George Harrison Interview
By Alan Walsh
Melody Maker
September 2 & September 9, 1967
"You may think this interview is of no importance to me," said George Harrison across the table at NEMs Enterprises' Mayfair offices. You'd be wrong. It's very important. We have realized that it's up to everyone-- including the Beatles-- to spread love and understanding, to communicate this in any way we can." George, radiant in a flowered shirt and trousers, long, flowing hair and bushy mustache lit up a dismal, wet London day by his clothes, his friendliness and the warmth of his replies. George spoke quietly but frankly about many subjects, from God to LSD, and the 90-minute conversation examined the whole existence of the most introspective Beatle.
Q: You've just returned from Haight Ashbury. What were your impressions of life there?
George: Well, we were only in Haight Ashbury for about 30 minutes, but I did see quite a bit. We parked our limousine a block away, just to appear the same, and walked along the street for about 100 yards, half like a tourist, half like a hippie. We were trying to have a look in a few shops.
Q: Who was with you?
George: Pattie, her sister Jenny, a friend of Jenny's, Derek Taylor, Neil Aspinall-- our road manager, and Magic Alex, who's a friend. We walked along, and it was nice. At first, they were just saying 'Hello', and 'Can I shake your hand?' Things like that. Then more and more people arrived, and it got bigger and bigger. We walked into the park, and it just became a bit of a joke. All these people were just following us along.
Q: One of them tried to give you. STP, I believe?
George: They're trying to give me everything. This is a thing that I want to try and get over to people. Although we've been identified a lot with hippies, especially since all this thing about pot and LSD came out, we don't want to tell anyone else to have it, because it's something that's up to the person himself. Although it was like a key that opened the door and showed a lot of things on the other side, it's still up to people themselves what they want to do with it.
LSD isn't a real answer. It doesn't give you anything. It enables you to see a lot of possibilities that you may never have noticed before. But it isn't the answer. You don't just take LSD, and that's it, forever you're okay.
A hippie is supposed to be someone who becomes aware. You're hip if you know what's going on, but if you're really hip, you don't get involved with LSD and things like that. You see the potential that it has and the good that could come from it, but you also see that you don't really need it.
I needed it the first time I ever had it; actually, I didn't know I'd had it. I never even heard of it. Then this is something that just hasn't been told. Everybody now knows that we've had it, but the circumstances were that somebody just shoved it in our coffee before we'd ever heard of the stuff. So we happen to have it quite unaware of the fact.
I don't mind telling people I've had it. I'm not embarrassed. It makes no difference, because I know that I didn't actually go out and try to get some.
Q: You never deliberately set out to take LSD?
George: No, not really for me. It was a good thing, but it showed me that LSD isn't really the answer to everything. It can help you go from A to B, but when you get to B, you see C, and you see that to really get high, you have to do it straight. There are special ways of getting high without drugs -with yoga, meditation, and all those things.
So this was the disappointing thing about LSD. In this physical world we live in, there's always duality, good and bad, black and white, yes and no. Whatever there is, there's always the opposite. There's always something equal and opposite to everything. And this is why you can't say LSD is good or it's bad, because it's good and it's bad, it's both of them, and it's neither of them, altogether, people don't consider that.
Haight Ashbury was a bit of a shock, because although there were so many great people, really nice people, who only wanted to be friends and didn't want to impose anything or be anything, there was still the black bit, the opposite. There was the bit where people were so out of their minds trying to shove STP on me and acid. Every step I took, there was somebody trying to give me something, but I didn't want to know about that. I want to get high. And you can't get high on LSD. You can take it and take it as many times as you like, but you get to a point that you can't get any further unless you stop taking it.
Haight, Ashbury reminded me a bit of the Bowery. There were these people just sitting around the pavement begging, saying, 'Give us some money for a blanket.' These are hypocrites. They're making fun of tourists and all that. And at the same time, they're holding their hands out, begging off them. That's what I don't like.
I don't mind anybody dropping out of anything, but it's the imposition on somebody else. I don't like the moment you start dropping out and then begging off somebody else to help you, then it's no good. I've just realized through a lot of things that it doesn't matter what you are, as long as you work. It doesn't matter if you chop wood, as long as you chop and keep chopping, then you get what's coming to you.
You don't have to drop out. In fact, if you drop out, you put yourself further away from the goal of life than if you were to keep working.
Q: Have you any defined idea of what your goal in life is?
George: We've all got the same goal, whether we realize it or not, we're all striving for something which is called God, for a reunion complete. Everybody has realized at some time or another that no matter how happy they are, there's still always the unhappiness that comes with it. Everyone is a potential Jesus Christ. Really, we are all trying to get to where Jesus Christ got, and we're going to be on this world until we get there. We're all different people, and we are all doing different things in life. But that doesn't matter, because the whole point of life is to harmonize with everything, every aspect in creation. That means down to not killing the flies, eating the meat, killing people or chopping the trees down.
Q: Can we ever get it down to this level?
