Canadian filmmaker Paul Saltzman encountered The Beatles upon his own spiritual quest, on a feature documentary about his own experience of being in India with The Beatles in the 1960s.
The film rehearses the theory that with their manager Brian Epstein’s death in 1967, the Beatles needed a new guru, and duly fell for the Maharishi, whom they later found to be manipulative and grasping.
Yet perhaps they reached this conclusion as a result of being manipulated by another guru, the supposed tech visionary Alexis “Magic Alex” Mardas, who became a malign influence on the chaotic business affairs of the Beatles’ Apple Corps.
The first single, a cover of John Lennon’s love letter to the country in India, India, is performed by Nikhil D’Souza and is out now, while the full record will follow later this year.
In 1968, The Beatles and a crew of hangers-on traded hip London threads for kurtas and wreaths of marigold, trudging through dense forest to an ashram in Rishikesh, India, where they spent weeks writing songs.
There was George Harrison, a devoted follower of Transcendental Meditation; John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who had started to feud over the band’s direction; and Ringo Starr, the band’s drummer, who was so perturbed by India’s famously spicy food that he packed a reserve of beans for his stay at the ashram. He lasted 10 days.
.As George and I sat down alone in his small meditation room, he picked up his sitar and began to play. I was struck by the exquisite beauty of the instrument. (thebeatlesinindia.com)
Bob Spitz, a biographer, characterises the trip as a spectacularly creative time for the band, and as an escape from the “rat’s nest of fame” that consumed their lives in London.
With noise from the big city far behind them, Lennon and McCartney wrote many of the songs that would later appear on The Beatles (the White Album), including “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and “Dear Prudence”. Of note, Spitz says, was a brief thaw in the deteriorating relationship between the men.
I heard guitars and the sound of Paul’s and John’s voices. They were sitting with Ringo among the potted plants on the steps of their bungalow. They were strumming their Martin D-28 acoustic guitars, singing fragments of songs,
Paul started strumming again and John joined in. Paul had a slip of paper sitting on the step beneath him and he started to sing the words that he had scribbled down. It was the refrain to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. They repeated it over and over again—working with it, playing with it—and when they paused for a moment Paul looked up at me with a twinkle in his eyes and said, “That’s all there is so far. We don’t have any of the words yet.”
“The pressure of being The Beatles had driven a wedge between them individually and that had all percolated in the months leading up to their visit to Rishikesh,” he said. “Once they got there, and they unburdened themselves from all of that, they reconnected with their songwriting and their creativity. It just flowed forth.”
Walking toward Raghvendra’s quarters, I met Prudence and Mia Farrow out for a stroll. We greeted each other. Prudence stopped. Then Mia. “You’re the fellow from the hotel in Delhi, aren’t you? You came to our room.” Prudence turned to her sister. “Mia, this is the guy who brought you that lovely, big yellow mum. (thebeatlesinindia.com)
The idea of a Beatles in India documentary has been with me since the mid-nineties,” said producer Reynold D’Silva. “By pure coincidence, or perhaps it was fate, three separate people put me in touch with Paul early last year. It turned out he had been harbouring the idea for even longer than I had! After our first phone call, we were set on a path to produce the film together. Paul has a stellar track record in his field of producing and directing films. He has a clear vision with a profound knowledge of the subject matter borne out by the fact he was at the ashram in Rishikesh with The Beatles in February, 1968.”
Before arriving in India, I felt I had an ‘ego’ problem. For several years, I found that I had two motivating forces when deciding what I wanted to do, whether in my work, or in my relations with others. One was the desire to be constructive in society, to do ‘good’. The other was my. (John Lennon)
“It turned out he had been harbouring the idea for even longer than I had. After our first phone call, we were set on a path to produce the film together. Paul has a stellar track record in his field of producing and directing films. He has a clear vision with a profound knowledge of the subject matter borne out by the fact he was at the ashram in Rishikesh with The Beatles in February, 1968.”
