The Beatles song George Harrison said was made for God: “A subtle bit of PR”
There’s no doubt that during their more experimental period towards the end of the 1960s, The Beatles were tapping deeper into a sense of spiritualism that few other acts were daring to approach at the time.
Of course, the band’s trips to visit India played a significant part in this newfound enlightenment, but their experience of experimenting with psychedelic drugs such as LSD also meant that they were able to explore deeper within their subconscious, even if only on a more ego-driven level. The Beach Boys may have had similar experiences on the mind-altering side of things, but in terms of far-reaching religious themes, their time spent with spiritual leaders had a more profound effect.
The member who was most tuned into this new perspective was George Harrison, who penned some of the band’s most raga-influenced tracks, such as ‘Within You, Without You’ and ‘Love You To’, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t other songs with themes of religion and spiritualism being written by other members.
John Lennon was responsible for the psychedelic yet Indian classical music-inspired ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ on Revolver. However, some of his more Western-influenced tracks for the group were also tapping into themes that one could relate to something of an ecclesiastical nature, and one in particular was something that Harrison believed to have been written as a hymn for God.
‘All You Need Is Love’ was written and recorded in 1967 and eventually released on the double-EP, Magical Mystery Tour. The song came to fruition as a result of their manager, Brian Epstein, telling the band they had been booked to perform on Our World, a live multi-national broadcast that would spread their music to countries that hadn’t been exposed to The Beatles before, and Harrison believed that this created a hidden religious undertone to the lyrics.
Spreading the good word of God to other countries, especially during the Cold War, where international relations were fractious in certain parts of the world, was intended as an act of positive activism, and the message of love being “all you need” was intended to show that there is good in the world during dark times.
“I remember the recording, because we decided to get some people in who looked like the ‘love generation,’” Harrison later claimed of the broadcast in the liner notes for The Beatles Anthology. “If you look closely at the floor, I know that Mick Jagger is there. But there’s also an Eric Clapton, I believe, in full psychedelic regalia and permed hair, sitting right there.”
He continued to talk of the spiritual unity that was present in the studio at the time. “It seemed to be a great idea to perform that song while everybody else was showing knitting in Canada or Irish clog dances in Venezuela,” he added. “We thought, ‘Well, we’ll sing ‘All You Need Is Love’ because it’s a subtle bit of PR for God.’”
It’s obvious that as a strong advocate for world peace, Lennon would have had this as one of his primary motivations for writing a song that would be broadcast throughout the world, and even though he’d flippantly claimed that the band were “more popular than Jesus” only a year before, that didn’t mean that they were beneath writing a song that touched upon his importance.
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