Mick Jagger thought George Harrison’s spirituality was “faddish”
In 1964, George Harrison was introduced to two people who would come to shape the next few years of his life. The first was Pattie Boyd, the model and photographer Harrison would later marry. The second was an unknown Indian classical musician, one of a small group who appeared as background artists in A Hard Days Night. Harrison’s relationship with Boyd would eventually deteriorate, but his commitment to Eastern spirituality never waned, much to the surprise of The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, who had once regarded Harrison’s obsession with transcendental yoga as little more than a passing fad.
“He was searching for something much higher, much deeper,” Ravi Shankar, the sitar maestro who became Harrison’s friend and mentor, told Rolling Stone. “It does seem like he already had some Indian background in him. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain how he got so attracted to a particular type of life and philosophy, even religion. It seems very strange, really. Unless you believe in reincarnation.”
Harrison had always had a curious relationship with faith. Reflecting on his Catholic upbringing in Anthology, he said: “It seemed to be the same on every housing estate in English cities: on one corner they’d have a church and on the other corner a pub. Everybody’s out there getting pissed and then just goes in the church, says three ‘Hail Marys’ and one ‘Our Father’ and sticks a fiver in the plate. It felt so alien to me. Not the stained-glass window or the pictures of Christ; I liked that a lot, and the smell of the incense and the candles. I just didn’t like the bullshit.”
George would later travel to India with the rest of The Beatles to embark on a course of transcendental mediation at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. On their return to England, The Beatles soon outgrew the yogic practices they’d been taught – everyone except George. “He very much concentrated on the spiritual side of his life,” Mick Jagger said of Harrison in a Rolling Stone retrospective, “and it was more than a passing fancy. It looked like it was a sort of faddish thing at the time, but it stayed with him. You got the feeling that most people were dabbling in spirituality, but for George it was perhaps the major part of his life once he discovered it.”
Jagger would go on to explain that it was “very easy to ridicule” someone like George. “And he was ridiculed, there’s no doubt about that, especially in England, for being like that. But he did follow through on the courage of his convictions. He stayed with it and never rejected it. And, of course, he made mistakes – anybody following this who was one of the first people of a generation to do that would make mistakes – but not any glaring ones. You’ve got to start somewhere.”
Harrison’s interest in Eastern spirituality stayed with him his entire life, informing his relationships, his work, and inspiring charitable undertakings like the Concert for Bangladesh. You can watch a clip from that below.
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