George Interview about the Raga Film (1971)

 I located this interview between George Harrison and Alex Bennett in the August 1974 issue of the Harrison Alliance. 

Alex:  This is Alex Bennett. With me is George Harrison. What we're here to talk about is a friend of George's and someone who has been a great influence on him, Ravi Shankar, a more particularly a motion picture that has been made about Ravi called Raga.  When did the film get started? 

George Harrison: The end of 1967, and it's taken this long to get it out because of differences with one thing or another.

 Alex:  You're much younger in your scenes than when they were shot.

 George: Yes, my footage was done in 1968.

 Alex: How do you feel when you see it?

 George: I think good, because I was in the film strictly as a pop star meeting an Indian sitarist. And I think I look just like a pop star should look.

 Alex:  Was a part of the original meetings you had with Ravi. I mean, was that actually filmed when you were taking some lessons from him? Or was it kind of set up for the camera? 

George: Well, it was set up for the camera, but it was during that time that I was taking lessons from Ravi. I first started that in 1967, and I was supposed to have done the part in India. It was the time we had been in Rishikesh with the Maharishi, and I was supposed to have gone to South India.  Because we arrived a week or so too early, that part couldn't be filmed. And then one thing led to the next. We ended up doing it in California, in Big Sur. So it was set up there at Esalen. We just sat in the grass and played the sitars. It's really difficult to try and play sitar, and it was particularly difficult sitting there learning something which I'd never heard before in front of cameras with everybody watching. It's very hard, but in the film, it's sort of condensed. It's really very short.

 Alex: How did George Harrison, the pop star, come to meet Ravi Shankar, the concert master? What was the change in your head? 

George: I first heard the music around 1966 or early 1967, even though intellectually, I didn't know anything about it; somewhere inside me, I recognized it. The only thing I could relate to is that somewhere, I could understand the music on some sort of level, which wasn't intellectual. I tried to figure it out, but there was something going on which I couldn't put my finger on, but somewhere inside it all made sense. It was a period when I bought a sitar and used it on a Beatles album. "Norwegian Wood" was the song. 

Just after that, Ravi came to London, and some company was trying to put out a record by him. I tried to organize a meeting between us and all that sort of thing, which we avoided. But at the same time, I had a feeling I was going to meet him. I didn't want to do so under any arranged circumstances. Eventually, we met at a dinner at a friend's house. He offered to give me some instruction in the basics of the sitar, like how to sit, how to hold it, and the basic exercises. It was really nice. It was the first time I ever learned music with a bit of discipline. I learned guitar just by a tutor book, getting hold of the thing and just trying to work it out.

 After about two years of exercises, I realized I wasn't really going to make it, because you have to dedicate so much time to the thing, and I had so many other things to do, I just made the decision that I had to get back and write some songs and get back on the guitar. In the fall of 1968, I actually stopped playing the sitar daily. Before  that, I just listened to Indian music for those two years.

 Alex:  That's pretty kind of honest decision to make, saying to yourself, 'I'm never going to make it on this instrument'. 

George: Well, during the time I was learning the sitar, I was very fortunate to go to India and spend some time with Ravi. And we traveled all around, and I met probably 200 of his students, people he teaches vocal or instrumental music. There was some sitarists there who were really incredible. They were very, very good. And out of all of the ones I met, Ravi has hopes for one of them. He said he might make it. So I knew I wasn't going to do much. Now, I just have the sitar for my own amusement. 

Alex: Do you pick it up often and play? 

George: Not recently, because I just moved my home and all my instruments are packed away. It's such a great instrument. You know? It's so flexible. There's so much you can do with it.

 Alex:  I've never been able to quite describe what the sound does, but there's something about it that's so catching. Anyone who listens to it, and I mean, anyone, is immediately caught up in it. 

George:  I think it has to do with the sympathetic strings, which are tuned to the notes used in the particular raga that's being played. So you hit a string, and you have all the sympathetics that ring out. Consequently, you hear a sitar solo that sounds like an orchestra playing. They have so many different strings which have different uses, like there's the main playing strings, the sympathetic strings, and also rhythm strings, which give a very high ring. There's so much more to a sitar than an instrument like a guitar, or other string instruments used in western music,

 Alex: Did learning the sitar influence your guitar playing at all?

 George: It was very subtle. How it affected me. It really changed my way of thinking about timing and rhythm. Also, the Talas, which are the time signatures in Indian music, influenced me. They have about 108 different time signatures, whereas in the West, we play three-four or four-four or six-eight and very seldom are different time signatures used. So this was a great help, because I realized that you can create anything you like. Gives me a bigger understanding of music.

 Alex: That first meeting you had with Ravi, how did you feel about it? I mean, here you are, someone who was quite well known and famous, meeting someone else, whom you kind of venture in a way. Did you feel at all apprehensive about meeting him?

