Identity Crisis

I found this story of Joe Massot, who is a film maker who spent about 6 weeks in India with John and George (buy the time he arrived Ringo and Paul had left).    His article doesn't go into a whole lot of detail, but I found it interesting.   Plus I had these photos that I recently found from India and this article seemed like a good reason to post them, especially since it mentions the home movie camera, and there is a photo of John using it.   This article is from the October 1996 issue of Mojo (the issue that all Beatle fans should own).

Identity Crisis

By Joe Massot

Gene Corman, a crazy film producer and brother of Roger, had some arrangement with the Maharishi to make a film with the Beatles.  George Harrison, who’d composed the music for my film, Wonderwall, called and told me about the deal, “Come out to Rishikesh.  You gotta film it.”

By the time I arrived, John and George were the only Beatles around.  Ringo didn’t like the food and his wife didn’t like the flies, and this was definitely not Paul’s scene, so they’d all flown home.  John was up on a rooftop dressed all in loose white cotton and sandals, playing the melodeon.  Later he claimed to have licked the problem of how to meditate and smoke at the same time.  He leaned against a tree and closed his eyes in deep inner thought, took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit up, “See?  I’m still meditation.”

John showed me to my room.  He saw my Phillips portable cassette and asked what music I’d brought.  I told him (Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding’s last recording – just released – and a small piece of hash.  John lowered his voice and told me there was no dope in Rishikesh and not to tell anyone, especially George.  George, it seemed, was really very studious in his approach to Eastern religion and was locked into some sort of meditational duel with Lennon to see who was the stronger character.

That night, after dinner, we smoked all the dope and listened to Dock of the Bay at least 20 times.

We got up in the morning and had breakfast in a hall.  Prudence Farrow, Mia’s sister, was there, literally climbing up the wall with two little Indian guys holding her back, watching her like she’s going to kill herself.  She was freaked.  The maharishi said she would be cured.  And she was.  She’s now married one of those guys from the transcendental meditation group.  John wrote “Dear Prudence” about her.

I liked the Maharishi.  I thought he was a funny man with a very clear vision of the world.  Many years later, the Pentagon employed him to debrief and cool out all the colonels from Vietnam, who were over the top, those Apocalypse Now guys who’d freaked out beyond a freak out.  They sent ‘em to him.

There was, however, no sign of the film crew, thought there was a little silent 16mm camera that everybody would pick up and shoot with; everything – breakfast, lunch, whatever.  We’d get up, breakfast, meditate with the morning mantra, lunch, then George would sleep or meditate and John would go up on the roof, play and write.  At about five the Maharishi would give a lecture.

George also took an amp to Rishikesh and the melodeon and John had an acoustic guitar.  He was writing Across the Universe, and said he could only play two chords.  But that was all he needed.  He wrote about four or five different versions of that song.  He taped one on my Philips tape recorder, the final version.  He’d been fiddling with it since he got there.  And I lost it!

 Then, at last, after about six weeks, Gene Corman finally showed up and had a meeting with the Maharishi, George , John and myself.  He promptly announced that he had a professional crew in New Delhi and a professional director (a choreographer who’d never made a film before).  Unfortunately for me, the cameraman was Nestor Almendros.  I worked with Nestor in Cuba.  The guy was one of the greatest cameramen in the world. 

So, I thought, Uh-oh! Looks like I’ve lost the job.  But there’s a good side:  I’m outta here!

Next morning I took a cab, the only one in Rishikesh, to the Oberoi Hotel.  I booked a beautiful suite, had a shower, a couple of bottles of champagne and a great dinner.  We’d been living, basically, on tinned spaghetti and tinned spinach. 

The following morning, I came down to the lobby, and John and George were there.  Something had gone down between the Beatles and the Maharishi.  I was never quite clear what.  They did the same as I had:  showered, shaved and got rid of the scent of Rishikesh.  They were desperate to get back to London.  We had dinner in the suite and lunch the following day.  While we’re having lunch, Corman calls up.  He wants to see me now.

He came up and he was almost down on his knees to me.  His project was dead as a doornail.  Would I speak to the Beatles?   I knew it was no use, “Well, you know, there’s some very beautiful religious festivals around Rishikesh that you can film.  And there’s the lepers!”  The guy left.  I told George and John and we were roaring, roaring!

And then we went out onto the balcony and I told them both the plot of Zachariah (A rock western, a head of its time), which I’d come up with watching them dueling together at the meditation centre.  Zachariah is the fastest gun in the West but he realizes that being the fastest anything is not the same thing as finding yourself.

The Beatles were individuals buy they were all feeding off each other creatively.  So long as they could stand it.  When we came back to London after Rishikesh, it was the end.  They had discovered themselves, found their own strengths. 

And that’s why they all went their separate ways.