George and John were introduced to LSD, through a dental friend, in 1965, without realizing they had been given it. ‘It was as if I’d never tasted, talked, seen, thought or heard properly before,’ says George. ‘For the first time in my life I wasn’t conscious of ego.’
Taking drugs didn’t stop their music. Now that they were all back together again, having found that things like acting didn’t work, they began work on their most ambitious album so far, which showed traces of their interest in drugs. This was Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
During this session, they also got the idea for a TV film. For over a year they’d been putting off doing their third film, at the same time as they were putting off other things they didn’t care for, like touring and appearing. Many scripts had been written, then rejected, one of them by the late Joe Orton. (He was an intense Beatle fan, and ‘A Day In The Life’ was played at his funeral.) Eventually, they came round to the idea of writing and doing a film by themselves, just to see if they could do it.
Paul thought of the idea of a TV film in April, flying home from visiting Jane on her 21st birthday in the States, where she was on tour with the Old Vic. He thought they would all get onto a bus and just see what happened. It would be Magical, so they could do what they wanted. And Mysterious, as no one would know where they were going or what they were going to do. That was as far as he got then. The others agreed to it, but no further work was done on it for almost six months.
George, by this time, was well immersed in Indian music, which also shows in Sergeant Pepper, but he’d also become very knowledgeable about Indian religion. His wife Pattie was with him in all this. In fact, it was she who first had any contact with the Maharishi.
She says that their interest in religion had started by chance, during their trip to India in September 1966. This had been simply to study Indian music with Ravi Shankar, which again had started by chance. During the film Help! there is a scene in which there are some unusual musical instruments. George, bored by filming, had amused himself by trying to play one of them, which turned out to be a sitar.
In India, apart from studying the sitar, George also met Ravi’s spiritual guru, Tat Baba, who explained the law of Karma (the law of action and reaction). ‘Meeting him and reading Autobiography of a Yogi, as well as the seven weeks with Ravi, were more spiritually rewarding than anything that had come before, even drugs.’
Back home, George and Pattie were reading many books about religion, an interest which had been first roused after George’s first LSD experience. He had begun with Aldous Huxley and gradually moved further into Eastern concepts.
In February 1967 Pattie had become a member of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, on her own. George did go once, around the same time, but wasn’t initiated, as he didn’t feel it was right for him. ‘I’d been trying to teach myself meditation from books,’ says Pattie, ‘but only half doing it. One day a girlfriend told me about transcendental meditation and I went along to a lecture at the Caxton Hall. Maharishi himself wasn’t there, just someone else talking about his work, but I joined the movement then. The lecture wasn’t very inspiring, but transcendental meditation seemed an obvious and simple process. I got all the movement’s literature from then on, so I knew about their summer conference at Bangor.’
George, in the meantime, was not only telling the others about what he was reading, he was now also looking round the world for some wise learned man to explain things and put him on the right track.
George even trailed down to a deserted part of Cornwall, after he’d read a book on cosmic communication, and spent several hours climbing a high hill, but nothing happened. He heard of many other people, Indian and Western, and their ideas, but no one seemed to him to be the right one, until Maharishi.
It is important to stress that all of them were already very knowledgeable, long before Maharishi came along. He didn’t convert them, or reach out and direct them, or even tell them much they didn’t know. He chanced upon their lives, just at a time when they were looking for him.
All this spiritual groping didn’t stop them from doing their normal Beatle work. They did a song, ‘All You Need Is Love’, in July 1967 for a worldwide programme Our World, which was seen live by over 150 million people.
Their spiritual awakening did have one concrete effect. By August 1967 they had given up drugs. By actively thinking, reading and discussing spiritual matters, they decided that artificial stimulants like drugs were no real help. It was better to get there without them. They don’t regret having been on drugs. They say it was useful for them at the time, but is now no more. But it was nothing to do with Maharishi that they gave up drugs. They’d already done so on their own before they met him. He simply confirmed and gave more lucid reasons for their decision.
It was ironic that all the acres of heavy print from leader writers and doctors, warning about drugs — after Paul and then Brian admitted they’d had LSD — had been ignored, but their own gropings into religion had worked.
In mid-August 1967 it was suddenly advertised in several newspapers that Maharishi was in London and would be giving a public lecture. ‘This seems to have been a sudden decision,’ says Pattie. ‘It wasn’t in any of our literature that he was in London, or even coming to our Bangor conference. When I heard, I said to George, look, we’ve got to go.’
But by this time George had already heard, from other people, that Maharishi was in town. He contacted the others and said they must all go to his lecture at the Hilton Hotel.
This was on the Thursday evening, 24 August 1967. Afterwards, Maharishi invited them to join his movement’s summer conference at Bangor on Saturday. They said yes.
They told Brian Epstein about Maharishi and his transcendental meditation movement and how impressed they were by it all. Brian said he was interested. He might come up later during the conference, which was scheduled to last ten days. But he was more concerned with having an exciting August Bank Holiday weekend at his country home with a few new friends.
The news leaked out that the Beatles were going to Bangor with the Maharishi. What they thought was going to be a private, spiritual experience, developed into a carnival. It was almost like their touring days again, which they thought they’d given up for ever a year ago.
Euston Station was crowded with thousands of sightseers and press, who had turned out to watch the Beatles off on what the Daily Mirror called next day, a ‘Mystical Special’, or the 3.50 stopping train to Bangor, North Wales.
There was such chaos that Cynthia Lennon was left behind on the station platform, unable to get through the crowds to join John. A policeman forcibly held her back, thinking she was a fan.
On the train, jammed tight in a first-class compartment, were John, Paul, George and Pattie and Ringo, plus Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull and Jennie Boyd, Pattie’s sister. Ringo was a late starter. His wife Maureen had just had their second child and was still in hospital. It wasn’t clear if he would join them. ‘I rang Maureen in hospital. She said I had to go. I couldn’t miss this.’
The decision to go had been very sudden. Brian Epstein knew about it, but he wasn’t involved in any way. Even the everpresent Mal and Neil hadn’t been brought along. For five years they’d never gone anywhere without Brian Epstein or someone looking after them. ‘It’s like going somewhere without your trousers on,’ said John.