For better or worse, I never had a “discovery” moment when it came to the Beatles, because in my whole life they always were, even in childhood; they were already a thing when my time came. Some have accused me of glomming on to my brother’s love of the Beatles – as a child, I idolized my brother – but whether this was true or not, I did love them, or perhaps they grew on me easily. Their music only got more attractive the more I listened, and it was very easy to sing to, something I loved to do (though was not entirely brilliant at).
I also loved to decipher song lyrics, for I was always curious regarding what people sang about, and I spent hours playing and replaying music, very often stopping it to jot down what had just been sung and filling up notebooks with my scribblings. I did this with tracks from the Beatles’ early catalog, but things became more intriguing the further into their career I got, and if I’d noticed their music before, I really perked up my ears when I found “Within You, Without You,” a George Harrison composition that dove deeper into what drove me than any other song I’d encountered.
Sure, I did somewhat connect to “Tomorrow Never Knows” – an attraction to the manipulation of the music is undeniable, and I certainly appreciated such lyrics as in the singer’s directive to “listen to the color of your dreams.” I enjoyed playing with words, giving them and numbers personalities, even histories in the case of the latter. “Passion” to me matched with black, not red as other people asserted. I loved using words in archaic or unusual ways, and often asked annoying questions that I now understand to be related to grammar, such as which word was modifying which, “so did the phrase mean this, or did it really mean that?”
But the song also sat with me in a way I didn’t necessarily enjoy all that much, though at the time I was really still quite young – under ten – and had neither the understanding of the world nor the language to articulate myself. Now I can say it probably struck me as a narrative about acting for the benefit of yourself, for what your own senses crave. Later I understood it also entailed risks pertaining to what people will do to satisfy such a hunger, whatever the danger to oneself or any other. “Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream…” did not really appeal to me, even before I learned about acid, because I had already read my share (“my share” being relative, given my age at the time) of material on workings of the brain, and I was fascinated, but the mind…I didn’t really want to go there. I’d learned enough about that too.
Like the other Beatles, George Harrison went there. According to Philip Norman’s 2023 biography, George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle, the singer’s introduction to LSD came about during a dinner party he attended at the home of a dentist friend, who’d slipped it into their coffee. Initially conflating its effects with “spiritual awakenings and being artistic,” he later realized its horrible potential, following a disillusionment with the Haight-Ashbury scene. After examining the drug in liquid form under a microscope, he observed, “[I]t was like bits of old rope. I thought I couldn’t put that into my brain anymore.”
This era in Harrison’s life coincided with the onset of his studies of Indian mysticism, and he began receiving sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar, a member of Asian Music Circle, a group established to promote Indian culture.
Shankar made George play always with eyes shut until he knew every fret in the long labyrinth by touch alone. Even to fingertips hardened by years of sliding up and down a guitar fretboard, the endless-seeming scales were “murder.”
Yet the da’s and the diri-diris were not the only part of his training. Fundamental to Shankar’s teaching was that “music has the power to lead you towards God,” the oral tradition of Indian music above all. “The guru,” he explained, in his pupil’s first-ever encounter with that word, “passes along not just the technique but the whole spiritual aspect, the meaning of life, philosophy, everything.”
George’s last experience of God had been the stringent single Deity of his early Catholic upbringing. In comparison, the multiplicity of gods invoked by sitar music seemed easygoing, even comforting. “I couldn’t even say the word ‘God,’ it embarrassed me,” he would recall. “But, it was so strange, [when I said it with Ravi] it washed away all those fears and doubts and little things that hang you up.”
While I’ve only seen these precise words in recent weeks, I have in the past indeed read similar sentiments from Harrison’s perspective, and they stayed with me. But that was after I first heard “Within You, Without You,” and it only furthered my intrigue of this incredible songwriter and musician whose words and musical arrangement settled into my very young experience. Unlike the other song that vied for my attention at the time, though, this one spoke of a sort of unity. “We were talking about the space between us all,” it began, and continued later in the song ~
When you see beyond yourself
Then you may find peace of mind is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we’re all one
And life flows on within you and without you.
~ and I understood immediately that healing division required love and the willingness of us all to move beyond ourselves to achieve it. There was life and love within us, but also without us, and we had to bring the two together, requiring a unification of energy. Of course, these are my words now; it’s highly unlikely I would have utilized them then (though you never know; I did speak of such things), but I understood it on an instinctive level.
