“When I first heard Indian music, I just couldn’t really believe that it was so great, and the more I heard of it, the more I liked it. It just got bigger and bigger, like a snowball."
~ George Harrison
A Never-Before-Seen Look at The Beatles' Visit to India!
By Harvey Kubernik Copyright 2022
In 1968, the world’s most popular rock & roll band, the Beatles, had achieved mass fame and fortune yet were searching for deeper meaning in their lives. Under the spiritual guidance of Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Beatles took a trip to Rishikesh, India to study Transcendental Meditation® and set out on a path of deep enlightenment that would change the world.
The award-winning feature documentary, The Beatles And India (Silva Screen Productions, Renoir Pictures), examines how Indian music and culture shaped the music of John, Paul, George and Ringo and in turn, explores how the Beatles served as ambassadors of this pioneering World music sound and cultural movement. The release of a Blu-ray and DVD of The Beatles And India from MVD Entertainment Group is scheduled for June 21st.
Drawing together an expansive archive of footage including contemporaneous locale shooting in India, recordings, photographs, and compelling first-hand interviews, The Beatles And India exhaustively documents this East-meets-West touchstone in pop culture history.
Inspired by Ajoy Bose’s book Across The Universe - The Beatles In India, the documentary was produced by British Indian music entrepreneur Reynold D’Silva and directed by Bose (his directorial debut) and cultural researcher Pete Compton. The Beatles And India has been awarded Best Film Audience Choice and Best Music at the 2021 UK Asian Film Festival Tongues On Fire. The Beatles And India has also been nominated for Best Documentary at the 2022 New York Indian Film Festival, and will be the closing film for the festival.
The Beatles were first introduced to Indian music while filming their 1965 film, Help!, which featured Indian musicians in a restaurant scene. George Harrison would become a lifelong impassioned devotee of Indian music. He would soon buy his first sitar, befriend and study under sitar master Ravi Shankar and employ the instrument to revolutionary effect linking the worlds of pop music with Indian music on The Beatles song, “Norwegian Wood,” which appears on their Rubber Soul album. That song marked the group's, and particularly Harrison’s, full-on immersion into Indian music, resulting in a raga rock sound heard on The Beatles songs, “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Love You To” (Revolver), “Within You Without You” (Sgt. Pepper), and “The Inner Light" (B-side to the “Lady Madonna” single).
In early July 1966, while returning from shows in the Philippines, the Beatles made a quick stopover in New Delhi, India, marking their first trip to the country. Less than two years later, in February 1968, the group would return for an extended sojourn at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in Rishikesh, India where they would take a training course in Transcendental Meditation®. Their search for spiritual enlightenment would both shape their thinking and values and indelibly color the sounds of their expanding musical palette.
The Beatles And India is a unique and revealing audio-visual experience that spotlights the legacy of that historic visit, chronicling the Beatles’ crucial role as avatars of a musical movement inspiring newfound societal and cultural awareness, weaving the fabric of pop and Indian music into a unified force of positivity and spiritual exploration.
The LP’s of Ravi Shankar in the mid and late sixties were occasionally heard on the FM rock radio play lists on KPPC, KPFK, KMET and on KBCA-FM the jazz channel. Ravi always had a devoted following in the Southern California area before the Byrds and the Beatles picked up on his work. Musician Chris Darrow of the Kaleidoscope remembers Ravi playing college venues around town, including The Ash Grove club in the last part of the 1950’s. The Lakshami Indian restaurant near Irving and Melrose near Hollywood presented his debut L.A. recital.
It was in 1966 that Ravi Shankar first met George Harrison. Harrison had first heard the sitar on the set of the Beatles’ movie Help! In September 1966, Harrison traveled to Bombay and became one of Shankar’s students.
In 1997 I interviewed George Harrison and Ravi Shankar. Portions were published in HITS magazine.
George Harrison discussed meeting Shankar at a dinner party for the North London Asian Music Circle all those years ago.
“His music was the reason I wanted to meet him. I liked it immediately, it intrigued me. I don’t know why I was so into it -- I heard it, I liked it, and I had a gut feeling that I would meet him. Eventually a man from the Asian Music Circle in London arranged a meeting between Ravi and myself. Our meeting has made all the difference in my life.”
Harrison mentioned his own sitar playing.
“I’m not a very good one, I’m afraid. The sitar is an instrument I’ve loved for a long time. For three or four years I practiced on it every day. But it’s a very difficult instrument, and one that takes a toll on you physically. It even takes a year to just learn how to properly hold it. But I enjoyed playing it, even the punishing side of it, because it disciplined me so much, which was something I hadn’t really experienced to a great extent before.”
George went on to describe his earliest attempt at playing the sitar with the Beatles.
“Very rudimentary. I didn’t know how to tune it properly, and it was a very cheap sitar to begin with. So “Norwegian Wood” was very much an early experiment. By the time we recorded “Love You To” I had made some strides.”
Harrison put his sitar explorations with the Beatles in perspective.
