"Living In The Material World, Part 1" "By Mikhel for Subtitulos.es ==SPREAD THE WORD==" "You know, just go ahead, George, go on and fly away, babe." "Just be free and go." "And we'll see you down the line." "Erm..." "Just, leave." "Go to some place nice." "We'll be all right here." "And then he went on out." "That was it." "Is there anything you would say to George if he was around today?" "Fancy a cup of tea?" "Where have you been?" "I had a dream that I saw him." "And that was what I said to him in the dream." "So I guess that's what would be the question, wouldn't it?" "Where've you been since I last saw you?" "And he answered it, so I can tell you the answer as well, which was, "Here the whole time"." "Which doesn't really help me in any way, but..." "There's George with cancer and he knows his life is limited." "And what he does is buys a house in Switzerland, so he can avoid paying the taxman here." "The man who wrote the song Taxman, even to his final hours, was determined to cheat the taxman." "And then I thought, "There's George." Grace and humour." "And a weird kind of angry bitterness about certain things in life." "It's still difficult to try and talk about him in a, kind of... anecdotal, frivolous way." "It's, er, it's still too painful." "** Sunrise doesn't last all morning **" "** A cloudburst doesn't last all day **" "** Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning **" "** It's not always gonna be this grey. **" "People in their gayest colours." "Red, white and blue rosettes." "Red, white and blue hats..." "That, in accordance with arrangements between the three great powers..." "** Make the world rejoice **" "** While you're playing your part Keep a song in your heart **" "** Tra-la-la-la, la-la, la-la Count your blessings and smile **" "** Sing low, sing high, isn't it grand, beating the band?" "**" "** Who wants to die?" "Oh, what a happy land. **" "** All things must pass **" "** All things must pass away **" "** Sunset doesn't last all evening... **" "OK." "Do you want me to start?" "OK." "And then Pete can go." "Right." "We lived in 12 Arnold Grove." "It was a two up and two down." "The only heating was a coal fire, so there was no electricity." "Small backyard." "Toilet down the bottom of the yard." "It was a very cold place." "What kind of a kid was George?" "He was cocky." "A cocky little guy." "He had a good sense of himself, he wasn't cowed by anything." "He had a great haircut." "He had this long hair that he quiffed back." "We had a friend, Arthur." "And he used to describe it as "a fucking turban!" ""Like a fucking turban!"" "And it did." "It looked like a great big marvellous thing." "Looking back now, you know, it was pre-fame." "So you were just an ordinary kid who couldn't get in places, cos you weren't famous." "Teachers didn't like you." "You know, rock and roll hadn't arrived yet." "I always think of it as Dickensian." "And the school that I went to, with George, incidentally, was a very Dickensian old place." "In fact, Dickens had taught there." "That's how Dickensian it was." "You grew up wanting to go somewhere else." "It made you hungry." "So art was a great golden vision." "So for us, we wouldn't have called it art then, it'd be rock and roll." "We needed a good guitar player." "Both John and I played a bit of guitar, but we couldn't really solo." "We weren't that good." "And I said, "I know this guy." "He's a bit young, but he's good."" "John said, "Well, you know, let's meet him"." "So I said to George," ""You want to meet these guys I'm in a group with?"" ""Yeah." So he brought his guitar." "We were all on the top deck of a double-decker bus in Liverpool, round where John lived, a place called Woolton, and nobody was on the bus." "It was late at night." "And John said, "Well, go on then." "Let's see you play" to George." "I said, "Go on, go on, get your guitar out."" "So George unpacked his guitar, got it out, and he played the thing called Raunchy, which is..." ""Raunchy" by The Beatles" "Down, George, down!" "Yeah." "George, only a brief document or two left." "For the record, I'd like to say these are more papers that I don't know what they say..." "Any of these?" "..that I'm signing." "Yes, all those." "Gentleman's name is Lennon." "No, no, no." "Or Richard Starkey, or John Lennon, or George Harrison." "Krishna, Krishna, Krishna." "May the Lord help this to become final." "The small gathering on Savile Row was only the beginning." "The event is so momentous that historians may one day view it as a landmark in the decline of the British Empire... the Beatles are breaking up." "** It's funny how people just won't accept change **" "** As if nature itself **" "** They prefer rearranged. **" "When I was still at school and I was really small," "I know John was really embarrassed, cos I was so tiny." "I only looked about ten years old." "When I met John, he had four strings on his guitar." "I mean, John didn't even know guitars had six strings." "And I said, "What are you doing?" "What's that?"" "And he would say, "Well, why?"" "You know, he thought that's what it was." "So we showed John the guitar chords," "E and A and all those." "My mother was a real big fan of music and she was really happy about having the guys around." "You know, and John was always keen to get out of his house, because his Aunt Mimi was, kind of, very stern and strict and she embarrassed him." "I remember going to John's house once when I first had met him." "I was still at the Institute." "And we were trying to look like Teddy boys, which was like that style in those days." "And I must've looked good, cos she was like..." "She didn't like me." "She was shocked." "She said, "Look at him!" "Who is this?" "Bringing this boy to this house." ""Look at him." "He looks dreadful, like a Teddy boy."" "And he'd just say, "Shut up, Mary, shut up!"" "** Don't you try to tame a wildcat **" "** You just don't understand **" "** The wildcat's what they name me No kitten's gonna tame me **" "** Oh, no." "Not me. **" "Our wedding was just one of those occasions where they thought they would practise on people and see what happened." "They were not exactly what the majority of people there expected." "They had a tea break." "An elderly lady, who was one of the guests, came along to play the piano, who was a real pub player." "She could really hammer out tunes that everybody wanted to sing to." "The three lads reappeared from the bar, pints in hand, and John just poured a pint over this lady's head, just straight over the head, saying, "I anoint thee, David."" "And just walked away." "And this lady surprised me, because there was absolutely nothing." "There was no reaction." "She just smiled and got up and went away and got dry again." "You know, it was..." "And I thought it was funny, because in those days, people used to say," ""See you had a wedding in Liverpool." "How many fights were there?"" "But there wasn't even a fight." "The nearly fight was John Lennon pouring a pint on her head." "When I met John, he had a lot of power, really." "Sometimes they'd pick somebody to march behind on the way to war." "Well, he was certainly out front." "When you thought you wanted to be a musician, where did you think you'd end up?" "There's no justification for it." "We kind of had a feeling that that's what we were going to do." "And I always felt that something good was going to happen." "But then, in those days, something good would just be getting to do a tour of Mecca ballrooms." "That was, like, a big deal." "** She's got a way that makes me act like a fool **" "** Spends my money then she plays me cool **" "** I'm begging for her kisses on a bended knee **" "** Oh, won't you give me some a-loving, baby?" "**" "** Please, please. **" "** Watch out now **" "** Take care Beware of falling swingers **" "** Dropping all around you **" "** The pain that often mingles... **" "After wartime, we still had lots of bombed houses." "Not poverty." "I mean, the Germans were rich quite quick." "It didn't take them long to pick up on that one." "That particular day, I had an argument with Astrid." "I was really angry and I wanted to let steam off." "And I quite often went that direction, to the harbour." "The Reeperbahn is really for the sailors, for the people getting drunk." "For people going to see naked women or having sex or whatever." "That's what this place is known for." "Klaus was always very laid back." "You know, you couldn't quite impress him by things." "He always said, "Yeah, great." "Fantastic."" "But when he came home seeing the Beatles for the first time," "I've never seen him like that before." "He just went crazy." "When I came down to the Kaiserkeller with Klaus, after, he had to persuade me for three days." "I just freaked out." "Seeing them onstage, faces I always dreamt of taking pictures of, because they had so much personality and were still young, like I was." "** Gonna write a little letter, gonna mail it to my local DJ **" "** It's a rocking little record I want my jockey to play **" "** Roll over Beethoven, got to hear it again today. **" "We didn't really have that much money." "We only just really had enough to feed ourselves, so there was nothing really to show for it." "But everything else was such a buzz." "You know, being right in the middle of the naughtiest city in the world at 17 years old." "It was kind of exciting." "And learning, you know, about it all." "There's the gangsters and the transvestites." "And there's the..." "You know, it was like that." "There's the hookers." "They looked real strange, teddy boy-like." "They didn't have the leather gear yet." "The leather thing came when they met Astrid and me and the way we were walking around." "We loved this band." "We were knocked out." "And we didn't realise how they lived." "The Bambi Kino was a porno cinema." "The room they stayed in first was a sort of place where you'd normally put brooms and things." "There was no window, there was just a light bulb on the ceiling." "And they were sort of living in these little cupboards, so to speak, right behind the screen of that cinema." "And it was terrible, because they were smelly, stinky." "They couldn't wash their clothes properly." "Klaus introduced me to them, and John did his, you know," ""I'm a man, I'm a man" thing." "And Paul was doing his, "I'm a good boy, good education" bit, you know." "Said hello and shook my hand." "And George was just, looked at me and said, "Oh, hello." ""And you are Klaus's girlfriend?"" "But he was ever so sweet." "I came to know George then." "And he was interested in so many things, but let's say, on the quiet, because Paul was the one who said, "Oh, who is that?"" "And "who wrote this book?" And "who is that on that picture?"" "George was just sitting there, looking at my room, which must have been very strange to them, because it was completely black, with leaves and branches hanging from the ceiling." "I think, at first, George thought I was a bit mad." "But that became very shortly a very lovely and nice friendship." "Astrid took them to her house and she cooked for them." "Astrid's mother was cooking their favourite meals for them." "So they had their little home, suddenly, which Astrid really took care of them really well." "Yeah, it was really good for us to meet them, too." "They, in themselves, were very artistic." "I mean, for us, we started hanging out with them and Astrid was so loving." "She really helped us a lot." "You may think it was sexually." "Of course, in a way, they all fancied me, because I was quite good looking and charming, in my own little way, with my funny English." "When I started falling in love with Stuart, it was great that I was a photographer, so I could just go up easily to him and ask him," ""Do you mind if I take pictures of you?", because I felt so attracted to him." "** A taste of honey **" "** Tasting much sweeter than wine **" "** Do do-dem-do **" "** Do do-dem-do **" "** I dream of your first kiss and then **" "** I feel upon my lips again **" "** A taste of honey A taste of honey **" "** Tasting much sweeter than wine. **" "I always had a vision that I want to take pictures of outstanding faces, who can tell a story behind the mask." "Imagine what is behind this rough young man, John Lennon." "And what is behind the funny, joking Paul." "Or the lovely, sweet little George." "George was only 17 years of age, but he was calm, he looked you straight in the face, he was funny and he was a catalyst in the band, you see?" "Paul and John were so different." "And George was bringing a certain peace into this set-up." "I mean, Ringo wasn't with them at the time, because Pete Best was playing the drums." "And Stuart was more on the side, but George was right in the middle, between those two characters." "After Stuart's death, John and George really cared about me." "You know, they used to come and see me in my home." "And so..." "It was actually John's suggestion." "John said, "Can I see where he used to paint?"" "So I said, "Of course, you can." In that moment," "I had to take a picture of them." "And I just grabbed this old chair and put it there." "And John was so full of emotion, being in the same room where his friend was just painting, that he nearly burst out in tears." "And George was all...a bit worried." "So I just said to George, "Well, stand behind him."" "You could see how quickly" "George understood what it was all about... death and being alive." "He was only just turned 18." "And when you look at the picture and see his eyes, they're so full of protection for John." "And John was just falling to bits, sitting there." "And you could see that in his face." "I gave that guitar away." "Ah, that's the one." "** That boy **" "** Took my love away **" "** He'll regret it some day ** ** Doo-da-doo **" "** This boy wants you back again **" "** That boy isn't good **" "** For you **" "** Though he may want you, too... **" "Good song, though." "Good sad song." "** This boy wants you back again... **" "John was as blind as a bat and he'd never wear his glasses, so he couldn't see a thing." "** Oh, and this boy **" "** Would be happy just to love you... **" "Double track." "** But oh my-hi-hi-hi **" "** That boy won't be happy **" "** Till he's seen you cry-hi-hi-hi. **" "It was almost like we were waiting to get going." "We couldn't go until all the Beatles were in the frame." "Ringo was a member of the band." "It's just that he didn't enter the film until that particular scene, you know." "We were always, kinda, you know, a little nervous before each step we went up the ladder." "And that was the good thing about being four together." "We all shared the experience." "How many Beatles does it take to change a light bulb?" "Four!" "** Well, she was just seventeen You know what I mean **" "** And the way she looked was way beyond compare **" "** So how could I dance with another **" "** Oh, since I saw her standing there?" "**" "We just went in." "We were punks, really, you know what I mean?" "We were like just these punks." "We went in." "We're all incredibly grateful to be on vinyl." "You know, the idea of getting a record." "Then, when it was going up the charts in England, we'd stop the car, cos you'd know when it was coming on." "BBC at, uh, 4.19." ""Stop the car!" And then we'd listen to the record and then drive on up to the gig." "** Now I'll never dance with another **" "** Ooh, since I saw her standing there **" "** Waaah!" "**" "Does the continuous living and working together impose any temperamental stress upon you?" "No, actually, it's quite lucky, cos we've been..." "** We've been together now for 40 years. **" "You know, we have all been mates for quite a long time, so we don't get on each other's nerves as much as we could." "I think I saw you being greeted by somebody outside." "No, no, that was George." "That was me." "That was me." "Uh-huh." "Well, actually, it was, um, my mother." "Your mother has to come to Ireland to see you?" "Yeah!" "** Well, we danced through the night **" "** And we held each other tight **" "** And before too long I fell in love with her **" "** Now, I'll never dance with another, ooh. **" "Do you find any difficulty in keeping up your public image?" "No." "What image?" "Our image is just us, you know, as we were." "We didn't try and, uh, make an image." "It just happened." "And so we don't have to keep it up." "We just remain ourselves, don't we, Ringo?" "Well, we do." "It's the other two we're worried about!" "The general atmosphere, we all loved it." "We all dug it, but you know, still in the band, we all had personalities and attitudes." "We stopped at a motorway cafe, you know, eat some grease." "Paul had the keys and George was sitting behind the wheel, as we came up." "And so an argument went on for at least an hour and a half." ""I've got the keys." "Well, I'm sittin' behind the wheel."" "And it was like, we had to sit there and go through this, cos no-one was going give up." ""I got the keys." "I've got the wheel."" "** So please listen to me if you wanna stay mine **" "** I can't help my feelings I'll go out of my mind **" "** I'm gonna let you down Let you down **" "** And leave you flat **" "** Gonna let you down and leave you flat **" "** Because I've told you before Oh, you can't do that **" "** O-o-o-o-oh!" "**" "** You can't do that... **" ""Dear Mum and Dad," ""The shows have been going great, with everybody going potty." ""And everywhere we go, we have about 20 police on motorbikes escorting us." ""We have had two Cadillacs every place, but tonight, when we finished the show and ran out," ""the cars weren't there and had gone to another door." ""So we went back inside until we could get out." ""All the kids came out of the show and saw the two cars around the side" ""and stormed them and jumped all over them."" ""The drivers had to get out and both cars were completely wrecked - the roofs were right down on the seats." ""Some girl fell through a skylight from the roof of a building and 45 more were put in hospital." ""In the end, we escaped in an ambulance," ""but don't worry, because no-one can get near us, for all the police and security."" "** I got something to say that might cause you pain **" "** If I catch you talking to that boy again **" "** I'm gonna let you down **" "** And leave you flat **" "** Because I told you before Oh, you can't do that. **" "What actors would you like to meet in Hollywood?" "Paul Newman." "What actresses?" "Jayne Mansfield." "We were all in our early twenties, so were just going with it." "The good side of it was that you could really go shopping!" "You know, there's the great line that the Beatles, they had one day off a month." "And on the day off, Paul would judge a beauty pageant." "** Everybody's green **" "** Cos I'm the one who won your love" "** But if they'd seen you're talking that way **" "** They'd laugh in my face **" "** So please listen to me if you wanna stay mine **" "** I can't help my feelings I'll go out of my mind **" "** I'm gonna let you down **" "** Let you down And leave you flat **" "** Gonna let you down and leave you flat. **" "The Beatles only ever had one car and two rooms, in any hotel, between them." "We got closer together." "The bigger it got, the closer we became, because from the minute you sort of left the security of your apartment, the heat was on." "People wanted a piece, wanted to talk, wanted their photo." "And so we sort of, you know, kept each other company." "When we first came to New York, it's a great story because we had the whole floor in the Plaza and the four of us ended up in the bathroom." "We were just sitting in there," ""Hey, how you doin'?" "What's goin' on?"" "just to get a break from, you know, the incredible pressure." "** Money don't get everything it's true **" "** What it don't get, I can't use ** ** Now give me money **" "** That's what I want That's what I want **" "** That's what I want. **" "The next song I'd like to sing..." "..is our latest record... ..or our latest electronic noise, depending on whose side you're on." "** That's what I want That's what I want **" "** That's what I want **" "** That's what I want, yeah. **" "Are you individually millionaires yet?" "No, that's another lousy rumour." "I wish we were." "All right then, where does all the money go?" "Well, a lot of it goes to Her Majesty." "She's a millionaire." "** That's what I want **" "** A lot of money **" "** That's what I want **" "** That's what I want A lot of money **" "** That's what I want. **" ""This morning, we're off to Wellington." ""We've been and played here in Sydney" ""and it was the biggest drag of all time." ""The stage revolves every three minutes and we have to walk right down the aisles," ""like boxers, to get to the stage." "At the first house, I punched a policeman," ""because he was shoving me." "And some kids had a hold of me when I was trying to get off the stage." ""I was swearing my head off at one policeman." "Sorry." ""Later, the chief apologised to me." ""After the show, there was a party in the hotel for Paul's birthday."" "It's great at the beginning," "You know, where, you know, you're recognised, you get a great seat in a restaurant and, you know, things are bigger and things come to you faster." "Um, you know, all that is great." "And then you really want that to end." "Thank you very much, ta." "Erm, this..." "This number..." "Shush." "Shush." "This number we'd like to sing now..." "You fight for it, and then when you get it, you want it to end, but it never ends." "That's the deal." "We do like the fans and enjoy reading the publicity about us, but from time to time, you don't realise that it's actually about yourself." "You see your pictures and read articles about, you know, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul and John, but you don't actually think, "Oh, that's me." "There I am in the paper."" "It's funny." "It's just as though it's a different person." "** Well, gonna write a little letter **" "** Gonna mail it to my local DJ **" "** Well, it's a rocking little record I want my jockey to play **" "** Roll over, Beethoven **" "** I gotta hear it again today **" "** You know my temperature's rising **" "** And the jukebox's blowing a fuse. **" "Do you know where you were this time last week?" "No." "I haven't a clue." "I don't even know what day it is." "You don't know what day it is?" "No." "What is it?" ""We've been to the Hollywood Bowl and done the show, which was great." ""And the place was marvellous." ""The seats go right up the side of big hills." ""Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis's manager, came to see us," ""and gave us all real leather belts and holster sets." "Cowboy things." ""And little covered wagons, which are television lamps." ""He was good too and said that Elvis wants to meet us" ""and has invited us to his house in Memphis, Tennessee." ""Tonight, we were invited to Burt Lancaster's house and he made us very welcome." ""His house was a knockout and cost him a million dollars." ""I had a swim in his pool, which was great - and as hot as a bath almost." ""After that, the men organising the tour wanted us to go to" ""this place called Whiskey A Go-Go, on Sunset Strip." ""They said we wouldn't be bothered." ""We got there and went in and fought our way, with Mal and a few big hard men, to a table" ""where John and Derek were." "And Jayne Mansfield."" ""By this time, after fighting through the crowd," ""I was annoyed and threw some Coke on a cameraman." ""We all fought our way back out and jumped in the car and went home." ""It was a drag and we were there for about ten minutes altogether." ""You see why we don't usually bother going out now."" "How did George deal with it?" "George, you know, George had two incredible separate personalities." "He had the lovebag of beads personality and the bag of anger." "He was very black and white." "Whether you will go along with any change in taste." "Er, no." "Well, you never know, because we have." "We change anyway, don't we?" "Yeah." "We hope you've enjoyed the show tonight." "Have you enjoyed it?" "** There's a fog upon LA **" "** And my friends have lost their way **" "** We'll be over soon, they say **" "** Now they've lost themselves instead **" "** Please don't be long... **" "I was boss of Parlophone Records and I'd made it my business, over the previous years, to develop Parlophone as a comedy label." "And, in fact, when Brian Epstein desperately took us on, or hoped we would take him on, he felt he'd hit rock bottom, cos he'd been everywhere else and now he was ending up on a comedy label." "I first met The Beatles in 1962." "I wasn't terribly impressed with the first stuff they did." "I couldn't make out the sound." "You know, it was something I hadn't heard before." "So I looked at these four guys, and thought," ""Well, none of them shines as being above all the others."" "And I had to make up my mind, in my silly mind, who the lead singer was going to be." "Suddenly, I realised I would take them as they were, as a group." "The hell with a lead singer." "They would be singing together." "So we were struggling with the sound a bit." "And I said to the boys, after we'd done a few takes of rather nondescript songs," ""Come into the control room and have a listen" ""and see what we've been doing." ""And if there's anything you don't like, tell us."" "And George was the one who took the leap." "And he said, "Well, I don't like your tie for a start."" "And the others were horrified." "They thought, "God, he's blown it."" "But, of course, I fell around laughing." "I thought it was so cheeky and so funny that I..." "You know, he endeared himself to me at that point." "** I give her all my love **" "** That's all I do **" "** And if you saw my love **" "** You'd love her, too **" "** I love her... **" "John and I would write the songs the week before the studio." "Brian Epstein would ring us up and say," ""You're in the studio next week." "You've got a week off." "" We'd go, "Yes!"" "He'd say, "But you've got to write the album." We'd go, "Yes!"" "So we'd just, you know..." "Each day we'd write a song, so we can have seven or so songs to go in with, which was enough to start with." "And we'd go in the studio, ten in the morning, and this was the first time George and Ringo had heard any of the songs." "So this is how good they were." "John and I would go, "It goes like this."" "** She loves you, yeah... ** Or whatever it was." "And they'd go, "Mmm-hmm."" "George would cop the chords." "He'd go, "Uh-huh," not writing them down." "It was just like, "Yeah, I can see what you're doing." "Cos I'm one of you." ""I didn't write it, but I see what you did."" "And Ringo would just stand around with his sticks and do a little thing." "I was just thinking actually about my song And I Love Her." "** And I give her all my love... ** I had that, but then George comes in with..." "** Do-do-do-do. **" "Now, you think about that." "That's the song." "But he made that up on the session." "Cos knew the chords, and we said," ""It needs a riff." I didn't write that." "When we got together in the studio, whoever had written the song would be the kind of boss in leading the other guys through it." "Paul and John, being the songwriters... and at that stage, George wasn't showing himself to be a songwriter... they were the dominant forces." "George and Ringo were slightly behind Paul and John, because Paul and John were the writers and the lead singers." "I guess George was kind of a loner, really, because he was outside the team that were providing the hits." "John and Paul had each other to play against." "And their collaboration was much more of a competition than a collaboration, really." "One would do something, and the other one would say, "Gosh, I think I can do better than that,"" "and try and make something better." "George was the sole guy." "He had no-one to work with." "The funny position I was in was that, in many ways, you know, this whole focus of attention was on The Beatles, so in that respect, I was part of it." "But from being in them... ..an attitude came over, which was John and Paul." ""OK, you know, we're the grooves and you two just watch it."" "I mean, don't forget, I spent ten years in the back of the limousine with them." "That speed." "Don't Bother Me." "This is remake recording, take ten." "'Don't Bother Me was the first song." "It was written basically as an exercise 'to see if I could write a song, cos I thought," "'"Well, if John and Paul can write, everybody must be able to."'" "Two, three, four." "** Since she's been gone I want no-one to talk to me... **" "Hang on, it's going too fast." "Take 12." "One, two..." "'I wrote that in the hotel in Bournemouth." "'We were doing the summer season, and I was sick in bed." "'Maybe that's why it turned out Don't Bother Me." "'Yeah." "It's not a particularly good song, 'but it at least showed me that, you know, all I needed to do was keep on writing 'and maybe some day I'd... 'write something good." "'I still feel, right at this point," "'I still keep thinking, "I wish I could write something good."'" "** Since she's been gone I want no-one to talk to me **" "** It's not the same but I'm to blame **" "** It's plain to see **" "** So go away, leave me alone, don't bother me **" "** I can't believe that she would leave me on my own **" "** It's just not right when every night I'm all alone **" "** I've got no time for you right now, don't bother me **" "** I know I'll never be the same **" "** If I don't get her back again **" "** Because I know she'll always be **" "** The only girl for me. **" "When I saw George and Pattie together, the way they fit into The Beatles thing, all of their domesticity seemed to be like Camelot, you know." "It was like..." "And I was the Lancelot, in a way." "I was kind of this lone wolf without really any direction." "I saw The Beatles play at the Hammersmith Odeon when I was bottom of the bill in The Yardbirds." "This band was like..." "They were like a single person." "It was an odd phenomenon, in fact, that they seemed to move together and think together." "It was almost like a little family unit." "I was very, very suspicious about what they were up to." "But when I saw them play, I mean, I was overwhelmed by their gift." "Each one of them seemed to be very well-endowed with their own musical capacity." "But the sad part was that no-one listened to them, and that their audience, which they had cultivated, I suppose, they were 12-year-old girls." "He was clearly an innovator." "George, to me, was taking certain elements of RB and rock and rockabilly and creating something unique." "They were very generous to everybody." "They took time to come and talk to everybody." "I didn't feel threatened at all, because I had quite a lot of self-confidence going in my concept of myself as being this sort of blues missionary, as it were." "And I wasn't looking for any favours from anybody." "And George recognised me as an equal, because" "I had a level of proficiency even then that he saw as being fairly unique too, you know." "George chose to move into a house in Esher." "And Esher is maybe eight miles north of where I was born." "And we became friends and I would go and visit them there." "Something grew out of the music and the kind of people we were." "I think we shared a lot of tastes, too." "You know, superficial things - cars or clothes, but..." "And women, obviously." "But I think what George might have liked about me was the fact that I was a kind of free agent." "And I think, if anything, he may have already been wondering about whether he was in the right place being in a group, cos the group politic is a tricky one." "You know, there was a lot about what he had going which I envied, and there was a lot about what I had going that he envied." "What did he have going that you envied?" "Well, I suppose, money, status." "You know, the classic things." "The Beatles, man, come on." "In the beginning, in the early days, what was good about being George's friend was that it was kind of like basking in the sunshine of this immense creativity." "We'd like to carry on with a song which is off our last LP." "The LP's called Rubber Soul, and the song, which is sung by our guitarist George, is called If I Needed Someone." "** If I needed someone to love **" "** You're the one that I'd be thinking of **" "** If I needed someone **" "** If I had some more time to spend **" "** I guess I'd be with you, my friend **" "** If I needed someone. **" "This is largely an appeal to the feminine heart, the heart of the young girl who worships love and the goddess of love and the heroes of love." "And this plays the dominant part in her life." "So the vast majority of the fans are girls, who come there to worship at the shrine of the goddess or the young god hero, as they did in the ancient past." "I've seen this with the most dramatic intensity with The Beatles playing to 2,000 or 3,000 young girls in Manchester." "Apart from another journalist, I was the only male in the audience." "And I've never experienced anything like it myself." "If I were confronted with 10,000 Loch Ness monsters," "I wouldn't be so impressed by this whistling and wailing and possession of the soul of these young girls." "Would you say it's true that the devotion your group attracts is essentially religious in nature?" "No." "In what way is it not?" "Well, in what ways do you think it is?" "The fervour, the excitement that it inspires in young people." "Would you say football crowds are any more religious, or football fanatics have any more religion in them than Beatle fanatics?" "I don't think so." "One value divides the generations more sharply than any other... religion." "The gap is greatest between college students and their parents." "The question was whether belonging to some organised religion is important in a person's life." "Nine out of ten parents say it is." "Only four out of ten college students say religion is important." "And the more radical the youth, politically, the more likely he is to reject the religious values of adult society." "Still, the gap is there, whatever the politics." "Well, some of the remarks attributed to you in some of the newspapers, the press here, concerning the remark you made comparing the relative popularity of The Beatles with Jesus Christ, and that The Beatles were more popular " "created quite a controversy and furore here." "Would you clarify the remark?" "Well, I've clarified it about 800 times." "I could have said TV, or something else, you know." "And that's as clear as it can be." "There were other evidences that that ol' time religion was under attack." "Evangelist Billy Graham went to London, hoping he could stop England from swinging." "In the process, he was almost engulfed by sin on a Soho street." "And I think a great deal of what we see among young people today is actually a spiritual search." "These young people are searching for a creed to believe in, a song to sing and a cause to follow." "** Carve your number on my wall **" "** And maybe you will get a call from me **" "** If I needed someone **" "** Ah **" "** Ah **" "** Ah **" "** Ah. **" "Before we sort of made it, as they say, money was part of the goal, but it still wasn't a sort of, "Let's get some money."" "But we sort of got..." "We suddenly had money, and then it wasn't all that good." "By having the money, we found that money wasn't the answer, because we had lots of material things that people sort of spend their whole life to try to get." "And we managed to get them at quite an early age." "And it was good, really, because we learned that that wasn't it." "We still lacked something." "And that something is the thing that religion is trying to give to people." "Have they changed because of all this?" "Altered...developed, perhaps, but not...um... not changed too much." "They're not in any way contaminated by it." "Not nearly as seriously contaminated as many of the people who... um...occasionally surround us." "They remain very calm and bland and simple." "And they don't know what it's all about." "They simply want to play their music and write it." "They're very normal." "Thank goodness." "I came home one day with the kids and Derek said, "Brian's just phoned."" "Brian Epstein. "And he's having a housewarming in Sussex," ""and he wants us to go." "He wants all his friends to be there."" "So we rallied all our babysitters together and we found ourselves on a plane." "And we arrived at