I appreciated the theme that required a seeing beyond yourself rather than merely taking care of what makes oneself happy. The words also operated in the manner I loved so much, by employing another level of meaning, “without you” referring not only to an absence of you (me), but also what exists external to each of us.
That was a gift to me from George, despite the reality of my young age and that he didn’t even know I existed. As I grew up, I saw how he had lived (and lived) that out: his Material World Foundation supports numerous charities and he himself advocated and aided a number of causes, including aid to Romanian orphans and children caught in humanitarian disasters; human rights with a focus against slavery and human trafficking; lupus research; cancer support; Doctors without Borders, and more. No list of George Harrison’s advocacy would be complete without the granddaddy of them all: the first ever multi-artist benefit concert, the Concert for Bangladesh, supporting the war-torn country in its quest to seek independence from Pakistan and its army’s genocidal attacks and relief from severe flooding, all of which resulted in a wave of refugees over the Indian border. Ravi Shankar, who partnered with Harrison for the event, hoped to raise US $25,000 ($190,000 – 2024); receipts came in at US $243,418.50 ($1,849,976.80 – 2024). While even $1 million today is not considered a large sum, we should remember that this was the first of its kind, executed without the aid of internet, MTV, or digital technology for ticket sales.
Nowadays, technology has only grown Harrison’s reach and influence: “Here Comes the Sun,” which, along with “Something,” gained him worldwide recognition as a songwriter of formidable ability, is in 2024 the most streamed Beatles song. All Things Must Pass, his first solo album following the Beatles’ breakup, was a critical and commercial success, and remains the most successful “ex-Beatle” album, having been certified seven-times platinum.
But the “quiet Beatle,” as we’ve seen, was about much more than that, and it was reflected in his responses to many of the difficulties he had as a Beatle and after. “Here Comes the Sun,” one of his loveliest songs, for example, speaks of relief at the melting away of cold and oppressive winter, but also of a reprieve from what were increasingly becoming messy business affairs.
.jpg)
Sometimes his influence, too, comes quietly, as in recent months when he has been on my mind, thinking of music, or the state of the world, or a longing for God. I kept meaning to make it over to a local vinyl shop to see about All Things Must Pass, a copy of which I have never owned. I then learned about the biography released last year (referenced above); it was on my Christmas list, and I had seen a massive pile of the volumes at a local bookstore. As it turned out, I didn’t get it, so I went in January to look for it, and the shop had run out. I was disappointed but remember thinking about George saying that it doesn’t really matter what you’ve got if you are happy in your heart. And I was happy because I realized there were a lot of people in my town who might be looking for the same thing I was, even if we had lots of different perspectives.
George spoke a little of this too. “All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn’t matter what you call Him just as long as you call.”
The “baby” of the Beatles, George passed away in 2001, but we remember him here today on what marks the 81st anniversary of his birth. His last words, spoken on his deathbed, are said to have been, “Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.”
Early Saturday morning, I woke, restless, and decided just to get up and have some breakfast. I remembered I had a couple of packages in the mail, so after I finished, I drove through our latest snowstorm for them. It was very quiet on the roads and so peaceful and pretty. On the way home, I thought, “Oh, I should go scoop up a donut for Turtle; it’s a nice Saturday morning for one.” So, I trekked in that direction and then came home at last. After donut and some tea, I opened my package to find it was a copy of All Things Must Pass.
Thank you so, so much to my dear friend in the Lower 48 for thinking of me, you are just smashing.
And thank you so much, George, for the beautiful birthday present. It will bring me so much more than you know. Or maybe you do.
Having read the Legendary Ten Seconds characterized as a folk band, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I received their third CD to review, though I was intrigued with the concept album format whereby all the songs map out historical events. More precisely, they detail a specific series of events pertaining to a key figure: Richard III. This release, aptly titled Richard III, highlights instrumental periods in the monarch’s life, through melodic tunes reminiscent of medieval music itself. Listeners will recognize certain moments in which the band pays homage to their medieval forebears, with particular use of mandola notes, bells, organs and other instruments. However, there is balance with a modern sensibility, so while the music is identifiable as medieval-inspired folk, this is neither the monophonically-textured sound we tend to associate with the Middle Ages, nor stereotypical folk often heard mainly at summer forest fairs. What it does present is much of the heritage—our own—that we are taught about as children and will recognize in themes of truth and loyalty, pastoral poetry and the timeless desire to be remembered. It is all presented here so engagingly that even those who might tend toward reluctance will find themselves drawn in, for the music as well as the history it recounts.
before the second sleep 