“That was the environment in the band, everybody was very open to bringing in new ideas. We were listening to all sorts of things, Stockhausen, avante-garde music, whatever, and most of it made its way onto our records.”
In the seventies when I was a music reporter for Melody Maker, Harrison personally arranged for me to attend a Shankar performance and sound check at The Roxy Theater in West Hollywood when he was proudly showcasing his Dark Horse Records/A&M label artist, Ravi Shankar.
During 1997 Ravi Shankar had released a new album, Chants of India via Angel Records, produced by his longtime friend and musical collaborator George Harrison. Chants of India is based on prayers and ancient chants of Shankar’s native India. The session musicians include Harrison, tabla player Bikram Ghosh and Shankar’s 15 year-old daughter, Anoushka, who helped assist and conduct and who was gaining her own reputation as a dazzling sitar player in the shows she shared with her father.
In 1996, Angel Records issued the acclaimed 4-CD retrospective of Shankar’s career, Ravi: In Celebration. This compilation was produced by George Harrison and Alan Kozlowski in association with Ravi Shankar, and according to Harrison, “The idea behind this four-disc set is to show the different aspects of Ravi’s music.”
The discs were arranged into Classical Sitar Music, Orchestral Indian/Ensembles, East/West Collaborations and Vocals & Experimental.
In my interview, Harrison explained how he first became involved with Chants of India.
“Steve Murphy, the president of Angel Records, had heard some songs that were similar to material on In Celebration, a Ravi retrospective that I had helped assemble last year. He suggested we go in to the studio to record more. This music, which is based on ancient Vedic chanting, I very much enjoy. And, of course, it gives me an opportunity to work with Ravi, so it made perfect sense.”
Harrison’s role on the record went beyond simply producing.
“I organized the recording of the album and during the recording I sang and played on a couple of songs. Bass guitar, acoustic guitar, and a few other things -- vibraphone, glockenspiel, autoharp. The main thing was organizing -- finding the right musicians, busing everybody out to my studio, and making certain everyone was properly fed. Finding the right engineer, John Etchells, was also key.”
When I asked why now is the right time to release Chants of India to the world, Harrison was eager to explain his motivation,
“In a way it represents the accumulation of our ideas and experiences throughout our 30-year relationship. But to put it into a slightly more commercial aspect, the record label asked us to do this and that would never have happened 15 years ago. Because of the fact of multiculturalism has become more accepted, and more people are interested in what this music offers, this project has become more commercially viable. And this music is very close to me, this is something I very much wanted to do.
“I actively read the Vedic scriptures and I’m happy to spread the word about what this project is all about. People also need an alternative to all the clatter in their lives, and this music provides that. Whether it’s Benedictine Monks chanting or ancient Vedic chants, people are searching for something to cut through all the clatter and ease stress.”
In 1997 I was originally scheduled to interview Ravi Shankar over the telephone for HITS magazine, and then at the last minute, Ravi requested, after talking to “a special friend,” that I come down to his California home in Encinitas for “a proper visit.”
Ravi Shankar was 77 years old at the time. He was residing in the beach community of Encinitas, near San Diego, where he lived with his second wife Sukanya, and his daughter and protégé Anoushka, who had been performing in concert alongside her father for the past few years.
In our 1997 conversation, Ravi was extremely eager to discuss his Chants of India CD, the 1996 Ravi: In Celebration box set, his friendship with George Harrison, Richard Bock of World Pacific Records, the Monterey International Pop Festival, Woodstock, the Concert For Bangla Desh, and his recording collaborations with jazz musicians and meetings and talks with John Coltrane.
Harvey Kubernik: In the late fifties and sixties you were recording a few blocks from my parents’ house in Los Angeles at the legendary World Pacific Studios. I rediscovered the work you did with jazz musicians: Bud Shank, John Handy, and I know you composed the piece, “Rich a la Rakha” for Buddy Rich and your own tabla accompanist, Alla Rakha. And you gave lessons in Indian music to Don Ellis and John Coltrane.
Ravi Shankar: I clicked with jazz musicians, always. From my childhood really, jazz reacted so strongly in me, because of the rhythms and beats and the freedom to improvise, which we also have. The whole basis is different because we improvise on the ragas and have very strict rules, whereas jazz takes chords, the harmony of Western classical music, and takes a theme and then they go free, whatever they want. But they don’t observe the raga or the complicated rhythmic cycles.
Q: I know John Coltrane was going to formally study with you before he died. He has a son, Ravi Coltrane.
A: He was coming to learn from me. I told him, “John, why do I find so much turmoil and disturbance in your music?” He laughed and said, “That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out myself and you can help me.”
We had three meetings and he came and sat twice, a very long one and a very short one in a New York hotel where I used to stay. And he wrote down many ragas, and I taught him how we improvise and he was asking me, “How do you bring the spiritual quality in your music? How do you do that?”
Afterwards, he started using more drones, if you remember. I heard the turmoil in his music. He was like a child. It was a wonderful revelation for me to see this man. Dick Bock always tried to play me as much Coltrane as possible, in the car, or a few records. There I was hearing certain melody qualities that were so wonderful.