Heathrow, and waiting for us was John and George." "And they were dressed in this exotic way." "They had silk shirts, and they were this incredible colour." "And they hugged us and they kissed us, and they..." "All of a sudden, it's like there are no barriers." "No handshakes, it's... .."What's happening?" And we were swept out to this... to outside Heathrow Airport, where John's Rolls-Royce, like a Romany caravan, was waiting for us." "George, in his Mini, and us in the Rolls-Royce, with Procol Harum playing Whiter Shade Of Pale, driving along the English country roads from Surrey to Sussex." "And Brian was waiting for us." "And there were all sorts of his friends, famous and not-so-famous." "And George gave Derek acid and John gave me acid." "And then John gave Derek acid." "So Derek had a double dose." "And we spent the whole night with them... on this mind adventure, which Paul had described to us as "controlled weirdness"." "I'm not quite sure how controlled it was, but it was weird." "But it was wonderful, and it bonded us, because they were so kind to us." "And we came through it and we walked out into this English country garden with the night receding and the sun coming." "Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun - well, that was what happened, literally, what happened." "When we took the notorious wonder drug LSD..." "Yes." "..it was..." "We didn't know we were having it." "John and I had this drug and it was given..." "We were having dinner with our dentist... ..and he put it in our coffee and never told us." "And we'd we never heard of it." "I mean, it's a good job we hadn't heard of it, because there's been so much paranoia created around the drug, that people now, if they take it, they're already on a bad trip before they start." "Whereas for us, we didn't know anything." "We were so naive." "So we had it and we went out to a club and it was incredible." "It was really incredible." "Something like a very concentrated version of the best feeling I'd ever had in my life." "It was just, like, fantastic." "I just felt, like, in love." "But not with anything in particular, or anybody, just with everything." "Just everything was perfect." "And we walked and things weren't the same that night as they'd been." "It was..." "All this Alice In Wonderland stuff was going on, but strange things." "I remember Pattie was, you know, half playfully, but half kind of crazy, was trying to smash a shop window." "And I was kind of being like, "Come on now, don't be silly." ""This way." And we got round this corner and there were all these lights and taxis." "It looked like there was a big film premiere going on." "It was probably just the doorway to the nightclub." "It seemed like, you know, it looked very bright." "And all these people with makeup that was like, this thick on their faces." "You know, like masks." "I had this lingering thought that just stayed with me after that." "And this thought was the Yogis of the Himalayas." "I don't know why." "It just..." "I'd never thought about them for the rest of my life." "But suddenly this thought was in the back of my consciousness." "It was like somebody was whispering to me, you know." ""The Yogis of the Himalayas."" "** Prabhujee **" "** Dayaa karo **" "** Prabhujee dayaa karo **" "** Maname aana baso **" "** Maname aana baso **" "** Prabhujee. **" "Interview du Mister George Harrison et Ravi Shankar par Michel Guillard." "Sound is God." "And through sound, or that is true good music, there can be also music which can be devil." "I don't want to name which music." "But music can excite you and make you, ahh, and go mad." "People go, you know, crazy." "That is also music." "But it didn't...doesn't lead you spiritually towards God." "But music has this power, whether it is through the Gregorian chants or beautiful Baroque music, or Indian music, or even folk songs, beautifully sung by people with beautiful voices." "Our music has been handed down from person to person." "It's an oral tradition." "It's not a written-down music." "And the guru passes not just the technique, but the whole spiritual, uh, aspect." "All the meaning of life, philosophy, everything is passed along with the music." "The fact that I met so many people, I can meet anybody, you know." "You could go in all the film stars' houses and Elvis and everybody." "And we met a lot of really good people, but we didn't..." "I never met one person who really impressed me." "The first person who ever impressed me in my life was Ravi Shankar and he was the only person who didn't try to impress me." "Why did he impress you?" "Because it was by his being." "He taught me so much without actually saying a word." "It's by example." "Now try to count five, five and six." "Five, five makes ten." "Yeah." "And six makes 16." "Nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14." "One, two, three, four, five." "One, two, three, four, five." "One two, three, four, five." "One, two." "Five." "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven." "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven." "One, two, three, four, five, six." "What you can do, if it is difficult for you to touch, one, two, three, four." "Just..." "It's very difficult." "Two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two..." "No, one." "One, two, three..." "If you're trying to find something, to find the source of that thing is very difficult, but my blessing was to be able to have Ravi as my, uh, patchcord." "He could plug me in to the real thing, so my experience of it was always the best quality." "** Each day just goes so fast **" "** I turn around, it's past **" "** You don't get time to hang a sign on me **" "** Love me while you can **" "** Before I'm a dead old man... **" "Ravi and the sitar was kind of like an excuse to try and find this spiritual connection." "I read stuff by various holy men and Swamis and mystics and I went around and looked for them." "Ravi and his brother gave me a lot of books by some wise men." "One of the books, which was by a Swami Vivekananda, who said," ""If there's a God you must see Him" ""and if there's a soul, we must perceive it." ""Otherwise it's better not to believe." ""It's better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite."" "And after all my life I've been brought up, well, they tried to bring me up as a Catholic." "They had told you to just believe what they're telling you, and, you know, not to have the direct experience." "And this, for me, going to India and hearing somebody saying, you know," ""No, you can't believe anything until you have direct perception of it"." "And I thought, "Wow, you know, fantastic!" "At last, you know," ""found somebody who..." "makes some sense."" "And so I wanted to go deeper and deeper into that." "I think that George's experiences of expanding his mind with acid... led him to looking for something that didn't need chemicals." "He knew that there was a point where you couldn't keep on doing that." "And it wouldn't be good for you, if you did keep on using chemicals." "So he was looking for..." "He was always looking for the truth and he was also looking for peace of mind..." "..because it was..." "it was pretty crazy." "John would pick us up in this big Rolls Royce with blacked-out windows, and Ringo, John and I all moved out of town to Surrey." "And then he'd pick up Ringo and then pick me up and then we'd head into town and, by the time we got to Hammersmith, we were just loaded and feeling ill, cos, you know, a Rolls" "Royce doesn't have the proper springs." "They just roll around." "And the black windows, you couldn't see anything out and the windows would be shut and so you'd just be getting double doses of these reefers." "And then we'd pull up at Abbey Road Studio and just be, like, fall out of the car." "We have to thank Paul that we made as many records as we did because, you know, John and I, cos we lived in the same area, would be hanging out." "It's like a beautiful day in the garden in England and the phone'd ring and we'd always know it was him." ""He wants us to work!"" "I mean, everywhere we went, people were smiling and, you know, sitting on lawns, drinking tea." "I went to Haight-Ashbury, expecting it to be this brilliant place," "I thought it was going to be all these groovy kind of gypsy kind of people, with little shops making works of art and paintings and carvings." "But, instead, it turned out to be just a lot of bums." "And many of them, they were just very young kids who'd come from all over America and dropped acid and gone to this Mecca of LSD." "We'd walk down the street and I was, like, being treated like the Messiah or something." "I was really afraid, because I could see all these spotty youths and they were... still an undercurrent of Beatlemania, but from a, kind of, twisted angle." "And they were..." "People were handing me things, like there was this big pipe, like a big Indian pipe with feathers on it and books and incense and, you know, all kinds of stuff." "And trying to give me drugs and, you know, I'd say "No, thanks, I don't want it."" "We were walking quicker and quicker." "We went through the park and back out of the park, and in the end, we just said," ""Let's get out of here."" "And we drove back to the airport, got on the jet, and as it took off, the plane went into a stall, and the whole dashboard lit up, saying "Unsafe" right across." "It certainly showed me what was really happening in the drug cult." "It wasn't what I thought of all these groovy people getting... having spiritual awakenings and being artistic." "It was like any addiction." "So, at that point, I stopped taking it, actually, the dreaded Lysergic." "That's where I really went for the meditation." "** Let me take you down **" "** Cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields **" "** Nothing is real **" "** And nothing to get hung about **" "** Strawberry Fields forever **" "** Living is easy with eyes closed **" "** Misunderstanding all you see... **" "We'd stopped touring." "We were now in the mid-60s." "We were partying and I think we, kind of, lost, sort of, our spiritual direction." "Not that we ever had one, but we lost it." "So we were, kind of, experimenting in anything." "It was the time of Sgt Pepper, and I'd written a song, the title song, and I put it to the guys that what we should do, we could make this record now under another persona." "We'll be this other band." "And it will free us." "The idea was we could bring anything we wanted, because now, you know, there was no lid on what we could do." "When we were doing Sgt Pepper, he presented us with a song which I thought was boring." "And I had to tell him so." "And I said," ""George, honestly, I think we could do... you could do something better for this record," ""because it's going to be an astonishing record." ""There's so many great moments in it." ""And do you mind going away and thinking about it and coming up with something else?"" "** We were talking **" "** About the space between us all **" "** And the people **" "** Who hide themselves behind **" "** A wall of illusion **" "** Never glimpse the truth **" "** Then it's far too late **" "** When they pass away-ay-ay... **" "He came up with Within You Without You." "Now, Within You Without You was not a commercial song, by any means." "But it was very interesting." "He had the way of communicating music by the Indian system of, kind of, a separate language, like, tiki-tiki-ta-ta-ta, tiki-tik, tika-da - the kind of things that would be the rhythms suggested by the tabla player." "And you had to get inside that to find out what it was about." "So it was like working out a puzzle with George." "He had Ravi play at his house once." "And we all went." "And we're sitting on the floor and Ravi made the announcement," ""Please don't smoke while I'm playing."" "And, uh, anyway, there was like a crowd of us and a crowd of Ravi's friends just sitting around and Ravi's playing away and this is how little we understood at the time, that Ravi's pals are all like going..." ""Aw!" "Which it sounded like to us they were saying, "Aw, God, crap!"" "But they were really going, "Ohhhh." "Ohhhh."" "We were like, "Keep the noise down"!" "** When you've seen 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. **" "When you get a sort of typical westernized Englishman coming to you, what is the most important thing you have to teach?" "Concentration?" "No." "Just allowing the mind to take its natural course." "Just that." "Say, it was surprising someone one day, uh, started to meditate." "Next day he came for checking and he said," ""I feel wonderful." "I slept very deep" ""and the whole thing is good, but tell me what you have taught me."" "I said, "Nothing."" "Because the process of thinking has not to be learned." "We are used to think." "We know how to think from birth." "I got a message from John and a message from George, saying," ""We're going to Wales." "We've met this guy." ""We listened to him." "He's great." "Come."" "We'd seen this giggly little Indian guy with a beard coming on TV, and we liked him." "He was a funny little character, who was going to save the world." "So he came around and we were ripe for saving." "You know, I wanted to get into meditation." "But it's one thing reading about it and the other thing of how do you do it?" "So I got myself to the point where, "OK, I need a mantra."" "You know, where do you go?" "You know, do you go to Harrods and get a mantra?" "But then David Wynn showed me this picture and said," ""Oh, he's coming to do a lecture at the Hilton." ""He's called Maharishi."" "You give each person a sound, don't you?" "Yes." "Is that the same sound that you give to each person?" "No." "Each person gets different." "How many sounds are there?" "Oh, there are lots of them." "I mean, hundreds or thousands or...?" "We could say thousands." "And when a person has been given their own particular sound, how do they use it?" "I mean, when they're meditating, how do they use the sound you've given them." "Why is that sound useful to them?" "Ah!" "See, every man has his own impulse of individuality, yes?" "Some man goes by and you feel attracted towards him." "Other man goes and you feel repulsed." "Something exchanged in the rhythm of the individual." "Like, everyone has his own rhythm." "Now, the rhythm of a sound which will resonate to the existing rhythm of the individual." "And that will be the sound suitable to him." "Got it." "So that you try to find, give the person the sound that fits in with the rhythm of their own lives and being?" "Right." "We were at Maharishi's meditation camp when the news came through about Brian." "And it was horrifying, because we'd experienced loss, but with Brian dying, it was like one of us dying." "Uh, and you can kind of come to terms with your parent dying, because you know they'll probably die before you." "But Brian, it was, "Woah!"" "He was such a big part of the equation." "People used to call him "the fifth Beatle"." "So it was like, "Oh, my God, now we're on our own."" "It was very strange for it to happen at that precise moment." "We'd just got involved with this meditation." "You know, I mean, that may not sound like a big deal, but it actually was." "It was..." "It's a big change in your life when, you know, when you start making the journey inward." "And for Brian to, like, kick the bucket that particular day, it was pretty far out." "Is the mantra something you use to get back to the subject if you find earthly or irrelevant thoughts intruding?" "Yes, sort of." "Or is it more than that?" "You know, you just sort of sit there and you let your mind go, whatever it's going, no matter what you're thinking about." "Just let it go." "Then you just introduce the mantra or vibration just to take over from a thought." "You don't will it or use your willpower." "If you find yourself thinking then the moment you realise you've been thinking about things again, then you replace that thought with the mantra again." "Sometimes you can go on and you find that you haven't even had the mantra in your mind." "There's just been a complete blank." "But when you reach that point, because it's beyond all experience, then it's down there and that level is timeless, spaceless, so you can be there for five minutes and come out." "You don't know how long you've been there." "Then the aim, as opposed to sitting and thinking, or anything is to reach a part of the sense where you have no thoughts?" "** Without going out of my door **" "** I can know all things on Earth **" "** Without looking out of my window **" "** I could know the ways of heaven **" "** The farther one travels **" "** The less one knows **" "** The less one really knows. **" "The word, for instance, the word "God", I mean has..." "Does it mean something different to you now than it did before the Maharishi?" "It could be." "It means all sorts of things to me." "It means..." "I mean, the first concept of a man in the sky, well, I kicked that one a few years ago." "But I've got back to that now, because it's a man in the sky as well, if you like." "It's just everything." "The whole thing that..." "It's just everything." "Every aspect of creation is part of God." "I think that perhaps we should try and get it a little clearer what we're talking about." "If we're talking about a mystical religious belief, which I think that George is, but are we really talking about mysticism or are we talking about a technique of improving yourself which is totally scientific and rational?" "You can take it either way." "You can take it either way." "This is because it is a perceptual method." "If a man has got a great conceptual apparatus and he meditates, he will begin to understand the nature of a conceptual apparatus and if he's wrong about it, he'll begin to understand where he's wrong about it." "If he's got no conceptual apparatus, he simply perceives an abstract experience." "Now, when he's had an abstract experience, he may wish then to give himself explanations of it." "But it's primarily a perceptual method." "And so what this offers is an experience?" "Yes." "Why should this abstract experience be any more valuable than any other experiences?" "George talks about a bliss