 days. I kept it safely in a plastic bag for many years in my cupboard next to my pile of underwear. But one day somebody threw it away while cleaning my cupboard. I was devastated. That scab could have found its way to a museum. Because it was inflicted by John Lennon. Not deliberately. But I owed it to him.

  6th July, 1966. I had just turned 15 years of age and was already a crazy Beatles fan. Two years ago when I entered my teens I had got myself a George Harrison haircut hoping to look like him. Anyway, on that fateful early July morning I had rushed to the Oberoi hotel to meet my idols after my elder sister’s journalist husband had tipped me off that the Beatles were going to be there for a brief stopover in Delhi. By the time I arrived at six in the morning it was no longer a secret. There was a huge crowd of thousands around the hotel front gates. About a hundred of us managed to make it to the lobby. We imagined they would emerge from one of the lifts. We waited and waited. Only Brian Epstein emerged and then suddenly vanished after seeing us. Then somebody told us that the Beatles wouldn’t be stupid to leave from the front lobby with so many of their fans there. We learnt that they were about to exit from the hotel back gate.

  A dozen of us managed to charge to the back gate. There we found a black Mercedes with dark windows parked beside a service delivery door. The engine was running. By then our numbers had increased to over one hundred. Everybody was screaming. I think I screamed too. I kept on banging on one of the windows of the car. The wheels started moving and the car was about to take off. Then to my surprise the dark window I was banging on began to descend. Six inches first and then lower. It was John. My face was four inches away from his. He smiled at me. Then I saw his hand move towards his mouth. I saw him kiss it and then he straightened his palm and blew the kiss to me. Not at the crowd but at ME! The window went up and the car jerked forward. My hand was still on the car and I went for a massive toss. I landed flat on my back and when I managed to get up I found the skin next to my elbow was badly lacerated. It was the most important wound of my life.

  Two years later when I was even crazier about The Beatles they came back into my life. My journalist brother-in-law was going to Rishikesh to try and interview the Beatles. He knew my craze for them and had seen the badge of honour near my elbow. So he asked me whether I wanted to come along. Asked? What was there to ask? Did I have a life then? Does a stupid besotted teenager have a life?

  I lived for three days in a cottage at a camp in Rishikesh just a hundred yards from the Beatles. I met them and spoke to them briefly. I didn’t show them the wound on my elbow because I was on a different level with them. They assumed I was one of the inmates of the camp. I attended with them lecture sessions by the Maharishi in the evening. I also remember sitting around a bonfire at night with The Beatles and others singing and playing the guitar. I too sang with them. I think I saw Patty Harrison and Mia Farrow. But my eyes were only for The Beatles.

  George Harrison was very kind. One night I remember he came with a blanket wrapped around him. He was seated on the ground. I was just behind him. It was bitterly cold. He turned around at some point and asked me whether I would like to share his blanket. I said thanks but no. I should have said yes. I could have said yes. But somehow I felt shy and said no. I would regret refusing to share George’s blanket all my life.

  I came back from the Rishikesh camp with wonderful memories and a prize trophy. It was a picture of a nude John Lennon wading through the waters of the river Ganges. The photographer of my journalist brother-in-law had sneakily taken it and gifted it to me. I could not believe my luck.

  Some years later I married a man who was obsessed with the Beatles like me. He had a Beatles Tee shirt and possessed every single one of their albums. We would sing Beatles songs all the time. I think the real reason he married me is because I had met the Beatles and spent time with them at Rishikesh.

  I fell in love with the Beatles as a rebellious teenager growing up in Calcutta in the mid 1960s. They were hated by my father, a senior bureaucrat in the Bengal government and an authoritarian figure in my elder brothers’ and my lives. And that only made us love the Beatles even more. Our father disliked their music which he dismissed as just noise; he was appalled by their screaming fans but he detested their mops of long hair the most. I remember some of the fiercest fights in my teenage years with my old man were about the length of my hair which I of course wanted to grow as long as the Beatles’. When members of the band took to drugs in their psychedelic phase, my father got even more worried and, by the time they came to the Maharishi’s ashram in 1968, he saw them as a serious menace to his sons. We had by then become adoring fans. What enraged and baffled him was how the British, whom he had worked with during the Raj and admired for their discipline and sense of propriety, could produce a generation of weaklings who let it all hang out with their drug abuse and dissolute lifestyle and their unkempt locks of hair.

  In early 1967 we won an important victory in the ongoing tussle with our father over the Beatles. At that time the hoary old Calcutta daily the Statesman had the same stamp of establishment values as The Times in London. It was the only newspaper that reached our house each morning and was a great favourite of my father who felt that we should learn both correct English and the right set of values from it. To our absolute delight, in February 1967, the Statesman group decided to shed its ‘fuddy duddy’ image to start a weekly newspaper, Junior Statesman, to reach out to a young, emerging audience that wanted to cock a snook at the establishment. Nicknamed ‘JS’, it was an instant hit among students of English-medium schools and colleges in the city and would soon become famous across the country. The cover story of the very first issue was on the Beatles, and the fact that a publication of the Statesman had granted them such recognition helped us score a huge point over our father.

  ‘We were all unanimous about putting the Beatles on the cover of the first issue. They were easily the most popular stars among English-speaking young people at that time,’ recalled Jug Suraiya who was a senior writer in the Junior Statesman from the start. The weekly, in its subsequent issues, would closely follow the Fab Four, providing in-depth analysis of their music along with snippets on their activities and photos mostly sourced from foreign publications and wire services. When the Beatles arrived in Rishikesh almost exactly a year after JS started publication, it covered their stay at the ashram extensively. In fact, the weekly was one of the few Indian newspapers read by the boys when they were in India and Paul is said to have been a particularly avid reader. The Maharishi even sent a special message to the young readers of the weekly as it led the intensive media coverage of the Beatles in Rishikesh, including a special article on Transcendental Meditation.