Q: The June 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. What are some of your memories of the event?
A: Dick Bock, of World Pacific Records, called Lou Adler. I was recording for World Pacific. Some of my recordings with jazz musicians are on that label. Dick was a wonderful person. Anyway, Monterey to me was like a revelation. Completely new. I had met George before that and that started the whole big hullaballoo, as you know. And, I saw the whole folk movement that started in England. That’s when I started seeing all the strange dress and the smell of patchouli oil, the hash and LSD. To me, it was a new world. Anyway, I had been performing in the United States since 1956. Carnegie Hall.
My first fans were jazz buffs and jazz musicians and average American people. So, a decade later, I arrive in Monterey and see butterflies and colors and flowers with peace and love. It was fantastic. I was impressed, but everyone was stoned. But that was all right and I was meeting all these beautiful people. Fine. It was one day before my concert and I went to hear the whole thing. That to me was the real experience. One night, I really heard Otis Redding. He was fantastic. One of the best, I remember. I really like The Mamas and The Papas. Lyrical, harmony and good choruses and harpsichord. Then, you know came the hard rock. The Jefferson Airplane. The Grateful Dead. To me it was difficult in a very loud, hurtful in-my-ear way. And Janis Joplin. I had heard of her, but there was something so gutsy about her. Like some of those fantastic jazz ladies like Billie Holliday. That sort of feeling, so I was very impressed by her. Then, some others and what really disturbed me was the hard rock. The worst was to come.
I had heard so much about Jimi Hendrix. Everyone was talking about him. When he started playing...I was amazed...the dexterity in his guitar playing. But after two, three items, he started his antics. Making love to the guitar, I felt that was quite enough. Then, all of a sudden he puts petrol on his guitar and burns it. That was the leaving point. Sacrilegious. I knew it was a gimmick. Then, the Who followed, started kicking the drums and breaking their instruments. I was very hurt and ran away from there along with the others who play with me. My feelings were hurt deeply, as well as my respect for music and the instruments. We ran away from the festival.
I said at the time, “Please. There is a contract and whatever you want to fine me, I won’t play. I definitely will not play in-between any of these items tomorrow.” So, there were talks and meetings between Dick Bock and the festival people. The next day, in the afternoon, we set up a special section between 1:00-3:00 p.m. where there would be no one in front of me and after me.
It was cloudy, cool, it had rained a little and that’s when I played and it was like magic. Jimi Hendrix was sitting there. (Jerry) Garcia was there. I remember a few names. All of them were there and you can see on the film what magic it had. I was so impressed and it is one of my memorable performances. I didn’t plan for this. I was grateful to God that I was sitting in the atmosphere without anyone disturbing me. It drizzled for a few minutes and then it stopped. So, it was was cloudy and there were flowers from Hawaii and you know, what atmosphere! After my set, it was crazy. I have never felt such a commotion of this sort. I was so pure, in spite of the fact that there were many people who were also strong. But it didn’t matter, because the whole atmosphere was so clean and beautiful and I could give my best. That’s all I can say.
Q: You played at Woodstock and not in the Woodstock movie, but a live album At the Woodstock Festival was released in 1970 on World Pacific Records.
A: I have always said that if Monterey was the beginning of this beautiful peace and love, flowers and all that, then Woodstock was the end of it. Because it was so big. Half a million people. Rain so much that there was mud all over. You couldn’t see the people or look into their faces. Such a distance and such a vast multitude. And it looked like a big parking place. We came by helicopter and landed behind the stage and it was raining. It was a mess. But my commitment was so strong, because I couldn’t get out of it, so I did my best. And somehow, in that atmosphere, I did my best, but I couldn’t feel anything.
Q: Was playing outdoors or at festivals a stressful situation for you and the instruments? I know after Woodstock you stopped doing pop festivals.
A: For technical reasons, our instruments are so sensitive and delicate and weather affects pitch and completely ruins the sound and it becomes muffled. Out of control, out of tune. Even indoors, we have to be very careful not to have very strong lights. Heat, humidity affects the instruments. Now, all the halls have air conditioning. And we never have big concerts in summer or in the rainy season. The main concerts are all in the winter season, three or four months when it’s ideal weather, dry and cool. I don’t like playing outside very much, but there have been some wonderful outdoor places and performances like Tanglewood, because the weather was quite good and the great audience, and a few other places where the weather was just right.
Q: Can we discuss the 1971 The Concert for Bangla Desh?
A: I told George and George wanted to help me. The film Raga was ready and it needed some finishing in which George helped. It was released later, I believe, in 1972.
At the time I lived in Los Angeles and had a house on Highland Ave. A beautiful Spanish villa and at that time, George was in town, and at that time I was planning to do a benefit concert for Bangla Desh, because I was very hurt that this whole thing was going on. To help this refugee problem, I wanted to raise some money,” explained Ravi.