experience." "You can have a bliss experience by drinking a bottle of whisky." "Speak for yourself." "Now, why is a bliss experience..." "You'd have a non-bliss experience the next morning." "..more valuable than anybody else's experience?" "Or are we talking about a universe which has some hidden laws and a hidden creator, who manifests himself only to people like" "Mr Harrison and the Maharishi, when they get into a state of trance?" "That's what I want to know." "Well, let's face it." "These laws that you say - hidden laws - they are hidden." "But they're only hidden by our own ignorance." "And the word mysticism is just being arrived at through people's ignorance." "There's nothing mystical about it, only that you're ignorant of what that entails." "** Arrive without travelling **" "** See all without looking **" "** Do all without doing. **" "He wanted to be a spiritual being, more than anything, but he couldn't, because he had to deal with this life." "So he could be loving, because that was really his true nature, and sweet and kind and gentle." "But then the anger came from the frustration that he had... when you glimpse something that you understand, but you can't be there, because there's something earthly holding you back." "And he was very aware of that." "What were the earthly things that pulled on him the most?" "Well, the other three Beatles and what they were creating and were continuing to create... this huge empire, Apple." "I think he felt that he'd found something that he totally understood and wanted to just be there." "Be in it." "He became totally absorbed with meditation." ""Dear Mum, Thanks for your letter last week" ""and if it's any comfort to you, don't worry about me" ""or don't think anything negative about" "Maharishi, because he's not phoney." ""It's only the bullshit that's written about him that's phoney." "He's not taking any of our money." ""All he's doing is teaching us how to contact God" ""and as God isn't divided into different sects," ""as religious leaders here make out," ""then it doesn't affect my dedication to Sacred" "Heart in any way." "It only strengthens it." ""But we will help to spread his teachings," ""so that everybody can attain this and new generations" ""will grow up and have this right from the start," ""instead of going through the ignorance that seems to dominate" ""everything and everyone at the moment, causing them to feel that it's mysticism or black magic." ""Don't think that I've gone off my rocker, because I haven't." ""I now love you and everybody else much more than ever." ""So it's not that bad, is it?"" "** Creme tangerine and Montlimar **" "** A ginger sling with a pineapple heart **" "** A coffee dessert, yes **" "** You know it's good news **" "** But you'll have to have them all pulled out **" "** After the Savoy truffle. **" "Whenever we were together, in the public, say, for instance, I would turn..." "I mean, for all of the amount of weight that I thought I carried, would turn to nobody." "If we were going into a restaurant or a club, the way people would behave around their aura, you know." "I mean, by "their", I mean, the Beatles, was beyond belief." "George had two sides to his character." "I mean, you know, I'm his mate, so I can't tell too much, but he was a guy." "You know what I'm talking about." "He was a red-blooded man, you know." "So he would like, you know, the things guys like." "** But you'll have to have them all pulled out **" "** After the Savoy truffle. **" "I distinctly remember putting the saxes on and I got what I considered to be a good sax sound." "They blended well." "It was very nice and George comes up, after teaching the parts, and says "Yeah, they sound great." ""Now distort them."" "It was, "What?" "!" "Yeah, they're too clean, they're too nice." ""Distort them." "OK."" "So I had to, one way or another, mess them up." "When we were mixing it, George Martin walks into the control room." "He says, "Uh isn't it a bit bright?" ""Isn't it a bit toppy?" And George turned around to him and said, "Yeah." "And I like it."" "And he just turns around and we carry on working." "And George Martin just upped and walked out, went to a studio where they were doing other work." "They were like the kids that just left home, whose parents aren't looking after them anymore." "A guy called Joe Massot was making this film and he'd asked George to do the soundtrack." "It was really just, um." "I showed up, you know." "George told me he'd like me to play on something and we'd write as we went along." "We put down this thing and George then put backwards guitar on top and was, you know, it was very experimental and it was good fun." ""Wonderwall" score by George Harrison" "I think that, in England, there was a sort of cultural revolution in the '60s which touched on every branch of life." "Wake up!" "You can thank your lucky stars you're working with me." "And a smile now." "Come on." "Smile..." "Smile!" "God." "'That's why Antonioni decided to do Blow-Up in England because of it being the spot where everything was going on." "What do they call you in bed?" "I only go to bed to sleep." "'I remember the mystery that was around'" "George Harrison." "I wouldn't have asked him a question." "I wouldn't have dared, because of feeling he was onto something else." "There was a lot of energy around." "Everybody was inspiring everybody else." "We'd go to David Hockney's studio and watch him paint." ""Oh, David, can I just have that little sketch?"" "And he'd say, "No, you can't."" "And then we'd go off and he'd say," ""Oh, let's go and see the Stones." ""They're recording at so and so."" "Then off we'd go there." "So we could just do anything." "Nobody minded." "Everybody was flying around like that." "It was all so possible and so easy and we didn't think twice about it." "I was in New York and some people came and said," ""Aren't you coming to London?" ""London is swinging." "London's great!" And I think, "Well, I don't know."" "I was so New York, you know," "I didn't want to, sort of, leave New York." "But then things happened and I went to London and it was great." "There was a, kind of, feeling of freedom and I felt that it's almost like the air was, kind of, had an intelligent smell about it, yeah?" "George and John and I made..." "Number Nine." "And that was actually George who, sort of, instigated it." "He said, "Let's do it, let's do it"." "And he didn't have that feeling of," ""Well, Yoko is a separate thing and, you know, we shouldn't" ""be nice to her or anything like that."" "He was just very nice." "I thought it's very interesting to know about what the Beatles do, because, you know, I come from an avant-garde background and all that and here they were making music in a way that was very different from what we used to do." "It had power of its own." "And I thought, "Well, this is what you can do."" "George had two sides, like we all do, you know." "Sometimes he was very nice and sometimes he was just being too honest or something... frank about things, yeah?" "He would say something right away, before he's thinking." "So he didn't, uh, mince words." "And sometimes it's, you know, "Oh, dear, you think that?" or something." "He'd just hurt me, maybe." "But John said, "Oh, that's George, you know."" "And I got used to that, too." "It was very nice." "I remember a particular occasion, when I'd written Hey, Jude, and I brought it in." "And I'd go, ** Hey, Jude, don't make it bad. **" "And George was playing, ** Hey, Jude... **" "** Don't make it bad... **" "And I had to sort of say, "No, George, look, I really don't think" ""you can put a guitar riff after every line, you know."" "And it was like a real, "Oh, OK, then."" "But, you know, I knew he couldn't do it." "Maybe he knew he couldn't do it." "But it created tension, you know." "And it was like..." "Then this feeling that I was just dictating things started to grow, you know." "And I was dictating things, cos I knew how I wanted my song to go." "Similarly, John would say how he wanted his song to go or George would say how he wanted his to go." "The intensity that they had together must have had its limits and it had to explode at some point." "Now they were out in London, travelling a lot and getting... having different people influence them." "So coming back together, it didn't work as well." "I quit the band in '67, on the White Album, because..." "I was just in," "I don't know, in some emotional state where I honestly felt that I wasn't playing well." "For some reason, I felt I just wasn't playing good." "And those three were really close." "And I thought, "Well, I've got to deal with this, anyway."" "So, I went over to John's - he was staying with Yoko in my apartment... and I said, "Look, man," I said," ""You know, I have to say, look, I feel I'm not playing really good." ""And you three are really close."" "And he goes, "I thought it was you three."" "And I went to Paul's and knocked on his door and I said the same thing." "I said, "You know, you three are really close."" ""I thought it was you three!"" "And I thought, "Oh, shit, I'm goin' on holiday." "I'm off." "And I went to Sardinia." "When I got back, it was, "Oh, come on back." ""We love you", blah, blah, blah."" "George had decorated the whole studio with flowers, you know." "And, you know, that was a beautiful moment for me." "** I look at you all **" "** See the love there that's sleeping **" "** While my guitar gently weeps **" "** I look at the floor **" "** And I see it needs sweeping **" "** Still my guitar **" "** Gently weeps **" "** I don't know why **" "** Nobody told you **" "** How to unfold your love. **" "It was crap, you know." "We were trying to do the song and it wasn't happening." "You know, they weren't taking it serious." "And, uh, I don't think they were even all playing on it." "And so, I went home that night and I just thought," ""Well, that's a shame, cos I know this song is pretty good."" "And then the next day, I was driving into London with Eric, and I said, "Hey, what're you doing?" ""Why don't you come to the studio" ""and play on this song for me?"" "And he says, "Oh, no, I can't do that." ""Nobody's ever played on a Beatles' record." ""And the others wouldn't like that."" "And I said, "Well, you know, look, it's my song" ""and I'd like you to play on it."" "We'd all learned to grow together and, you know, some days one'd grow a little taller, and the next day someone else'd grow a little taller, you know?" "It's how we were." "It had been a few years since I'd seen them and they had changed." "And this particular song was a strong view of..." "It was coming very much from where George had found himself, as a result of becoming involved with, um, mysticism." "And seeing John and George and Paul sing together, when they were doing harmonies and things, and Paul playing, I mean, it was fantastic." "** I look at you all **" "** Still my guitar **" "** Gently weeps. **" "By Mikhel for Subtitulos.es ==SPREAD THE WORD==" "By Mikhel for Subtitles.es ==SPREAD THE WORD==" "Living In The Material World, Part 2" "** I look at the trouble and hate that is raging **" "** While my guitar gently weeps **" "** As I'm sitting here doing nothing but ageing **" "** Still my guitar gently weeps **" "** Gently weeps **" "** Still my guitar gently weeps... **" "I always felt really close to the public and where I grew up and that's why, I suppose, I wrote some songs that were like," ""Hey, you can all experience this," you know?" "It is, it's available for everyone." "Ravi, really, it was him who helped me to get back into being a pop singer." "** Da **" "** Da-da-da-da-da **" "** Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da... **" "He was the one who said to me, you know, try to find my background, or some roots." "What's my roots?" "I mean, the first thing that meant something, really, that I could call a root was riding down the road on my bike and hearing Heartbreak Hotel coming out of somebody's house." "So, "Right, it's Heartbreak Hotel."" "So from then, I went from Los Angeles, where I was with Ravi with my sitar, went to New York on my way home." "That was the last time I really played sitar." "I checked in the hotel in New York." "Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton happened to be staying there." "Then I thought, well, maybe I'm better off to get back into being a guitar player, songwriter, whatever I'm supposed to be." "Because I'm never going to be a sitar player, because I've seen 1,000 sitar players in India who's twice as better than I'll ever be." "You want to hear the song I wrote last night?" "Yeah." "It's just a very short one." "** ..doesn't last all morning **" "** A cloudburst doesn't last all day... **" "If there's people joining in, I'd appreciate it too." "It seems I've got..." "We can forget about the second part of it." "The only thing..." "The main thing is..." ""January 2nd." "Started rehearsing at Twickenham." ""Derek and I are going to do the musical Hey Man." ""January 3rd." "Rehearsing at Twickenham." ""January 10th." "Got up, went to Twickenham, rehearsed until lunchtime," ""left The Beatles, went home and, in the evening, did King Of Fuh at Trident Studios."" "'January 11th." "Got up." "John and Yoko came and diverted me at breakfast.'" "I just thought, "Well, what's the point of this?"" "I thought, I'm quite capable of being relatively happy on my own," "And I'm not able to be happy in this situation." "You know, "I'm getting out of here."" "It's like..." "It's complicated now." "See, if we can get it simpler... and then complicate it where it needs complications." "But it's complicated in the bit..." "It's not complicated." "But, no, I mean, you know..." "I'll play just the chord if you like, and..." "C'mon, you always get..." "Always get annoyed when I say that." "I'm trying to help, but I always hear myself annoying you." "Shall we...try it like this, you know?" "It's funny that I don't..." "It's this one, it's like should we play guitar through "Hey, Jude"?" "Well, I don't think we should." "Yeah, OK, well, I don't mind." "I'll play, you know, whatever you want me to play." "Or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play." "You know, whatever it is that will please you, I'll do it." "I wish we could start hearing the tapes now." "Like, do it and then hear what it is." "It was just a very, very difficult, stressful time." "And to be, you know, even under pressure, being filmed having a row as well." "That's what happened." "I just got up and I thought," ""Well, I'm not doing this anymore." "I'm out of here."" "And so I got my guitar and I just went home." "And wrote Wah-Wah." "Did you ever hear the thing about John Lennon saying, when George walked out of the Let It Be session in frustration," ""Let's get Eric Clapton"?" "Yeah." "Did you ever think what it would be like to be in The Beatles?" "HE LAUGHS" "Yeah." "The pros and cons of being in a band like that... were massively extreme." "They were times when you just... it was like the closest knit family you've ever seen in your life." "But as that can be, too, the cruelty and the viciousness was unparalleled." "We didn't underestimate George." "We knew that he was peaking, you know, as we got to those records." "He'd not been really interested in the beginning, I don't think." "And because John and I did so much of the writing, he could just leave it to us." "But, erm..." "I think he realised, you know, that there was something in this." "That artistically and financially, it was a good thing to get into." "So by that time, erm, yeah, we realised that he was really coming up with the goods." "I think, you know, with George, you know, it wasn't his ambition to be in The Beatles for his whole life." "Sometimes it could be quite difficult to get a song on an album." "When you think that in Let It Be, they rehearsed All Things Must Pass and a couple of other of George's songs that didn't make it on to Let It Be, right, and didn't make it on to Abbey Road, right," "but made it onto his first solo album, he was stockpiling stuff." "You know, stuff was building up." "** Something in the way she moves **" "** Attracts me like no other lover **" "** Something in the way she woos me **" "** I don't want to leave her now **" "** You know I believe and how... **" "I don't honestly believe that giving" "Something to Joe Cocker, or giving My Sweet Lord to Billy Preston had anything to do with his confidence as a songwriter." "I think he was totally confident about the songs." "The insecurity may have been if The Beatles kept going," ""How many songs am I going to be able to get on each album?"" "And with the backlog sort of mounting up of songs that he had, get it out there and get something from it." "** Somewhere in her smile she knows **" "** That I need no other lover **" "** Something in her style that shows me **" "** I don't want to leave her now **" "** You know I believe and how. **" "Something was a great song, is a great song, and John just said, "That should be a single."" "And that was the first time that George's song was a single." "It was usually Paul's, and George was usually the B-side." "But, you know, he just said, "This should be the single."" "Because he always cared about George." "They had something going, you know." "** You're asking me Will my love grow?" "**" "** I don't know, I don't know **" "** You stick around, now it may show **" "** I don't know, I don't know... **" "Can you describe the scene at Apple Corps, a typical day?" "It was a bit like spin the top and see where it goes." "You know, George met the Hells Angels, right, and said," ""Hey, if you're ever in London, pop in to Apple." ""We'd love to see you." You know." "Never thinking it's going to happen." "Six months later, you know, 30 motorbikes, you know," "Harley Davidsons, are outside the offices in Savile Row, you know, with the Hells Angels." ""Well, George said it was OK."" "Right, they're all living in Apple." "At a Christmas party," "John and Yoko came as Father and Mother Christmas, and we had this 24-pound turkey that only had to make it from here to that couch." "That's where the table was." "Didn't make it, right?" "Two guys were carrying it in, and the Hells Angels just ripped it to