 George: Yeah, I felt a bit funny because on one level I wanted to understand the sitar a bit more, but obviously I didn't have a clue about the instrument, but he was so great. You know, that's the thing to meet him. He's such a giant musically. He's a very small man, but he's a giant, and he's so humble. I mean, the way he sat down, the first lesson he gave me, he sat there and played scales, and he really enjoyed it. Anyone to be that good, to have that much patience. That's the thing that I admired most. Consequently, after all the time I've spent with him, I think I learned a bit more about humility and all those other things, rather than just music.

 Alex: The film brings out that as a result of his meeting with you and the attendant publicity. Ravi Shankar, for a moment in time, went from being a concert virtuoso to being treated like a rock star.

 George: Yes, that was a problem. Ravi's dilemma. Because all the Rock and Roll crowd picked up on it. The drug scene was very heavy in 1967, and everybody was getting into the Indian sort of thing. I helped to cause a lot of this dilemma that Ravi had because suddenly Indian music was being identified with the hippies and with the drug culture.

 Also, he was raised to a level or sort of superstar, and then it was like all fads, and the thing passed by. Then he found it all very difficult. He went through a period where the craze had gone, and there was just the doldrums, and now he's back on top again. It's really good because the people who go to see him are really appreciators of the music. So, during that time, he gained a lot of new fans. He lost a lot after that period; the ones who had just come on, thinking it was a big, hip thing to do.

 Alex:  Indian music is too serious to be fashionable.

 George: Yes, and this is a big problem for Ravi, because his music is the classical music of India. It's also spiritual music, which has taken years and years of discipline to get to. Suddenly, he finds that people, in their ignorance, use and abuse it. So he's got a constant battle in order to try to put over to the audience what the real meaning of the music is and to give them a deeper understanding.

 It's that part in the film where it goes through a freak-out scene where people putting on saris and  the "sitar man" sort of thing.

 Alex: Then there's a scene of him walking down the beach, just wondering about all this kind of distortion. I guess that's the price he had to pay because of a great desire to bring this kind of music to the Western world. Though it did get out of hand for a while. Don't you think maybe it's gotten into perspective now? I think a lot of people appreciate Indian music now who never did in the past. 

George, Yeah, and I think this period is particularly good for Ravi, because, like I've said, we've lost all the people who came to see or listen because it was a fad. Now just the people who really like it tend to go to the concerts, and there's really a solid audience out there every time he performs.

 I think it's good that the film took so long to make. That it didn't come out earlier, because there's a whole different significance. now. Someone recently pointed out that Ravi Shankar was the only person to perform at all three of the biggest concerts of the last decade, the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock, and the one we just did in August at Madison Square Garden for Bangladesh. So there's something going on. I think maybe Ravi's the one who organizes these concerts secretly.

Alex: You've now come to the point where you produced records and spent some time recording in India.

 George: It was fantastic. Actually, I worked at the EMI studio in Bombay, in the studios located on top of the offices, and there was no soundproofing. So if you listen closely to some of the Indian tracks on Wonderwall, you can hear taxis going by. Every time it was 530, the offices knocked off work. We had to stop recording because you could just hear everybody stomping down the steps. It was really funny. They only had a big old EMI mono machine. It was too incredible. I mixed everything as we did it. It was nice, though, because you got spoiled working on eight and 16 tracks. 

Alex: What's happening in your life at this point? 

George: Now I'm just editing the film of the Bangladesh concert.

 Alex: How did that concert come about?

 George:  Mainly because of Ravi's connection with Bangladesh. His forefathers and lots of friends and family are all from that area. He was very upset by what was happening there and wanted to do something. He had a lot of requests from Indian people to try to do a benefit concert. But he thought if he was just to play on his own, he could only raise a small amount of money. He wanted to do something a bit bigger, so he asked if I could suggest something. In the end, I decided that I'd go in on the concert too. And from there, it just snowballed until we got the film, the record, and the concert.

 Alex: They'll make a lot of money for Bangladesh. 

George: Yes, I'm told it will amount to millions of dollars.

 Alex: In closing, George, I expect to hear a lot of reviewers, the Judith Christs and the Wanda Hales writing about the film. I'd like to hear a review of Raga by George Harrison.

 George. I think I'm a bit biased. I like the film because many people have heard the name of Ravi, and a lot have seen him in concert or heard his records. But there's so much more to him, and this film gets it across. Details about his background and the reason why he's in the West. It's a real honest film. I mean, it's not often you can go to see a movie about an honest person. Usually it's a quick rip-off to try and make as much bread as possible, without a lot of fun, with a lot of phony actors acting out some phony script. Most of the movie business is just to make some bread, and there is an accent on truth. But I think there's a lot of accent on the truth concerning Ravi Shankar in this film.