Everybody, every Indian, was thinking about doing that. And then, when I thought about it, I knew I could do more than any other Indian musician. Still, how much can you send? $20,000, $25,000, at the most?
At this time of turmoil I was having, George was there,” Shankar disclosed. “He came to meet me and I was sitting. He saw me.
From 1966, whenever he came to town, we would meet. At that time, he was staying in L.A. for a couple of weeks. I told him what I was planning. You know, it’s like a drop in the ocean. At the same time, I never wanted to take advantage of him. I did not want to say, ‘Would you help me?’ But, somehow, it came very naturally. He was so sympathetic. ‘Well...let’s do something.’ And you know, that made me feel so happy. What he did, he immediately started phoning and booking things up.
His position naturally makes it quicker. He phoned and got Madison Square Garden in New York. Later he contacted Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston, and a few of his friends. Somehow, it was done like that. Within three weeks or so, we gave a performance and it was sold out. So, they had to schedule a matinee.
As you know, the first half was me. I called my guru’s son Ali Akbar Khan who plays the sarod. Alla Rakha, now lives in Bombay, and he’s running a school for himself. We were the first part. I composed the first lines for the items played as we always do and we improvised. And then intermission,” remembered Ravi.
There was no clapping when we were tuning, which is seen in the film and the people were so well-behaved, a lot of matches. It went beautifully. It was a young audience, especially because I had this existing audience already, who were mature listeners and who had come to Carnegie Hall. This audience was the same type of audience as Monterey, but they were very attentive and there was no problem at all. After our segment, I went to see the second half. Their program was very complimentary, because they chose the numbers that were very soulful in the sense that they weren’t hard rock. ‘My Sweet Lord’ and ‘That’s The Way God Planned It.’ Bob Dylan had his harmonica and did ballads. George sang ‘Here Comes The Sun,’ and the song he composed ‘Bangla Desh.’ There was harmony and it wasn’t so different. It went off beautifully.”
Jim Keltner and Ringo Starr were the drummers on The Concert for Bangladesh.
“I first heard Ravi Shankar at age 19,” reminisced Keltner in a 2020 phone interview. “We used to sit around and listen to Ravi and Stravinsky in the days when we were trying to expand our consciousness. When Ralph J. Gleason in The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about Miles Davis he’d sometimes mention Ravi. I became well aware of him.
“And, then, years later to have actually recorded with him when George asked me to be part of his album Shankar Family & Friends. And to be on tour with George and watch Ravi in 1974 and the most amazing musicians on the planet every night was a thrill beyond. Every night on the plane I would sit next to Alla Rakha while he was having a Scotch. He didn’t speak English at all and he would sing the tabla rhythms to me,” Jim marveled.
“Over the decades I got to see George and Ravi a lot together. It was a father and son relationship in a way. He brought Ravi to the rest of the world in a very big way. One of my favorite things was being with George in the audience watching Ravi play.
I talked to Jim one evening over dinner at his home in Los Angeles for a 2002 Goldmine Magazine interview.
“George was a very important teacher to me at that time. Georgie. My friend and my beautiful and wonderful brother. And I read these things about him being kind of anti-celebrity and all that. I guess he had enough of that with the Beatles, ya know, so that the Bangladesh event seems like a warm and wonderful cause that everyone turned out for.
“The Concert for Bangladesh concerts were in August, and the previous March, I did a couple of songs with Leon, Carl Radle, and Jesse Ed Davis for Bob Dylan, ‘Watching The River Flow’ and ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece.’
“George called and said, ‘Let’s do a single.’ So we went in to Wally Heider’s studio 4 on Cahuenga in Hollywood and did ‘Bangla Desh’ with George and Phil Spector. Leon played and I think he helped arrange the song. The birth of the concert sort of started with this single. I loved the song.”
For the Bangla Desh live date, Keltner is double drumming with Ringo Starr, who was asked by George to play and accepted on the condition ‘but only if Keltner will do it with me.’
“Well, I think Ringo was asked by George, and Ringo said yes,’ because Ringo was a little unsure, about playing live with a big band. He hadn’t played live in a while, either. So, when they asked me, I said ‘of course, but I want to stay out of his way.’
“I didn’t want to destroy anything of that great feel or his sound. When we actually sat down to play, I asked them to set me up in such a way that I could see his hi hat hand. And after we played together at the sound check I had to decide on a few things. And one of the first decisions I made was to not play the hi-hat much. So, I played the hi-hat like I had seen Levon (Helm) of The Band do, which was to pull the hand off the hi-hat for the two and four, so that it didn’t come down with the backbeat at the same time. And that helped me stay out of Ringo’s way.
“Ringo was a little on edge,” volunteered Jim. “He didn’t fancy playing alone and was kind of unsure about his playing, which is amazing if you think about it. Ringo is one of rock’s all-time great drummers. All you have to do is listen to the Beatles records, of course, especially, the Live at the BBC. Rock and roll drumming doesn’t get any better than that. Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, Gary Chester, Fred Below, and David ‘Panama’ Francis, great early rock and R&B drummers, and Ringo fit right in there with those guys. Listen to the BBC tapes and you’ll hear what I’m saying.