pieces." "By the time it got to the table, there was nothing left." "And then, you know, they were sleeping in the studio and stuff and so we asked them to go." "You know, "Could you please leave." And they said, "No." ""George asked us." "It's nothing to do with you." "George said it was OK."" "Right. "Well, George is going to have to tell them to leave." Right?" "So..." "George knew the situation and knew he would have to ask them to leave but he had to figure out how he was going to ask them." "And, er..." "So he did it very well." "He was talking to them and he said," ""You know, there's yin and yang, in and out, up and down," ""you're here, you go."" "And they said, "OK." And went." "I think we'd kind of come to the end of our tether." "We'd sort of done about all we wanted to do." "We would get a bit testy with each other." "It was like a marriage." "You know, you love each other, but you're getting fed up." "And then we'd solve it, and we're good friends." "We'd realise we loved each other, and it was all cool." "But then we'd argue again, you know." "My house was like the reconciliation house." "We all shouted at each other and talked it over and then we went back to work." "He comes in, he'd been to India again, I think, and he says, "I've got this song." "It's like seven-and-a-half time."" ""Yeah, so?"" "You know, he might as well have talked to me in Arabic, you know what I mean?" "** Here comes the sun, do-do-do-do-do **" "** Here comes the sun **" "** And I say, It's all right... **" "Da-da!" "And that's how I come off." "I had to find some way that I could physically do it, and do it every time so it came off on the time." "That's one of those Indian tricks." "I had no way of going, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven."" "It's not my brain." "So as long as I did, "Der-der-ler, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do da-da!"" ""OK, that's seven." "Good." "Got it."" "It was one of those beautiful spring mornings." "I think it was April." "We were just walking round the garden with our guitars." "And that was..." "I don't do that, you know." "I'd only ever do..." "This was what George brought to the situation." "He was just a magical guy and he would show up with his guitar, get out the guitar, get out of the car with the guitar and come in and you'd start playing." "And we'd walk around the garden." "We sat down at the bottom of the garden, looking out over the..." "And the sun was shining and it was a beautiful morning and he started to sing." "Started to sing Here Comes The Sun, the opening lines, you know, and... and I just watched this thing come to life." "** Little darling **" "** It's been a long, cold, lonely winter **" "** Little darling **" "** It feels like years since it's been here **" "** Here comes the sun, do-do-do-do **" "** Here comes the sun **" "** And I say, it's all right... **" "What would you say you learned from each other?" "I'd say we just learned a bunch of stuff." "What it was, we'll never know." "And I always liken us to like, four corners of a square." "People say, "You know, John was the impor..."" "or "John and Paul were the important ones."" "And so and so and so and so." "But I say, "No, no, no, it's a square."" "Without any of those corners, you collapse." "The days that we spent as these Beatles, and we'll probably die as Beatles, err... you know, we understood it." "No one else will ever understand that." "And, you know, we actually understood it cos we experienced it." "How did you feel when the band finally called it quits?" "It was very difficult." "We'd done this a long time, and as I said before, you know, no matter how bad it was... and some days it was very bad in the studio, just the atmosphere and the tension and the distance... but...we, you know..." "If the count-in came in, if someone counted it in, we all gave everything." "It was quite obvious that the Beatles gave us the vehicle to be able to do so much." "When we were younger we grew right through that, but it got to a point where it was stifling us." "There was too much restriction." "You know, it had to self-destruct." "And I wasn't feeling bad about anybody wanting to leave." "I wanted out myself." "I could see a much, you know, better time for myself by, you know, being away from the band." "** What I feel **" "** I can't say **" "** But my love is there for you any time of day **" "** But if it's not love **" "** That you need **" "** Then I'll try my best to make everything succeed **" "** Tell me, what is my life without your love?" "**" "** Tell me who am I without you **" "** By my side?" "**" "** What I know **" "** I can do... **" "The band that I was in, we had more stress than everybody." "And yet, it's all these other people who are all offing themselves left right and centre." "And sometimes, I'd be in a crazy mode and then Ravi would come and I'd think, "Oh, what am I going to do?"" "But the moment you just go for it, then it would turn out much better than you would expect." "And I used to have the same feeling with..." "I became quite friendly at one point with, erm," "Swami Bhaktivedanta, who formed the Krishna temple." "But I..." "You know, they'd call me up and say, "Come to the temple,"" "and, "The Swami's here and he'd love to see you."" "And I'd be like, going through some private nightmare or something, and I'd think, "How can I go to the temple when I'm like this?"" "But then I'd go." "I'd always walk out of there thinking, "Oh, thank you, Lord."" "I think everything George did, including the songs that he wrote that didn't have spiritual words directly in them, were spiritual and that that was always on his mind." "Even the song Something, that is considered one of the greatest love songs ever written..." "I think Frank Sinatra said that - can be seen as a love song to God." "What about the music makes it spiritual, aside from the words?" "I think the thing about the music that makes it spiritual is the person who's singing it, namely George." "That he wanted to be spiritual, he had a spiritual dimension to him, he was known to be involved in spirituality." "A mantra as we know it in English means some phrase that's repeated again and again." "Actually, mantra is a Sanskrit word originally." "It meant a sacred chant, to this maha mantra." "Maha means great in Sanskrit." "It means the great chant for deliverance." "In 1966, I had gone to San Francisco and I'd heard that the devotees had recorded a record at that time." "I had also heard that The Beatles had ordered 300 copies of that LP, 33 1/3 LP vinyl recording." "And it was a kind of thing where it just sort of passed." ""OK, the Beatles got 300 copies, so..."" "After about a week, we just sort of forgot about it." "But I found out later that George had gotten that record himself and that he and John had chanted the Hare Krishna mantra while sailing somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, for so long that he said that his jaws were aching." "I think that chanting helped George a lot to overcome feelings of distress and anger." "He once said to me..." "George once said that," ""Once you start chanting, you don't want to stop."" "I think that he was very attached to the chanting and also to people like myself who were of his age and who were on a spiritual path." "Sometimes I called him a closet Krishna because he didn't shave his head, he didn't wear robes." "** Hare Krishna **" "** Hare Krishna **" "** Krishna Krishna **" "** Hare Hare **" "** Hare Rama **" "** Hare Rama **" "** Rama Rama **" "** Hare Hare **" "** Hare Krishna **" "** Hare Krishna **" "** Krishna Krishna **" "** Hare Hare... **" "He wanted to make an album for the Radha Krishna Temple." "All of these people in their white robes, bald heads, going round, hitting the Indian bells... just trying to, at times, record all of them with them not necessarily keeping still all the time," "and some of the weird instruments that were being brought in to be recorded, it was absolutely fascinating." "** Hare Krishna **" "** Hare Krishna **" "** Krishna Krishna **" "** Hare Hare **" "** Hare Rama **" "** Hare Rama **" "** Rama Rama **" "** Hare Hare. **" "I remember hearing it on a car radio somewhere in the east part of... east London, and the disc jockey saying," ""That was a song by a group of bald-headed Americans."" "George said about taking on this project himself, recording the devotees singing the Hare Krishna mantra, was that he wanted to get across what he believed through a medium that he was familiar with." "And that was chanting, that was a 45 record." "And it was quite amazing because myself and none of us thought that this was going to be a popular record, and yet it became very popular." "It was played in the intermission at the Isle of Wight concert, when Bob Dylan was setting up." "And then it was played at the intermission in a football game in Manchester, where Manchester United was a very popular soccer team." "All the fans, who were probably just there to watch the soccer, started singing along because it was only three words and they could do it." "There were 5,000 football fans singing Hare Krishna." "People always say I'm the Beatle who changed the most." "But really that's what I see life is about." "The point is, unless you're God-conscious then you have to change, because..." "because it's a waste of time." "Everybody is so limited and so really useless when you think about the limitations on yourself." "And the whole thing is to change, try and make everything better and better." "That's what the physical world is about, change." "** Sunrise doesn't last all morning **" "** A cloudburst doesn't last all day **" "** Seems my love is up **" "** And has left you with no warning **" "** It's not always going to be this grey **" "** All things must pass **" "** All things must pass away... **" "Well, I'm trying to, I think, but..." "** Sunset doesn't last all evening... **" "He just lived by his deeds." "He was spiritual and you knew it." "And there was no salesmanship involved." "And it made you spiritual being around him." "Uh, it made you like those Krishnas, who could sometimes be the biggest pain in the necks in the world, running around with their robes and their shaved heads and their white powder all over their face." "Scaring you half to death coming out of a dark studio, glowing." "It was a very unusual choice, I thought, to work with Phil Spector with the kind of songs you were making on that album." "Yeah, I suppose it was, but he needed a job at the time." "And I needed somebody to help me because, you know, I mean, after being in a group all the time with a producer suddenly to be a solo artist with no producer, you know, and no group, you know?" "Yeah." "So it's like, you know, it's quite a big jump." "John phoned me up in the morning." "He said, "I've just written this song and I'm going to record it today" ""and have it out tomorrow." "It's called Instant Karma." ""Will you come and play on it?" I said, "OK."" "Got my guitar, went into town, went in the office and Phil was there." "And I said, "Come on, let's go and do this song with John."" "And he said, "Whoa, no, no." "I can't go." "I haven't been invited."" "And I said, "Don't worry." "Just come on."" "And so he stood at the back of the control room in studio three, it was, in Abbey Road." "And he stood there, and like the engineer was getting all paranoid and Phil wouldn't say anything." "And after about a couple of hours, I said," ""Come on, do something."" "So then he started putting the echo on it." "McCartney was making an album." "John had a single ready to go." "And now John was talking about making an album already." "The Plastic Ono Band." "And I said to George, "You know, you ought to consider making an album."" "And I'd only been there 12 hours." "I went to George's, Friar Park, which he had just purchased, and he said, "I have a few ditties for you to hear."" "It was endless!" "He had literally hundreds of songs." "And each one was better than the rest." "He had all this emotion built up when it released to me." "I don't think he had played it to anybody." "Maybe Pattie." "** Wah-wah **" "** You've given me a wah-wah... **" "We worked over and over on the songs in the studio so that everybody got the right routine." "And it sounded really nice and in the control room," "Phil was in there with the engineer making it sound like this noise." "The first track we ever did was a song called Wah-Wah." "And it sounded really nice in the studio." "All this nice acoustics and piano and no echo on anything." "We did it for hours until we, you know, he had it right in the control room." "Yeah." "We went in to listen to it and I thought," "I hate it." "It's so horrible." "Did you say that to him?" "Yeah, I said, "It's horrible." "I hate it."" "Eric said, "Oh, I love it."" "So I said, "Well, you can have it on your album then."" "But I grew to like it." "He wouldn't let anything go until it was right." "My Sweet Lord must have taken about 12 hours to overdub the guitar solos." "He had nine harmonies working on." "Bwa, bwa, bwa, bwa, bwa, bwa, bwa." "He must've had that in triplicate, six-part harmony before we decided on two-part harmony." "He had it metic..." "He was a..." "Perfectionist is not the word." "Anyone can be a perfectionist." "He was beyond that." "He just had to have it so right, and he would try and try and experiment and experiment and experiment upon experiment." "Whoa." "One, two, one, two, three, four." "** You don't need a love... **" "You don't need a..." "I was just going to bed and I was cleaning me teeth and suddenly in me head came this" "** You don't need a... **" "All I had to do was pick up the guitar, find what key it was in and fill in the missing words." "** You don't need a love in **" "** You don't need a bedpan **" "** You don't need a horoscope **" "** Or a microscope to see the mess that you're in **" "** If you open up your heart **" "** You know what I mean **" "** Been polluted so long **" "** Here's a way for you to get clean **" "** While the Pope owns 51% of General Motors **" "** And the stock exchange **" "** Is the only thing he's qualified to quote us **" "** But the Lord is awaiting on you all To awaken and see **" "** By chanting the names of the Lord And you'll be free **" "** You don't need a love in **" "** You don't need no bedpan **" "** You don't need a horoscope **" "** Or a microscope To see the mess that you're in **" "** If you open up your heart **" "** You will know what I mean **" "** We've been polluted so long **" "** Now here's a way for you to get clean **" "** By chanting the names of the Lord **" "** And you'll be free **" "** The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see **" "** By chanting the names of the Lord and you'll be free **" "** The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see... **" "The album took six months to make." "And George had endless time." "He never really knew if he wanted the album to come out." "So the longer it took to make, the better George, the happier George was." "I picked My Sweet Lord of all the songs." "cos I told him that's the hit." "And everybody fought me on that cos they said it's got religious overtones in it." "I just said it didn't matter." "It's the most commercial song in it." "And George was even nervous about it because of Hare Krishna in it and My Sweet Lord and was the public ready for it." "I said, "It doesn't matter." "It's a hit record."" "I thought a lot about whether to do My Sweet Lord or not." "Having written it," "I thought it's really committing myself to something." "There's going to be a lot of people are going to really hate me." "Because people fear the unknown, you see." "It's some sort of instinct in people." "The point was that I was sticking my neck out on the chopping block." "But at the same time, I thought, "Well, nobody's saying it." Yeah." "I wish somebody else was doing it." "So that, you know, to represent, you know, cos everything should be represented in a way." "If everybody's just going "Be bop, baby" you know, OK." "We were on tour with Bonnie  Delaney." "They came over to England and George was a big fan." "And one place we were, we had a piano in the dressing room." "And, uh, the discussion was, how do you write a gospel song?" "So I went to the piano and started playing some gospel changes." "And I don't know if it was Delaney or Bonnie, but one of them starts, ** Oh, my Lord. **" "And then they went on ** We say hallelu... **" "** My sweet Lord Mmm, my Lord **" "** My sweet Lord... **" "** Well, I really wanna see you **" "** I really want to be with you **" "** I really want to see you, Lord **" "** But it takes so long, oh, Lord **" "** My sweet Lord. **" "** My sweet Lord **" "** Oh, my sweet Lord **" "** Oh, my... **" "What is it about it that makes it so timeless?" "Well, is it?" "Uh, first it's simple, you know, and the repetition." "You know, really, I think, the thing about a mantra, you see, it's got a mantra in there." "And, uh, mantras are..." "Well, they call it a mystical sound vibration encased in a syllable." "It has this power within it, and you know, it's just hypnotic and it's kinda nice." "You know, it's nice." "I mean, I'd have done that mantra for ages." "Once I chanted it for, like, three days non-stop just driving through Europe." "And you just get like hypnotised." "You get a... on some subtle level which makes you feel so good that you don't want to stop." ""My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison" "George's huge commitment to Indian spirituality and how that would lead him to be fairly dismissive of the material things that we'd all come to enjoy, you know, and so he was trying to remove himself from that in some way," "and even in a physical way, you know?" "And I had become, bit by bit, more and more obsessed with his wife Pattie." "And was making amateur kind of inroads into finding out what was going on and what was happening to their relationship." "And at the same time trying to balance my relationship with him." "And when we finally did start to act it out," "I mean, I went to George right away and said," ""Look, I think this is going to happen," ""and I think, you know, it is already," ""there's