They emerged as smiley faced mop tops and conquered the world, but it was when The Beatles got all freaky that I think they really came into their own. It was also the moment that George Harrison - AKA ‘the quiet Beatle’ - really made his presence felt, and established his status as perhaps the coolest and most progressive thinking of the lot.
The documentary “George Harrison: Living in the Material World” - directed by Martin Scorcese and showing now on Rialto - has been polarising for fans of the man and the band, but I love that fact that it has at its heart his dedication to Eastern thought and the power of meditation.
They emerged as smiley faced mop tops and conquered the world, but it was when The Beatles got all freaky that I think they really came into their own. It was also the moment that George Harrison - AKA ‘the quiet Beatle’ - really made his presence felt, and established his status as perhaps the coolest and most progressive thinking of the lot.
The documentary “George Harrison: Living in the Material World” - directed by Martin Scorcese and showing tonight 8:30pm on Rialto Channel - has been polarising for fans of the man and the band, but I love that fact that it has at its heart his dedication to Eastern thought and the power of meditation.
The film focuses the imaginative and always unique eye of one of cinema's most legendary filmmakers on one of the world's most influential music figures, and it works. It takes viewers on the musical and spiritual voyage that was George Harrison's life (hence its length at around three hours!), and much of it is told in his own words. For decades, with his legacy in mind, Harrison had been saving photographs, letters and memorabilia as well as his film footage of interviews he had recorded, and this absolute gem of a doco contains previously unseen private letters, home movie footage and intimate personal recollections of the man himself. It might be a lengthy watch but damn, for that kind of coverage it had to be IMHO!
But back to the subject of Eastern thought, and Harrison’s dedication to meditation after studying TM-style meditation many years ago. “I had got to the point where I thought I would like to meditate; I’d read about it and I knew I needed a mantra – a password to get through to the other world,” Harrison said in retrospect, and it all started when in 1967 George’s wife, Patti Boyd, learned the Transcendental Meditation technique in London while George was away on tour with The Beatles. “I loved meditating and I found the effects remarkable,” Patti said, and it was her unbridled enthusiasm for the practice that led George to encourage the Beatles to hear a lecture in London by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This meeting led to a lifelong dedication to meditation and the quest for higher states of consciousness - one that would set the tone of his personal and professional life.
And it certainly influenced his music, too. After his experience studying Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi in India, compositions emerged that include “Here Comes the Sun,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and “Something“ - a song that John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the two principle songwriting members of the band, felt was among the very best the group recorded. It was also the second of his songs most covered by other artists after the iconic “Yesterday.”
The Eastern thought subject is also interesting when your consider that Scorcese and Harrison were both smart men raised in Roman Catholic families, who were drawn to Asian philosophies and art to the point that they became driven to rep them in the West. It’s this connection that made the second half of the doco - the post ‘rock ’n’ roll fable’ part of the tale - the more serious and sombre end of the story, which follows Harrison as the post-Beatles Renaissance man, and has loads of private footage of his family in his later years. It’s full of great interview subjects though, including a shamelessly self-absorbed Eric Clapton and ever-grinning McCartney, still the most cheerful Beatle of the lot.
Also on the Beatles tip is the film “Good Ol Freda”, premiering later in the year (September 22 to be exact) on Rialto Documentary. It’s the story of 17-year-old Freda Kelly, who was the envy of thousands of teenage girls when she was made secretary to the Fab Four and put in charge of their fan club. At the height of the band's success, a newspaper headline referred to her as: "The Most Coveted Girl in the World". She is one of the few employees to have stuck with the band for the entire time they were together. Today, she is one of the few to survive and her story has never been told - until now. Apparently she was persuaded to tell her story by her daughter, Rachel. "My daughter said: 'Your memory box is going now – do it before the dementia sets in,” she told The Guardian. "I wanted to make a little film for my grandson, Niall, to know what his granny did in her youth. He's three. I want him to be proud." Love that and can’t wait for a watch!