“Playing on Bangladesh was a really big deal for me. I made sure to stay completely out of Ringo’s way and just played the bare minimum.
“For Bangladesh there was only one rehearsal,” recollected Jim. “The rehearsal was in a basement of a hotel, or near the hotel. George was beside himself trying to put together a set list and trying to find out if Eric (Clapton) was going to be able to make it, Where Bob (Dylan) was gonna make it. Plus, George was nervous because he hadn’t played live for a long time. He was absolutely focused and fantastic as a leader. Of course he had Leon in the band. And Leon helped with the arranging and all. I remember that everything seemed to be fine at the sound check and that I didn’t have too many concerns. When we started playing with the audience in the room it really did come alive.
“I remember loving the sound of Madison Square Garden. I heard Phil’s voice over the speakers, but never really saw him at the actual show, except during sound check. He was in the Record Plant (recording) truck.
“Phil had his hands full and did a remarkable job if you really think about it. Horns, multiple singers, double drums, lots of guitars. That was his forte, so he wasn’t intimidated by two drummers and 14 background singers. On Bangla Desh, George was very lucky to have had Phil on that set,” underscored Jim.
In my 2004 book This Is Rebel Music, Keltner revealed, “When George (Harrison) introduced Bob I stood backstage, and Dylan walked on. Jean jacket, kind of quiet the way Bob always is. Bob walked by me on his way to the stage. I had already recorded with him a couple of months earlier and I sort of knew him.
“He walks out there on the stage and puts the harp up to his mouth and starts singing and playing and chills up and down my arms. His voice and the command, it was awesome. And Leon decides to go up with his bass for ‘Just Like a Woman,’ and play with him. It was a tremendous moment. It was real dark on stage with a little light for them. Dylan was incredible. Standing in the back in the dark, it was great to see Leon have the guts to get up there with the bass and perform with him on ‘Just Like a Woman.’
“George seemed very powerful that night. And the songs: ‘My Sweet Lord,’ ‘Awaiting On You All,’ ‘Beware Of Darkness,’ ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps,’ Wah-Wah,’ and ‘Bangla Desh.’ Some great stuff. And very appropriate for the suffering going on over there, and don’t forget Billy Preston with ‘That’s The Way God Planned It.’ I loved being a part of that with George.
“Bangladesh was a great little reunion. They loved playing with Ringo and me. Klaus Voorman was the principal bass player on Bangladesh. Phil loved the way Klaus played. He had a great way of stretching the time. Klaus is one of the greatest bass players I’ve ever played with.
“I was right in the back watching Ravi Shankar’s set. The whole thing and being amazed and just how powerful it was. I had been listening to Ravi and Alla Rahka for years and here I was seeing them up so close I could reach out and touch them. Alla Rakha and Ravi Shankar were telepathic. They played together for so many years it was awesome to watch it. Ravi was at his peak in terms of technical proficiency. Alla Rakha was as well. It was dazzling. It is something that will always be with me.
“Between shows the hotel had an incredible hospitality room set up with delicious Indian food.”
It was in Westwood, California, in the campus of UCLA in 1964–65 that keyboardist Manzarek first met writer James Douglas Morrison, a transfer student from Florida State University. At the UCLA Film School, Ray earned a master’s degree in cinematography and Jim a B.S. degree in the theater arts department of the College of Fine Arts. While performing with Ray and the Ravens in the summer of 1965, Manzarek saw Morrison again at Venice Beach, and they discussed forming a band together.
In 1965 Ray was introduced to Richard Bock, owner of the monumental World Pacific Records. The label was home to Chet Baker, Les McCann, Barney Kessel, Shelley Manne, Shorty Rogers, Jim Hall, Don Ellis, Joe Pass, Gerry Mulligan, Russ Freeman, Art Pepper and Ravi Shankar. Bock introduced the practice of Transcendental Meditation to Manzarek, gave him two LPs by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and touted Shankar’s catalogue on his label.
Rick and the Ravens cut a few singles for World Pacific’s Aura Records, the rock subdivision. They also recorded a demonstration acetate of material that the band members eventually utilized as a calling card to record labels. “Ravi Shankar. The genius. The master. He opened the door to the East. The vibrations, the inner spirit of music,” Ray stressed to me in a 1997 interview.
Ravi Shankar and the Transcendental Meditation Center were responsible for the formation of the Doors. It was during 1965, when John Densmore and Robby Krieger met Ray Manzarek at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation Center on Third Street in L.A.
“Robby and I went because LSD was legal and we were quite interested in our nervous systems, and knew we had to do this TM thing slowly,” Densmore explained to me in a 2007 interview.
“We go over there and I meet this little guy, Maharishi, and the ‘Love Vibe’ is very palpable. This is 30 people in a room. Then, a year or two later, I read that the Beatles are onto TM and our little secret is being spread worldwide. Great.
“Frankly, TM is the reason the Doors are together. TM glued together Ray, Robby, Jim and I.