the feelings there." "I have to know what you feel about that."" "It was almost like, well, if you want me to stop and go away," "I will, you know." "But I need to know what..." "And he was very kind of cavalier, you know?" "He said, "Well, take her." "She's yours," kind of thing," ""But, in fact, can I have that, we'll swap."" "And to be honest, it had kind of almost got to that before anyway." "There was a lot of kind of swapping going on, and a lot of fooling around." "And this is, you know, '60s free-love stuff." "I mean, so..." "And George's attitude seemed to have more wisdom in it than anyone else's, in that this is all material, it's all Maya, it's all irrelevant to the bigger picture." "Doesn't really matter, in other words." "And I thought, phew, God, you know, well, that's almost like giving me carte blanche." "From time to time, during the spring and summer of 1970" "Eric and I saw each other." "One day we were walking down Oxford Street when" "Eric said, "Do you like me, then, or are you seeing me" ""because I'm famous?"" "I replied, "Oh, I thought you were seeing me because I'm famous."" "And we both laughed." "He always found it difficult to talk about his feelings." "Instead, he poured them into his music and writing." "Another of our secret meetings took place at a flat in South Kensington in London." "Eric wanted me to listen to a song he'd written." "He switched on the tape machine, turned up the volume, and played me the most powerful, moving song I'd ever heard." "It was Layla, about a man who falls hopelessly in love with a woman who loves him but is unavailable." "My first thought was," ""Oh, God, everyone's going to know who this is."" "I felt uncomfortable that he was pushing me in a direction" "I wasn't certain I wanted to go." "But the song got the better of me with the realisation that" "I had inspired such passion and such creativity." "I could no longer resist." "That evening, I went to a party at the rock manager Robert Stigwood's house in Stanmore, North London." "George had said he didn't want to go." "Eric was there." "And I felt elated by what had happened earlier in the day." "But also felt deeply guilty." "** Isn't it a pity... **" "Much later in the evening, George appeared." "He kept asking "Where's Pattie?"" "** Isn't it a shame... **" "He was about to leave when he spotted me in the garden with Eric." "** How we break each other's hearts... **" "He came over to us and said, "What's going on?"" "** And cause each other pain... **" "Eric said, "I have to tell you, man, that I'm in love with your wife." "** How we take each other's love... **" "George was furious." "He turned to me and said..." "** Without thinking any more... **" ".."Well, are you going with him or coming with me?"" "** Forgetting to give back... **" "And I said, "George, I'm coming home."" "** Isn't it a pity... **" "** Wah-wah **" "** You've given me a wah-wah **" "** And I'm thinking of you **" "** And all the things that we used to do **" "** Wah-wah **" "** Wah-wah... **" "George was always so in tune with people." "He loved Ravi." "When Ravi told him how bad it was," "I think he just started making calls immediately." "Ravi came to me and he said if he was to do a concert, maybe play to so many thousand people, but to the size of the problem, the money, the funds that would be made would just be so small." "So that's where I came along." "I can generate money by doing concerts and by making records." "George, how much money do you hope to get from this?" "Well, it depends really." "Maybe through the concerts, we could estimate maybe about..." "How much?" "Quarter of a million." "Maybe 250,000 from the concert." "But if we record the concert and film the concert then maybe that would be a greater way of making the money." "You know, a record could possibly sell a million, two million." "Thank you." "If you appreciate the tuning so much," "I hope you'll enjoy the playing more." "Thank you." "** Watch out now, take care **" "** Beware of falling swingers **" "** Dropping all around you **" "** The pain that often mingles **" "** In your fingertips **" "** Beware of darkness **" "** Watch out now, take care **" "** Beware of the thoughts that linger **" "** Winding up inside your head **" "** The hopelessness around you **" "** In the dead of night **" "** Beware of sadness **" "** It can hit you **" "** It will hurt you **" "** Make you sore and what is more **" "** That is not what you are here for. **" "There were two concerts." "One in the afternoon at two and one at eight o'clock." "It was the first of its kind, benefit by stars for a relief concert and it was magical." "That's the only word to describe it because nobody had ever seen anything like that before, that amount of star power on stage since Woodstock." "And this was all in two hours on stage at one time." "Eric was there." "Leon Russell was there." "Ringo was there." "Dylan was a no-show up until the last minute." "I had to go down to his apartment and literally get him." "It was chaos." "So we didn't know what we were doing, and mics were all over the place." "We only had three hours to mic the band." "Then the audience came in." "We didn't know how to mic the audience." "So the mixing took six months." "The concert took, the two concerts took four hours." "And we had to put together what was a Grammy-winning album." "George knew all these people." "You know, they were his close friends." "I got that second-hand." "You know, I got to meet the great Alla Rakha, the greatest tabla player who ever lived, you know?" "George was always saying," ""Ask Alla Rakha to show you some things."" "And so, I think he finally got the picture that he oughta show me some things." "So he would hold his hands and he'd go..." "And he'd do this whole thing, this Indian-technique thing and George would be watching." "I'd look up a few times and George would be watching and laughing, you know?" "How am I supposed to understand what it is he's doing." "This genius trying to teach a rock drummer." "I really appreciated in later days that he actually went in front of that audience on the Bangladesh concert because he did it for his friends." "That he actually went up there and talked to an audience." "I think that must have been about the first time he's ever done this." "You see, a few things in English, or a few things in German on the stage where it didn't matter, is a big difference than to an audience where he knew it was going to be filmed and used." "To talk to an audience was very, very difficult for him." "There's somebody on bass who many people have heard about but they never actually have seen him." "Klaus Voormann." "'And one day, '" "I was pretty upset." "And we walked in the garden." "And we didn't say much for a long time." "We sat down on a bench, and we really... ..went inside of me." "He wanted to really find out what made me so sad." "And he did it in such a fantastic way." "I can't repeat the words, or I can't tell you exactly what it is, but he just, in a fantastic way, made me feel good." "Found out what the problem is in no time." "You know, nobody's ever done this before and will never do it again." "George is a very extreme character." "He always goes to the extreme." "If it's taking coke, you know, sniffing coke, or if it is being open to meditation." "He was in New York, and one time I said," ""I'll come over and watch you."" "And he said, "OK." And then he said, "Oh, Klaus is coming." ""Hide the stuff." And that made me very, very sad." "I lived first in the main house, in a room." "Old Victorian house." "Beautiful old kitchen." "In the early days, you had your servants." "They were going from the kitchen to the front room and bringing you the food." "They had to walk through five doors, "Oh, I left the spoons."" "Had to go back." "It was really crazy." "It was not meant to be lived in by normal people." "So I at a certain point suggested to George," ""Why don't you put the kitchen where you are?" "Just build a kitchen!"" "He said, "That's a good idea."" "So he actually built a kitchen downstairs where you look into the garden." "The man who built the house, he must have been a nutcase." "Just a complete maniac." "One thing, for example, he has a picture of a friar with a frying pan in his hand." "And with holes in it." "And it says underneath, "Two holy friars."" "You know." "Stupid stuff, in a way." "It's not really very bright." "But that's what the whole place was." "It was like a joke, in a way." ""Before I bought it, the house" ""was going to be knocked down because the Catholics would not pay" ""for the upkeep." ""What a thing to knock down a house like this." ""Sir Frank helped my awareness." ""Whatever it was I felt became stronger or found more expression" ""by moving into that house," ""because everything stepped up or was heightened." ""There were disasters all around at that time." ""Some were great, some were awful, some were drawn out," ""painful, miserable." ""Some were not disasters after all." ""But the thing about Sir Frank with his advice like," ""'Scan not a friend with microscopic glass.'" ""I mean, that helped me" ""actively to ease up on whomsoever I thought I loved." ""It gave me the consciousness not to hang onto the negative side" ""of it, to be more forgiving."" "One way of starting a day was for him to get up when the sun gets up, sit down and meditate." "For a long time he had a special room in the house where he was going to meditate." "And he was very proud of this." "He would come to me and tell me about it, how strong he was, and he was fighting the bad parts in his body and, uh, he was really opening up." "George liked turning you on to things that he liked and was interested in, whether you were a little kid or whether you were a grown up." "For our kids their first experiences at George's house were not unlike the experience that Derek and I had when we went on that weekend to Sussex, but without the drugs." "The impression it made upon them, it's such a wonderful place." "The caves, the lake, the shape of the house." "Everything." "The detail." "It was just a dream." "** Give me love, give me love **" "** Give me peace on Earth **" "** Give me light, give me life **" "** Keep me free from birth **" "** Give me hope, help me cope **" "** With this heavy load **" "** Trying to touch and reach you **" "** With heart and soul **" "** Oh **" "** My Lord **" "** Please **" "** Take hold of my hand... **" "He created an atmosphere in the studio." "He put up joss sticks, make a nice smell." "He put the lights down." "He really made it into a real tranquil, nice sort of surrounding." "Everybody felt just great." "He would sit down with the guitar most of the time, play the song to us." "And then slowly we'd start picking up on what the feel of the song was." "We could take our time, find our sound, do what we wanted, make suggestions." "George had such a beautiful touch on the slide, you know." "George had that kind of sound that'd make you cry." "When I hear certain songs he's played slide on, it just takes me right to a place." "He loved to find the right note and, you know, if you listen to anything he's playing the solo on, he certainly did." "If I had him on my records, you didn't have to read it," ""Oh, that's George." You know?" "He found that incredible, it's like a haunting and emotional sound he got from his slide-ish guitar." "With Ravi, the times when he's completely absorbed so much into the music where he's forgotten that he's even sitting there playing." "Mm-hm." "And he only remembers when he's finished the piece and he comes out and the audience applaud." "That's the moment when he realises he's transcended and been somewhere, which is the same in meditation." "Sometimes, I think great people can project their greatness." "They don't have to shout about it." "The concert Eric did," "Eric Clapton at the Rainbow." "Watching the concert, I was so aware of Eric." "All he did was he had his eyes closed and he was playing some fantastic guitar, and his foot was tapping." "The thing was that the magic was coming out of Eric's... ..soul, or whatever." "Mm." "Through his guitar." "Yeah." "And it was at that point where he just looked like an angel." "When George was ready to make a record, he'd just say he's got some new songs, and, uh, would I be wanting to, you know, come and play on 'em." "When he put out Living In The Material World, on the back of the record he put, "Jim Keltner Fan Club..." ""send a self-undressed elephant to Jim Keltner Fan Club." All that." "And so I saw that, I went, "George, what's that, man?" ""What did you do?"" "And he said, "Well, I figured if I'm going to do a fan club," "I'm going to make it about somebody who I'm a big fan of."" "What a tremendous thing, you know?" "It was a little embarrassing, but yet it just, you know," "George was always having fun." "I was getting, uh, weird letters from crazy people." "I got a couple of Polaroids from this crazy guy." "There was an arrow through a piece of meat," "I think it was a heart, I think he bought a heart or something, some kind of big piece of meat, and there was an arrow going through it." "You know, and then there was like, one with a knife and blood dripping, and that was right about the time that I, uh, had bars put on our windows." "George stepped back." "And that step back to me means that he got very heavily into drugs and things, which, I don't know the reason why that happened." "** What I feel **" "** I can't say I can't say **" "** My love is there for you every time of day **" "** If it's not love If it's not love **" "** That you need That you really, really need **" "** I try my best to make everything succeed **" "** Tell me what is my life without your love?" "**" "** Hey, man **" "** Tell me who am I without you **" "** By my side?" "**" "** Oh, tell me... **" "Recommended by Eric Clapton," "Barbra Streisand and many other top-notch singers and entertainers." "Secret mixture of honey, vinegar and... warm water." "And your throat will never bother you again." "You just won't have a throat!" "But it coats what you don't have, so they tell me." "And..." "Hey, the ex-Beatle himself." "Get a programme!" "Hey, today's two-head programme!" "Hey, George, ex-Beatle, Harrison programme!" "** You thought that you knew where I was and when **" "** It looks like you've been foolin' you again **" "** You thought that you had got me all staked out **" "** But, baby, looks like I've been breaking out **" "** I'm a dark horse **" "** I'm running on a dark race course **" "** And now I'm a blue moon **" "** Since I stepped out of the womb **" "** I've been a cool jerk **" "** Looking for the source **" "** I'm a dark horse. **" "The critics were brutal." "I remember that about Ravi opening the show and then about George's voice being gone and shot." "Yeah, it probably, his voice probably was very weak or, you know, and beat-up." "And maybe a lot of people they saw bored with the Indian set." "But that did not deter George." "And, by the way, not everybody was bored with it." "And not everybody thought that his voice sounded horrible." "They just loved hearing those songs and him trying... to deliver them the best he could." "My next move will be Madison Square Garden." "After that, I'll go back to the hotel, then it'll be Madison Square Garden again." "** Baby, looks like you...**" "After that, I'll probably just collapse." "I don't know." "He liked the moon." "You know, if the wind was blowing and the full moon was up, he'd put on Bing Crosby singing Sweet Leilani and just make the moment even better." "And then he might hand you a gardenia." "He just painted life like that." "He drew all the elements in." "He was a very sensual person." "Sensual in the way that whatever you ate had to have a flavour." "You know, had to have some special flavour." "If there was a flower, he wanted it to smell or be bright." "When I first met him, he said, "I don't want you to think" ""you've discovered something about me I don't know." ""I'm not claiming to be this or that or anything." ""People think they've found you out when I'm not hiding anything."" "For whatever his, you know, faults were, and his..." "He had karma to work out." "And he wasn't going to come back and be bad." "He was going to be good and bad and loving and angry and everything all at once." "You know, if someone said to you "OK, you can go through your life" ""and you can have everything in five lifetimes," ""or you can have a really intense one and have it in one," ""and then you can go and be liberated", he would've said, "Give me the one." "I'm not coming back here."" "I thought he was really... somebody who was saying something that I connected with." "He was really a very captivating person." "And we seemed, he was working." "And I liked, uh, you know, I liked the music." "I liked what he was doing." "We just seemed like partners... from the very beginning." "Jim Keltner's here?" "Yeah." "About how long does it look like?" "About three minutes." "Good." "** Everyone has choice **" "** When to or not to raise their voices **" "** It's you that decides **" "** Which way you will turn **" "** While feeling that our love's not your concern **" "** It's you that decides **" "** No-one around you will carry the blame for you **" "** No-one around you **" "** Will love you today and throw it all away **" "** Tomorrow when you rise...