“Jim didn’t meditate, Robby and I went and Ray was there. That’s where we met. One time Jim came and he wanted to look into Maharishi’s eyes…and Jim later said, ‘Well, he’s got something. I’m not gonna meditate but he’s got something.’ This was the first class in the country. We were two years ahead of the Beatles, thank you (laughs).
“The whole Eastern Indian thing, Ravi Shankar, via George Harrison and the Beatles saturated everything with paisley bedspreads sound wise. ‘The End’ was a raga tune.
“In spring 1967, Robby and I went to Ravi Shankar’s Kinnara School of Indian Music [on Robertson Blvd] in Los Angeles. When you’re students at the Kinnara School of Music, you get to sit on stage with the master at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
“Later Robby and I go see Ravi play at the Hollywood Bowl, and George is on stage. Ravi didn’t teach at the school, but he’d drop in and give a little lecture on Sublimating Your Sexual Drive Into Your Instrument.
“Ray had a previous relationship with World Pacific Records in 1965 when he was on the label with Rick and the Ravens and recorded for Dick Bock who owned the label, and released Ravi Shankar albums in the U.S. We got a couple hours of free studio time at World Pacific recording studios, and that’s when we got to make a demo in 1965,” John recalled.
“On the way into the World Pacific studio Ravi Shankar is leaving with Alla Rakha, my idol, who I didn’t know was going to be my idol yet, was on the way out with these little tabla drums, which I soon find out by studying at the Kinnara School, are the most sophisticated drums in the world. I’m in awe of them. It’s the East! And, I’m just a surfer. Not literally, but from West L.A.
“The very first TM class was with Clint Eastwood and Paul Horn the year before me. Paul later was in India with the Beatles. Harrison was doing it in England. Later, George Harrison came to one of our recording sessions for The Soft Parade.
“You hear the Indian thing in techno stuff now. That came in and it was deep and it’s still around. We need the East.
“Let me tell you, at our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, (Bruce) Springsteen came up to me and said, ‘I like your drumming. It’s so quiet and then you drop a bomb.’ Thank you, Boss. So maybe, 1966, 1967, I was noticing in the traditional Indian ragas you gotta wait for your climax. It’s not a quickie, you know. So that was the influence.”
“Before it was transcendental meditation it was called meditation,” Robby Krieger specified to me in a 2007 interview.
“My friend Keith Wallace had a brother, Pete, who actually went to India, in like, 1959. He went to find a guru in India and checked out all these guys and ended up with Maharishi over there and talked him into coming to California. And so, the first meeting we had was at the house of Peter’s parents in Pacific Palisades. And there were maybe ten people. I still do it when I need it,” Krieger underscored.
“I first heard of Ravi Shankar the first time the Doors played in Berkeley at a theater. And that was 1966, probably. And John and I met these Indian guys. We were kind of into the Indian thing, and they suggested we check out this record by Ravi Shankar. I had never heard of him. It was a white album on the World Pacific label called Ravi Shankar In London. I just fell in love with it. I would go to sleep every night playing it and getting it into my brain. It really did affect my guitar playing quite a bit. There was an influence of Ravi on ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘The End.’
“John and I went to the Kinnara School of Music when it opened. Harihar Rao was the instructor. I took sitar lessons and John took tabla. I bought a sitar in New York at a little Indian store where you could get them. I had seen Ravi play many times, including up in San Francisco. And he was always amazing. The Hollywood Bowl concert was really good. I remember that. I loved seeing him in the concert films of Monterey Pop and The Concert for Bangla Desh.
“The one thing I do remember when Ravi came to the school and talked to us. We asked, ‘What is the secret? What do you have to do to really be good?’ And he replied, ‘You have to give up sex…’
“Last century I saw Ravi at a recording studio with Bruce Botnick in Santa Monica. I got to talk to him a little bit and told him about the Doors and ‘The End.’”
“I was really happy when Ravi Shankar started getting acceptance in the West, partly because of George Harrison going to India,” philosopher and author Ram Dass acknowledged to me in a 1997 interview, “and I had heard of Ravi in the very early 60’s when I was in India. I played the tanbora. I loved the Beatles’ music. I took acid to Sgt. Pepper.
“I loved the Doors. Some Eastern influences in their music. Jim Morrison was a poet. I liked the level of reality he played with. I like people pushing the edge and getting out of the linearity. I love that. And not in a kind of clever, studied way, but in an ecstatic experiential way. That’s what I love better. That’s what he tried to do.
“I was delighted of the East-West merger. I was so much a part of bringing Eastern stuff to the West that it all seemed obvious to me when it eventually started happening here, so I don’t think I was blown away by the time it happened, I had already done it in my own being. It wasn’t like ‘Someone is doing this!’ It was great to see someone doing it with such style and class.”
The Byrds had been exposed to Shankar’s LP’s and were former occupants of the landmark World Pacific studio where their sound was developed with record producer/co-manager Jim Dickson during 1964.
“Best record I heard in 1967 might have been John Coltrane’s Africa Brass, Byrds’ co-founder Roger McGuinn revealed to me in a 2007 interview.
“We were on the road, and I had bought a Phillips Cassette Recorder in London, and it was such a new invention at the time there were no pre-recorded cassettes on the market. But I had a couple of blanks that I picked up. And we stopped somewhere in the mid-west, [David] Crosby knew somebody there, so we went over to this guy’s house, and he had the latest Ravi Shankar and Africa Brass. And, so, I guess this is music piracy, but I dubbed Africa Brass on one side of the cassette and Ravi Shankar on the other. And we strapped the cassette player to a Fender amp on the bus and we just kept turning the cassette over and over and listened to that thing for a month on the road.
“We loved that music, which influenced ‘Eight Miles High’ later. The break on ‘Eight Miles High’ was a deliberate attempt to emulate Coltrane, like sort of a tribute to him, if you will. We had heard Ravi Shankar earlier.”
“I went to the Monterey International Pop Festival,” emphasized actress/singer Peggy Lipton. “It reached its climax for me when we took something in the early afternoon and there was a light drizzle and we went to hear Ravi Shankar. I remember I left my body. That was it for me. It was beautiful, peaceful and chilled everybody out. Ravi transported me. It was gently raining and he transported everybody. We were all taken there. It was like we were put on a spaceship and driven to another planet. And, I think I forgot about Sir Paul (McCartney) during that performance. I secretly hoped Paul would show up (Laughs). It’s really funny. And I think now what makes sense is I relaxed was that I wasn’t looking for Paul McCartney. (Laughs). I was finished with backstage nerves and I got out there with everyone else. We didn’t have good seats, they weren’t bad, and that’s when it rained and I released all of it. And that’s the Ravi Shankar effect. I called my autobiography [written with David and Coco Dalton] Breathing Out.
“In 1967, George was studying the sitar with Ravi Shankar, his teacher,” remembers Rodney Bingenheimer, a SiriusXM dejay. “George was devoting all his time to Indian music. I was writing a weekly music column for GO! magazine and I was invited on August 3rd to the Kinnara School of Music on Robertson Boulevard, who held a special press conference in honor of Ravi Shankar. George introduced Ravi and also made some comments.
“After the conference, George and I talked, and he asked me, ‘Do you know where I can get some groovy things?’ I sure did, and the next day we went shopping to all sorts of groovy stores in the Hollywood area. We went in a ’64 copper brown Corvair driven by a secretary from Apple’s Derek Taylor. George in the front seat and myself with photographer Ed Caraeff in the back. We then drove to a psychedelic head shop in Westwood called Headquarters that Jerry Hopkins owned. George really dug it and flipped out in the black light room. He bought a psychedelic poster of the Beatles and lots of black light posters. After we ate, we did more shopping and drove down Santa Monica Boulevard in the two-door Corvair with a Monterey International Pop Festival sticker on the bumper.
“Ed Caraeff had previously discovered an Indian shop also on Santa Monica Boulevard called Sat Parush while eating at an Indonesian restaurant on that block. So, George suggested we walk over to Sat Parush. It was the first chance he’d gotten in all these years to just walk on an American street. People were great. They just smiled and waved and nobody tried to mob him. George really liked everyone because they were so nice to him. Ed would later do a photo shoot in 1968 Sat Parush of a Strawberry Alarm Clark LP cover. They were a cool band signed to Uni Records by Russ Regan. They had a big hit record, ‘Incense and Peppermints,’ that DJ Dave Diamond on KBLA first spun. George ran around Sat Parush and tried everything on. Even dressing in the window. George also went outside and sat with some people on the street. Some knew who he was. He was totally cool about the whole trip. We all went to an Orange Julius stand and George had one of those to drink. Then we went to another clothes store on Santa Monica Boulevard called Siderial Time who had some of the grooviest clothes in the city. George wanted everything, and the owner, Larry, got him some special ribbon shirts that he loved just like the ones Larry did for the music group Lewis and Clarke Expedition.
“During that time George stayed in L.A. Derek Taylor arranged for Ed Caraeff and I to attend the Ravi Shankar concert at the Hollywood Bowl. We drove in Ed’s Mercedes-Benz, brown sedan four-door. Ed and I witnessed Ravi at the Monterey International Pop Festival the previous June. At the Hollywood Bowl, we were given full access and sat with George on the side of the stage. No cameras and photos were allowed, but Ed managed to snap a photo with his Nikon. No flash, very subtly, while George and I meditated to Ravi and his musicians doing a raga.”
Without Ravi Shankar, we might have never heard of the band Little Feat.
“Lowell George was a flute player and a Japanese shakuhachi flute player,” recalled songwriter and record producer Russ Titelman in an interview we conducted in 2011.
“In fact, Lowell could play anything that he picked up. I met Lowell at the Kinara School of Music. Ravi Shankar’s school. I studied sitar for a year. George Harrison came by and we were briefly introduced. I would produce him years later.