**" "'There was this amazing sunset." "Just orange sky.'" "And he said, "That is what I want to do."" "Now...somebody might say, "What?"" "You know, "What do you want to do?"" "What?" "He wanted to make, he wanted to be able to create that sunset." "When we were first on tour, and we were in customs and they were going through my baggage," "I hadn't revealed anything to George, really." "They're going through my handbag." "He said, "Oh, you've got that book, do you..?"" "He was like going through my bag with the customs." ""You read that, you've read that." "That's good."" "He was approving of... ..of my journey, and he, I think, considered himself a bit of an expert on spiritual matters." "Yeah, we had our differences." "I might have done a different technique than he did." "But we both had the same goal." "And I think that was really the key to everything in our lives." "He had this ability to bottom line everything by pulling focus and showing you the cosmic world of this galaxy and there you were suddenly, just this little person with his own little problems, fretting away on the surface." "So, I had heard a little about George, uh, liking Python, and I'd been a bit wary because, you know..." "I don't want to know about somebody famous, you know." "We had the screening of The Holy Grail and it went really well and suddenly there he was, going "Well, this is fucking great."" "And he said, "Let's go upstairs."" "And then we started a dialogue which went on for about 48 hours." "It was extraordinary." "I mean, it was like bla, bla, bla..." "Well, George was very fond of Rutland Weekend Television." "On Rutland Weekend Television, we did a send-up called The Rutles." "It was like a Hard Day's Rut." "We were on Abbey Road filming." "And I'm dressed as..." "Paul." "And then Neil was dressed as John with a huge big beard." "And we're there, we're on Abbey Road, and these people, "You're the Beatles!" ""You're the Beatles!" It's 20 years later, you know." ""You think they're still here?" But George is standing with us, and they don't recognise him." "He's laughing his ass off." "We're getting signed autographs, and they don't notice it's George." "Existence is kind of funny because of our temporality." "Here we go round pretending to be kings and emperors, and you're going to die." "You're in a box in a minute or two." "So we are constantly undercut by our own physicality, our own physical bodies, which let us down." "And you find all these evangelicals, and suddenly they're having gay sex in Aspen." ""Oh, this body's letting me down all the time."" "that's what makes us funny." "George's grounding in what was... both true and what was, he would test things by what made him laugh or what was close to his heart." "I've always been surprised Python's proved to be as long living as it has, cos we were just having fun, just like they were having fun." "We were entertaining ourselves." "We weren't thinking about the audience." "It's like John Lennon said, "You're still fucking peasants to me."" "Certain things..." "There was a kind of arrogance there that... you're not out there to, you know, want to be loved so desperately that you'll do anything." "It's about... maintaining your own integrity and your own view of the world, whatever that is, and trying to be truthful about it." "We'd written Life of Brian." "We had EMI putting up the money for the movie." "We had designed it." "We were heading out on the Saturday with the crew to Tunisia to start building." "And on Thursday, we get a call." "And Lord Delfont - Bernie to his friends... had finally got around to reading the script apparently." "He hadn't read it before." "He was shocked and horrified, and said, "There's no way EMI's going to be involved in this blasphemous filth."" "And pulled the plug on the Thursday." "And we were dead." "I'd be calling George and he said, "No, I'll pay for it."" "So I thought, yeah!" "All the time he said, "No, I'll take care of it."" "And I thought, yeah." "We were looking for 4 million, and nobody has that amount of money, you know." "Eventually, when we got to California, George says, "I've figured it out." ""We're going to create a company and we're going to give you the money."" "And it's 4 million and he'd mortgaged his house to put up the money for this movie, because he wanted to see it." "Which is still the most anybody's ever paid for a cinema ticket." "Thank God you've come, Reg." "I think I should point out first, in all fairness, that we are not, in fact, the rescue committee." "However, I have been asked to read the following prepared statement on behalf of the movement." ""We the People's Front of Judea, brackets, officials, end brackets" ""do hereby convey our sincere fraternal and sisterly greetings to you, Brian," ""on this, the occasion of your martyrdom."" "What?" "!" "Goodbye, Brian." "And thanks." "If you care about what constitutes what we call western civilisation and which now probably is coming to an end, and you were to consider the role that's been played in that, by this thing that you treat as a piece of buffoonery," "you would have a certain humility in saying that you have been able, through making it, to shed light." "What we're saying is take a critical view, find out about it." "Don't just believe because somebody tells you to." "Somebody in the pulpit says something, question it." "You keep making the basic assumption that we are ridiculing Christ and Christ's teaching." "And I say that we are not." "Would you imagine your scene, for instance, the sermon on the mount, the scene in your film of The Sermon on the Mount..." "Right." "..is not ridiculing one of the most sublime utterances that any human being has ever spoken on this Earth?" "Of course it is." "A lot of people looking in will think we have actually ridiculed Christ..." "Yes...physically." "Christ is played by an actor, Ken Colley." "He speaks the words from the sermon on the mount." "It's treated absolutely respectfully." "The camera pans away, we go right to the back of the crowd to someone who shouts "Speak up!"" "Because they cannot hear him." "Now if that utterly..." "No... ..undermines one's faith in Christ, then I think their faith cannot be terribly strong." "I think he enjoyed the scandal of the whole thing." "He pretended not to, but I think when you actually can alienate" "Protestants, Catholics and Jews all at one go, you know, you're doing something." "** Let me in here **" "** I know I've been here **" "** Let me into your heart **" "** Let me know you **" "** Let me show you **" "** Let me roll it to you **" "** All I have is yours **" "** All you see is mine **" "** And I'm glad to hold you in my arms **" "** I'd have you any time... **" "When we were editing Life of Brian and we just had a screening, and George was there, and we then had a meeting afterwards with all of us," "Denis O'Brien, who was our manager, George and his manager at the time, and George and it was a shocking moment for him because there we were disagreeing about everything." "We were arguing what should stay in, what should go out, what was working, what didn't" "And I think he was genuinely disturbed and I think it was the last meeting he ever came to of the group cos I think after, I think he wanted to believe in something." "He may talk about the spirit of the Beatles going into Python, but I don't think he wanted the divisive nature of the spirit." "In 1979 I'd finished... a two-man tour with Elton John." "And, as always when George was around in my life, the phone would ring." ""What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I'm not doing a lot."" "And he said, "Well, I think I've got a film company."" "He said, "You know all these theatre people," ""and you love all that stuff, why don't you be me in the office?"" "And it was as simple a statement as that." "I said, "When can we start?" "" He said, "I've started." "Life Of Brian's on its way." ""We're thinking about the next one, called Time Bandits." ""There's this madman called Terry Gilliam, you know." ""You'll love him." "" I said, "I know Terry." "" "I thought you might know him,"" "And off we went." "HandMade was called handmade because we were handmade." "Everything was done in-house, including, er, quite a lot of the marketing strategy." "We designed posters because we had people like" "Terry Gilliam who would do those designs." "We had people like Michael Palin and Derek Taylor, who would come up with great by-lines, all in-house." "So this was again, this was like a giant band, and George loved being in a band." "He missed The Beatles." "He missed his mates." "He missed working with people." "He was a great collaborator." "He loved being there." "Why is minority music important?" "All the music that isn't really sold in your local record store in the top hundred..." "Well..." "You're asking me?" "Everybody on the charts gets it from somewhere, don't they?" "They get it from these little guys in other countries who invented the stuff." "That's how I feel about it." "So it's important purely so they've got something to steal and put in the charts?" " No, it's important..." " That's a good answer." "Hi, Liv." "Hi." "So why is it important to have all these people at our house?" "It's important to have to worry about lots of things and make sure everything's right." "And, uh, well, it's nice to see everyone." "Wonderful people, good food." "You like it, don't you, after all?" "See?" "Thank you." "Yes." "I feel very strongly about major issues." "I don't talk about them an awful lot." "But I feel, uh, very strongly about unfairness." "What do you think we should be doing to make our lives better?" "Thank you." "** Give peace a chance **" "** All we are saying **" "** Is give peace a chance... **" "Mr Chapman came up behind them and called to him Mr Lennon as he arrived at that doorway." "And then in a combat stance, he fired, he emptied the Charter Arms 38 calibre gun that he had with him and...shot John Lennon." "** I bless the day I found you **" "** I want to stay around you **" "** And so I beg you **" "** Let it be me **" "** Don't take this heaven from one **" "** If you must cling to someone **" "** Now and forever **" "** Let it be me. **" "I wonder what you felt, losing someone who was close to you for all those years." "It's like, uh, losing your parents, or anybody you know and love." "He was no angel." "He wasn't." "But he was, as well." "Was he?" "Yeah." "He was really angry that John didn't have a chance to leave his body in a better way." "Because George put so much emphasis and importance on the moment of death, of leaving your body." "That was very, um..." "That's really what he was practising for." "It's like the Dalai Lama said something that, we really, um, made us smile." "He said, "What do you do in the morning?"" "He said, "I do my practice, I do my mantras," ""I do my spiritual practice."" ""How do you know it will work?" "" He said, "I don't." "I'll find out when I die."" "And, you know, it's so great." "It's like that was it." "I'll, I'm practising this so that when I die I will know how to leave my body and I'll be familiar and I won't be frightened." "George had a maximum amount of diversion in life." "And, you know, towards the end of his life, he'd say, like," "I'd say, "Oh, you know they want to give you this award thing"." "And he said, "Well, I don't want it." ""Tell them to get another monkey."" "I'd say, "Yeah, but, you know, it's really a nice one." ""You should have this."" "And he'd say, "Well, if you want it so bad, you go and get it."" "You know. "I'm not going." ""I'm not doing that any more." ""Because it's just a big diversion." ""I want to plant trees." ""I want to be quiet." "I want to meditate."" "And he really did draw the line." "And I really admired him for that." "I mean, I've always been intrigued with George's "spirituality", which is absolutely essential to him." "You know, living in the material world." "So he was caught in these two worlds of a very spiritual world and a very material world." "And..." "And they're both, I think, related in the sense that it's about finding the beauty in the real world." "To make the real world as beautiful as it can be." "And that's, I think, what he was doing in... in Friar Park." "He created such, you know, exquisite beauty there." "But there was nothing airy-fairy about it." "And it wasn't about somebody snapping his fingers and having somebody else do it for him." "He had to do the work." "OK, back up now." "Back up!" "Our friends would joke, calling him Capability George, you know, like after Capability Brown." "And he'd be like, "Get that pond..." ""put it over there, move that hill..." ""Don't like that hill." You know." "And the next week, it would be, pond over there, hill over there." "And it would look better, you know." "And he'd garden at night-time, he'd garden until... you know, till midnight." "And he'd be out there squinting cos he could see, at midnight, you know, he could see the kind of moonlight and he could see the shadows." "And that was his way of not seeing any of the weeds and imperfections that were, you know, that would plague him during the day." "So he'd be able to imagine what it was going to look like when it was done." "** Well, I'm alone but that's all right... **" "'He used to say to me every day," "'"You don't have to go to school today." "'"Do you want to just go on a yacht in the South Pacific" "'"and run away forever?"'" "** I'll be fine anywhere... **" "'A lot of people would probably say," "'"You're an idiot for not doing that."" "'And maybe in a way I am." "But I...'" "To rebel in my family was to go to school." "I went to like a semi-military school." "We did CCF one day a week, and that used to piss him off, me walking around in an Air Force uniform." "I was...15, and then, er... ..had some, er, little run-in with some policemen." "And, er, he told the policemen to fuck off!" "And, uh, that was when I realised that he was actually cool, on my side, and not just a scary dad, you know." "And, er, he was very, very close to me after that." "And we kind of... would run off down the garden and hide." ""Don't tell your mum" kind of stuff, you know." "He was really a free person and he did not like to be bound by rules." "But he did like women." "And he did, erm, he was..." "Women did like him." "And he was... uh..." "Whether..." "If he just said a couple of words to a woman, honestly, he had a profound effect..." "on people." "So that was always something that was, you know..." "And I'm not the only one who's had to deal with this, you know, person who's..." "well-loved." "So it was always a challenge." "Uh..." "Sometimes people say, you know," ""What's the secret of a long marriage?"" "It's like, "You don't get divorced."" "And I think, you know, you go through challenges in your marriage and here's what I found." "First time we had a big hiccup in the road, I, you know, you go through things, you go, "Wow."" "There is a reward at the other end of it." "There's this incredible reward." "You love each other more." "You..." "learn something." "You let go of something." "You get..." "Those hard edges get softened." "You know, you're that block of stone." "And, you know, life shapes you and takes away those hard edges." "You have kept to yourself, in recent years." "This led to some wild stories about the Howard Hughes of Henley." "Because I don't go discothequeing and things like that, where people hang out with their cameras, so they presumed that I was Howard Hughes, with my big fingernails and Kleenex tissues and that kind of stuff." "Bottles of urine all around the house, and, uh..." "But I wasn't like that at all." "I go out all the time, or a lot of the time, see friends, have dinner, go to parties..." "I'm even more normal than, you know, normal people." "I've met you before." "You know, all his lines about, "I was never at a discotheque..." "" Well, I wasn't." "We had to drag him out of them, you know." "LAUGHTER" "Well, that was back in '64, '65." "Before the limp." "Yeah." "No, I stopped going to 'em around 1967, I think." "Yeah, I stopped in 1980." "What about now?" "What makes you cross with each other now?" "Well, the last time we were cross was when George was suing me." "Er, the last time he calls me was to say, "I'm going to sue you."" "I said, "No, George, don't be silly."" ""No, I'm going to sue you." "I don't like what you've done."" "Cos he wrote this song and I had it mixed by somebody else... and, er, he didn't like the mix." "So he was going to sue me." "So, in the end I have to..." "I said, "Sue me if you want, but I'll always love you."" "** I don't want you **" "** But I hate to lose you **" "** You got me in between **" "** The devil and the deep blue sea **" "** I forgive you **" "** Cos I can't forget you **" "** You got me in between **" "** The devil and the deep blue sea **" "** I want to cross you off my list **" "** But when you come knocking at my door **" "** Fate seems to give my heart a twist **" "** And I come running back for more... **" "'You're going very fast." "'You're going at the absolute limit of the car's tyres 'and its suspension' and you, yourself are right on the very edge of your limit, taking it to the finest point." "When that happens, your senses are so strong and, in my case, I relate it to a real experience, where I went... came to a corner and before I got to the corner I smelled grass." "My senses were so... so sharp, so exaggerated that a car had gone off the road in front of me, out of my sight." "My senses told me there was something wrong." "That was grass." "The car was on a tarmacadam road." "So, I immediately backed off." "The millisecond that you're talking about is so small." "Now, that's what I think George saw and that was heightened senses to a point, not only of your feel and your touch, but your feet because of the pedals, the gas pedal, the brake pedal," "the sensitivity of the function of those." "It's the kind of thing if George and I talked about it, he would love that." "And if you listen to a really top guitarist, how he can make that guitar talk, that's another heightening of senses that is beyond the ken, the know, the knowledge of any normal man or woman." "George had a huge circle of friends and I think I was kind of, er... ..I was just one of them, really." "I mean, I like to think that there was something special about our relationship." "In many ways there was, but after George died, when, you know, and I, and we all got together," ""God," I thought, "he's got, how do these guys all fit together?"" "And there was a whole other mob, they used to call them the Thames Valley gang, and these were all old, you know, ageing rock stars, if you like." "That had, you know, got little, nice little houses, and he was..." "He had something going on with everybody." "Anything to do with racing and cars and motorbikes, that was part of the world, then there was the music side, and then there was the movie side, and then there was the comedian side, and... and there was always this wonderful crowd of people," "all