“I brought Little Feat to Warner Bros. In 1969 Lowell was playing with the Mothers of Invention and rehearsing Little Feat. Lowell and I became best friends. So, we spent all our time together. And he was rehearsing the new band and played with Fraternity of Man with Elliot Ingber and Ritchie Hayward. He put together Little Feat. He had Roy Estrada and himself and rehearsing in this little room on Sunset Blvd. And Lowell played me the songs he was writing and I thought they were great. ‘Willing’ and ‘Truck Stop Girl.’
“Lowell was going to sign with Gabriel Meckler’s Lizard Records label. And I said to him. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. Let’s go to Lenny (Waronker) at Warner Bros. Records. Let’s go to Lenny first.’ So, I took Billy (Payne) and Lowell after I called Lenny and told him I wanted him to hear this stuff. We went to his office, a little cubical, practically like the size of the cubical we used to write in, only a little bigger. And he had a miserable little spinett piano in there, not completely in tune. So, Lowell, Billy and I went to the office. Lowell sat down, he brought a guitar, Billy played piano. They played ‘Truck Stop Girl,’ ‘Willing’ ‘Brides Of Jesus.’ They got done doing those songs and Lenny said, ‘Go upstairs and make a deal with Mo [Ostin].’ That’s how it happened. And that’s how innocent those days were, too. They didn’t have to do a showcase. Lenny said ‘Go make a deal with Mo.’ Lenny was like the best song man of anybody. He got it immediately. That was it.”
In 1970 Titelman first started working for Warner Brothers as a producer and then joined the label as a producer in July 1971.
Ravi Shankar passed away on Dec. 11, 2012, in San Diego, Calif., at the age of 92. On December 20th a memorial was held for Shankar at Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas, Ca. The windmill chapel at the Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades California carries on Paramahansa Yogananda’s spiritual and humanitarian Self Realization Fellowship work and legacy and hosted George Harrison's funeral service in 2001.
(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows published in 2014 and Neil Young Heart of Gold during 2015. Kubernik also authored 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon and 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo collaborated on Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble. Harvey and Kenneth co-authored the highly regarded A Perfect Haze: The Illustrated History of the Monterey International Pop Festival, published in 2011 by Santa Monica Press.
In November 2006, Harvey Kubernik was invited to address audiotape preservation and archiving at special hearings called by The Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California. During July, 2017, Harvey was a guest speaker at The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Library & Archives Author Series in Cleveland, Ohio discussing his 2017 book 1967 A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love.
Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s book, Docs That Rock, Music That Matters, featuring interviews with D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, Albert Maysles, Murray Lerner, Heather Harris, Steve Binder, Morgan Neville, David Leaf, Dick Clark, Curtis Hanson and Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
In 2004 Harvey wrote Hollywood Shack Job: Rock Music In Film and on Your Screen published by the University of New Mexico Press that spotlighted Andrew Loog Oldham, Ice Cube, Paul Thomas Anderson, Melvin Van Peebles and Steven Van Zandt.
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Kubernik’s writings are in several book anthologies, including The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats and Drinking With Bukowski. Harvey penned liner note booklets to the CD releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, and The Ramones’ End of the Century
In 2020, Harvey served as a consultant on the 2-part documentary Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time directed by Alison Ellwood that debuted on the M-G-M/EPIX cable television channel.
During December 2021, Kubernik was an interview subject and consultant on a documentary, The Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, produced at Varsity Stadium September 13, 1969 in Canada, featuring the debut of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band. Klaus Voorman, Geddy Lee of Rush, Alice Cooper, Shep Gordon, Rodney Bingenheimer, promoter John Brower, and Robby Krieger of the Doors were filmed by director Ron Chapman. Pennebaker Hegedus Films is exec producing. It is scheduled for a summer 2022 theatrical release.
In summer of 2019, Harvey was interviewed by director Matt O’Casey for his BBC4-TV digital arts channel Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird. Cast: Christine McVie, Stan Webb of Chicken Shack, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, John McVie, Christine’s family members, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, Mike Campbell, Neil Finn, and producer Richard Dashut.
Kubernik was interviewed for the BBC-TV documentary on Bobby Womack, Across 110th Street, directed by James Meycock. It spotlighted Bobby Womack, Ronnie Wood, Damon Albarn of Blur and the Gorillaz, Regina Womack, and Antonio Vargas.
Harvey served as Consulting Producer on the 2010 singer-songwriter documentary, Troubadours directed by Morgan Neville. It screened at the Sundance Film Festival in the documentary film category and broadcast on PBS-TV in their American Masters series.
Kubernik appears in director Matthew O’Casey’s 2012 Queen at 40 documentary on BBC Television, released as a DVD, Queen: Days Of Our Lives in 2014 via Eagle Rock Entertainment.
Harvey is the former West Coast Director of A&R for MCA Records. During 1978-1979 he teamed engineer/producer Jimmy Iovine with Tom Petty for Damn The Torpedoes and initiated the Del Shannon album Drop Down and Get Me, which Petty produced, issued on Network Records).