pretending to be grown-ups!" "That's what was really funny about it and we all just giggled a lot, because, look at this, and we're all in this place." "He showed up one day and he came in with two ukuleles and he gave me one." "He goes, "You gotta play this thing, it's great," you know," ""let's jam," you know." "And I said, "I have no idea how to play a ukulele."" ""Ah, it's no problem, I'll show you," you know." "So we spent the rest of the day playing ukuleles and, I mean, playing ukuleles..." "Strolling around the yard playing ukulele... my wrist hurt the next day!" "But he taught me how to play it, you know, and I learned the chord formations." "And when he was going, I walked out to the car and he said," ""Well, wait, I want to..." ""I want to leave some ukuleles here."" "And he'd already given me one, you know," "I said, "Well, I've got thi..." "No, we may need more."" "And he opened his trunk and he... he had a lot of ukuleles in the trunk." "And I think he left four at my house and he said, "Well, you know, you never know when we might need 'em" ""because everybody doesn't carry one around."" "** Yippie yi yaaaay **" "** Yippie yi ohhhhh **" "** Ghost riders in the sky... **" "'He and Jeff had kind of pictured this group, The Traveling Wilburys, ' and George's idea was that he would hand-pick everybody in the band and it'd be the perfect little band, but I think the qualifications were" "more about who you could hang out with, you know, more so than, like, trying to find the best guy that did this or that." "Though George liked to surround himself with people that were good... at something, you know." "George rang my bell one night and came in and said," ""God, I just had dinner with Roy Orbison and Jeff," you know." ""I got this idea, I've got to do an extra side..." ""for a single that I'm bringing out." ""I need a studio, so I called Bob Dylan, and..." ""You know, Bob has a little studio out at his house" ""and so he's agreed to let me use the studio." ""I'm going to try to write something tonight" ""and we'd just do it, but I thought I'd have Roy on it, too," ""and if you want, you know, maybe you'd come too."" "And I said, "Yeah, well, I'd love to come."" "** Been beat up and battered around **" "** Been sent up and I've been shot down **" "** You're the best thing that I've ever found **" "** Handle me with care **" "** I'm so tired of being lonely **" "** I still have some love to give **" "** Won't you show me that you really care?" "**" "** Everybody's got somebody **" "** To lean on... **" "'Bob said, "Well, what's it going to be called, George?" "'"You gotta have a name for your song."'" "And there was a packing crate that said, "Handle With Care,"" "and..." "I witnessed him look over at the crate and look back and say," ""Oh, it's Handle With Care."" "So, we cut the track and then we took a break to eat and... he said, "OK, well, now we gotta write some words, guys."" "You know, "I got these songwriters here..." ""Time to write a song," you know, "let's write one," you know." "So, everyone..." "Everyone'd just throw a line out and you'd get, "No!", or, you know, sometimes a line'd come out and you'd get," ""Woo, that's good, that's a good one." "Oh, I like that."" "You know, and, so that's how we did it." "** It was in Pittsburgh **" "** Late one night **" "** I lost my hat **" "** Got into a fight. **" "OK." "That's sort of like..." "Yeah?" "Yeah, if you ignore those chords, then just sing it over, the same sort of phrasing over the next bit, we can change the chord." "Or, or if he..." "Or the other thing would be, you know, if we back it up now, don't play you that and you sing the second off the lyrics of the same chords and we'll copy it and put in, all right?" "All right." "Yeah, do that." "Yeah." "That'll be..." "Yeah." "Let's try that then..." "Yeah, that sounded good..." "You could have chosen to retire into contented middle age and get together with a few friends in the musical business and play together occasionally." "Well, that's what the real reason is!" "Really." "Contented middle age?" "Yeah, I suppose so." "** Everybody loves your **" "** Electric dumplings **" "** He loves your Clothes that stretch **" "** He loves your **" "** Fuel injection **" "** He loves your **" "** Service charge **" "** He loves your **" "** Five-speed gearbox **" "** He loves your Long endurance **" "** He loves your **" "** Quest for junk food **" "** He loves your **" "** Big refrigerator. **" "That was all right." "It was OK." "I'm not mad about, "clothes that stretch."" "It sounds very English, ** Clothes that stretch. **" "It's a bit of a joke, the idea of a comeback, you know." "Especially to me, you know." "Seems..." "Why?" "I don't know, because I don't really see myself as a fully-fledged showbiz star, anyway, you know, like that." "George, why do you play music?" "Why do you still play music?" "Just to enjoy?" "Yeah." "Now, just, well, we gotta do something, you know, with our lives." "Yeah." "That's the one thing that I know what to do, you know, how to do." "Hello, Neil, how are you?" "Hello, George." "Very well, thank you." "Nice to see you." "Very nice." "Hello!" "Oh, a vegetarian leather jacket!" "Yeah?" "Yes." "Oh, is that a filmer?" "Yeah, I've got you!" "Oh, I've seen that, that's the one I can see." "Go on, turn it off." "You know, I can see..." "No, I don't want to turn it off!" "I've seen that, Sharp, you know, I've seen the adverts for those." "And who is this?" "It's Stephan." "It's John." "Oh, is it?" "John Lennon, of the Beatles." "Oh, that's what's her name." "Pat!" "Pat!" "Who's this?" "Cilla's friend." "We don't know who that is." "Ho-ho-ho!" "Some other lady, lady of the night!" "They were horrible girls, weren't they?" "No, George, it's a very fine leg, it's a nice bit of stocking top!" "Hmm." "Just cos you've graduated in the world." "They're fine ladies!" "** Ahh Ahh **" "** Ahh Ahh. **" "'You know, they say, 'in this life you have to perfect one human relationship 'in order to really love God.'" "You practise loving God by loving another human and by giving unconditional love." "George's most important relationships really were conducted through their... their music and their lyrics." "I mean, George, er... that's, I'd Have You Anytime, the song that George and Bob wrote together, you know," ""Let me in here, I know I've been here, let me into your heart."" "He was talking directly to Bob because, you know, he'd seen Bob and then he'd seen Bob another time and he didn't seem as open and so, that was his way of saying," ""let me in here, let me into your heart."" "And he was very unabashed and... romantic about it, in a sense." "You know, I found that he was very, er... he had these love relationships with his friends." "He loved them." "It was very early in the morning when I think my wife took the call and then woke me up and told me that Roy had passed away." "And then the next call was George." "I don't even know if I should say what he said to me, you know, but I will anyway!" "When I came to the phone, he said, "Aren't you glad it's not you?"" "I said, "Yeah, yeah, I am," you know." "Just, you know, he said, "He'll be OK." ""He'll be OK." ""He's still around, so just listen, he's still around,"" "and then, that was all he had to say about it, you know." "We say farewell to the end of this reel." "You know, you want to just write it so that, you know," "I mean, you don't want to milk it into some huge big thing, you know." "No, of course." "I mean, I prefer you were to be honest about it." "No." "No, that's fine." "You know, there's nothing worse than, you know...bullshit." "You know what I mean?" "Yeah, I agree, I agree." "And then all it does is it means everybody else starts phoning up and then they want their version of it." "I know." "I'm sorry, I mean, we're all going to die one day, but I'm not going to die for you quite yet." "We wouldn't want that." "Well...you never know." "I think it makes a good story, doesn't it?" "W-what..." "When it was first..." "When he was first diagnosed with cancer, he told me, and in a way as, you know, his main thing was not to upset me." "I mean, there is a man who's, who was not well, who's worrying about me and all the people around him." "So, that was the measure of the man." "And then, of course, it was with great joy that, that he actually got better initially and so things were back on track and we all put it to the back of our minds that this was gone now." "I woke up, I just heard smashing of glass." "I jumped up and woke up George." "It was about, it must've been about 4.30 in the morning... and I said, "Somebody's smashed a window,"" "and he said, "How do you know?" I said, "I heard it!"" "So he jumped up and I ran to the door and I locked the door." "And he said, "Why are you locking the door?"" "I said, "Why?" "!" "Because I'm afraid." "That's why I'm locking the door."" "He said, "No, no, no, I'm going out there."" "And so he ran downstairs, um... ..which he really didn't have to do, but he felt he had to do cos my mother was upstairs, and he didn't want..." "You know, he didn't know if she was OK." "We had a statue of Saint Michael." "And the wing from the statue of Saint Michael... it was made of stone - had been thrown through the window." "And George was on one side and I was on the other and we looked down and this maniac just ran in like Beelzebub..." "..with a stick from Saint Michael in one hand... you know, he slays the dragon with his spear." "He had that in one hand and I didn't see what he had in the other." "Anyway, George started chanting really loud at him, and this guy was saying, "Get down here, get down here."" ""What do you want?"" "He said, "You know what I want," it was just horrible." "It was just like this voice from the bowels of hell." "And, uh...and then he just ran up, tore up the stairs." "He was in a florid psychotic state." "And he was tall and young." "And then they'd come closer to where the room was." "And this man was on top of George, um... trying to kill him, just laying on him, in just, I think, the worst way." "To have some, you know, physical contact with some horrible person." "Anyway, I just ran back in the room and, uh..." "I don't know, something just took over, and I grabbed a poker." "My dad was a big baseball fan and he used to always say, "Follow through."" "That's all I could think of was, "Don't throw like a girl."" ""Follow through."" "I mean, it got worse, cos I hit the guy several times, you know," "I could see the blood spreading down his blond hair." "And then, he got up." "You know, he got up and he chased me and had me around the neck." "And then George got up and jumped on his back." "And, poor George, he said, "You know, God," ""just when he got off of me, I was thinking 'Oh, good, '" ""then I had to get up and fight him again."" "And he'd already been stabbed." "But we all fell into a big pile, and I managed to get out from underneath, and George pinned him down." "And George said to me, "I've got the knife!"" "And I thought, "What knife?" "!"" "I didn't know, I thought he was just kidding." "I thought he was just trying to fake the guy out." "It's like, I hadn't seen that." "Afterwards, we were..." "We were, um, taken to a good old National Health hospital with these rickety wheelchairs at four in the morning and it was like freezing, it was so cold, I was just shaking," "I didn't realise I was in shock." "But, you know, they were pushing us down and we were looking at each other and they've got us in these beds and they put the curtain around us and he had a collapsed lung, he had things in and" "out the other side and outside of his leg..." "You know, I had my head open and, you know..." "But just looking into each other's eyes, our eyes must have been like..." "I said, "What the hell was that?"" "He said, "I don't know, it's like, I never tried to kill anybody before,"" "and I said, "No, neither did I."" "It's like this..." "you know, phew." "But what..." "You know, honestly, we talked about it a lot, and the next day George said, "You know, I was lying there" ""and I was thinking, I can't believe it," ""after everything's that's happened to me," ""I'm going to be murdered, I'm being murdered in my own home." ""And since I'm being murdered and I'm going to die," ""I better start letting go of this life," ""and I better start doing what I've been practising my whole life" ""so that I can leave my body the way I want to."" "He was so defiant, and so determined." "Nothing was going to stop him from leaving his body and leaping as high as he could go." "It was the millennium, and we were staying in Santa Barbara with some friends, and then this awful news came through." "I said to Tania, "We have to go,"" "and so I called up and said, "Should we come?"" "And he said, "Where are you?"" "OK, so, we got on a plane and came immediately, and, um...it was very..." "You know, it was very powerful." "I mean, they would walk us round where the various stages of the attack took place." "When they picked him up, they put him on this stretcher and they're carrying him downstairs, and there were two people who had just started work that weekend." "And he's being carried out, stabbed, he'd eight stab wounds, and he looks over and he says," ""So what do you think of the job so far?"" "Which is a great kind of...very George." "So Dhani and Livy and George... came up to this house... and he just was so distraught." "I've never, ever had a time when there's so many tears have been shed... just total grief - of no death." "Just grief of what a horrible thing somebody could do to another person, without actually killing them." "He was very, very badly attacked, and... by the time he died, he didn't even have a single scar on him." "I mean, he was like a yogi." "He moved on from that, physically and mentally, and didn't let it affect him." "But it definitely took years off his life, you know." "If you're trying to fight cancer and then you're trying to stay alive for something like that, you know, it's got to take it out of you, you know?" "We went to Fiji to be," ""Take us to the island where there isn't anybody," ""and then take us in a boat and drop us off at the cove" ""where there isn't anyone on the beach, where there isn't anyone."" "And then he'd disappear." "It's like, he's only with me, and then he would go off on his own." "But he'd come out, like, dressed in banana leaves, or something, you know, with, like, heliconias and things." "He liked to..." "for him, I think that was just like building a fort out of bracken." "I had an experience which, um... ..speeds up the whole idea of, um..." "You know, if you have something happen to you physically, then, you know, people go in hospital, or have, you know, something wrong with them and, um, you know, have a shock or something like that," "and then you think, "Wow, yeah, I could be dying now."" "Now, if I was dying now, what would I think?" "What would I miss?" "If I had to leave my body, you know, in an hour's time, what is it that I would miss?" "And I think, "Well, I've got a son who needs a father," ""So I have to stick around for him." "as long as I can." ""But, um..." ""other than that, I can't think of much reason to be here."" "We had this whole 30 years together, and then at the end you're able to just decant that time." "We spent that summer together and we had so much fun." "It's amazing, you know, at the end of your life, here's the conversation..." ""I hope I wasn't a bad husband."" ""Well, I hope I was an OK wife." ""How did we do?" "How did we do?"" "And then you think, "I'm so glad." ""I am so glad that we just kept walking this path together."" "And all those other things that came and went we just swatted away and batted away in between us, you know?"" "He had a long battle with his cancer." "He's such a brave lad." "What do you miss the most about George?" "Uh, his humour, his friendship... his, um, love." "I've lost racing drivers, phew, so many of my friends have been killed." "I've been with them when they've died." "I've had an enormous exposure to emotional experiences." "And yet, I don't think there's much else that's ever given me such a long-lasting... bereavement as George's loss." "And I can't say that I was one of George's very best friends, cos a lot more people spent a lot more time with him than I did." "But I, at least, felt such a closeness to him that it still affects me to this day." "I could give you a dozen names, and I'll bet you they would say the same as I'm saying." "It wasn't a skill." "It was just an aura which provided us with a feel-good factor that we didn't get from very many people in our lives." "The last weeks of George's life, he was in Switzerland, and I went to see him, and he was very ill." "And, you know, he could only lay down." "And while he was being ill and I'd come to see him," "I was going to Boston, cos my daughter had a brain tumour." "And I said, "Well, you know, I've got to go," ""I've got to go to Boston," and he goes..." "..it's the last words I heard him say, actually..." "And he said, "Do you want me to come with you?"" "Oh, God." "So, you know, that's the incredible side of George." "God, it's like Barbara fucking Walters here, isn't it?" "There was a profound experience that happened when he left his body." "It was visible." "Let's just say, you wouldn't need to light the room... ..if you were trying to film it." "You know, he, um..." "He just..." "He just lit the room." "** Namah Parvati **" "** Pataye Hare Hare Mahadev **" "** Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare **" "** Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare **" "** Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva **" "** Hare Hare Hare Hare Mahadeva **" "** Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva **" "** Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva **" "** Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva **" ""Long, Long, Long"" "** It's been a long, long, long time **" "** How could I ever have lost you **" "** When I loved you?" "**" "** It took a long, long, long time **" "** Now I'm so happy I found you **" "** How I want you **" "** How I love you **" "** You know that I need you **" "** Oh, I love you... **"