George: You can only do it if you believe in it. Everybody's a potential divine. It's just a matter of self-realization before it will all happen. The hippies are a good idea. Love, flowers, and that is great. But when you see the other half of it, it's like anything. I love all these people too, those who are honest and trying to find a bit of truth and straighten out the untruths. I'm with them 100%, but when I see the bad side of it, I'm not so happy.
Q: to get anywhere near what you are talking about. Do you believe you have to be a hippie or a flower person?
George: Anybody can do it. I doubt if anyone who is a hippie or flower person feels that he is; it's only you, the press, who call us that they've always got to have some tag, if you like. I'm a hippie or a flower person. I know I'm not. I'm George Harrison, a person just like everybody else, but different to everybody else at the same time. You get to a point where you realize that it doesn't matter what people think you are. It's what you think you are yourself that matters, or what you know you are; anyone can make it. You don't have to put a flowery shirt on.
Q: Could a bank clerk make it?
George: Anyone can, but they've got to have the desire. The Beatles got all the material wealth that we needed, and that was enough to show us that this thing wasn't material. We are all in the physical world. Yet we are striving for isn't physical. We all get so hung up with material, things like cars and televisions and houses, yet what they can give you is only there for a little bit, and then it's gone.
Q: So, did you ever reach the point where you considered getting rid of the material wealth?
George: Yes, but now that I've got the material thing in perspective, it's okay. The whole reason I've got material things is because they were given to me as a gift. So it's not really bad that I've got it because I didn't ask for it. It was just mine. All I did was be me. All we ever had to do was just be ourselves. And it all happened. It was there, given to us all this, but then it was given to us to enable us to see that that wasn't it. There was more to it.
Q: Where do these beliefs fit in with the musical side of the Beatles?
George: I'm a musician. I don't know why. This is a thing that I've looked back on since my birth. Many people think life is predestined. I think it is vaguely, but it's still up to you which way your life's going to go. All I've ever done is keep being me, and it's all just worked out. It just did it all ----magic. I just did it. We never planned anything. It's so obvious, because I'm a musician now, that's what I was destined to be. It's my gig.
Q: George, can you tell me where the Beatles are musically today? What are you trying to do?
George: Nothing. We're not trying to do anything. This is the big joke. It's all Cosmic Joke 43. Everyone gets our records and says, 'wonder how they thought of that,' or 'wonder what they're planning next,' or whatever they say. But we don't plan anything. We don't do anything. All we do is just keep on being ourselves. It just comes out. It's the Beatles. All any of us are trying to do now is get as much peace and love as possible. Love will never be played out, because you can't play out the truth.
Whatever I say can be taken a million different ways, depending on how screwed up the reader is, but the Beatles is just a hobby, really. It's just doing it on its own. We don't even have to think about it. The songs write themselves. It's just all works out. Everything that we're taking into our minds and trying to learn or find out, and I feel personally, it's such a lot. There's so much to get in, and yet the output coming out the back end is still so much smaller than what you're putting in; everything is relative to everything else. We know that now. So we got to a point where when people say there's nothing else you can do, we know that's only from where they are. They look up and think we can't do anymore. But when you're up there, you see you haven't started.
Take Ravi Shankar, who's so brilliant. With pop music; the more you listen to it, the more you get to know it, the more you see through it, and the less satisfaction it gives you. Where in Indian music, and Ravi Shankar as a person, it's exactly the opposite, because the more you're able to understand the music, the more you see there is to appreciate, the more you get back out of it. You can have just one record of Indian music and play it for the rest of your life. You'd probably never see all the subtleties in it. It's the same with Ravi Shankar. He feels as though he hasn't started, and yet he's doing so much, teaching so many people, writing film music, everything.
Q: Have you any idea what the Beatles will do next time you go into the recording studio?
George: No idea. We won't know until we do it. We're naturally influenced by everything that's going on around us. If you weren't influenced, you wouldn't be able to do anything. That's all anything is-- an influence from one person to another. We'll write songs and go into the studio and record them, and we'll try and make them good. We'll make a better LP than Sgt. Pepper. But I don't know what it's going to be.
Q: If you had a child, do you know what you would try to do as a father?
George: I haven't, and I can't really know what I'd do, but I do know I wouldn't let it go to school. I'm not letting fascist teachers put things into the child's head. I'd get an Indian guru to teach him, and me too.
Q: I believe the Beatles are thinking about making a film in which you create the visuals as well as the sound and music.
George: Yes, we've got to the point now where we found out that if you rely on other people, things never work out. This may sound conceited, but it's not. It's just what happens. The things that we've decided ourselves and that we've gone ahead and done ourselves have always worked out right, or at least satisfactorily, whereas the moment you get involved with other people, it goes wrong. It's like a record company. You hand them the whole LP and the sleeve and everything there on a plate, all they've got to do is print it. Then all the crap starts. 'You can't have that', and 'You don't do this'. And we get so involved with trivial little things that it's all started deteriorating around us.
It's the same with the film. The more involved we get with film people, the less of a Beatles film tt's going to be. Take that Our World television show, we were trying to make it into a recording session and have a good time, and the BBC were trying to make it into a television show. It's a constant struggle to get ourselves across through all these other people, all hassling.
In the end, it'll be best if we write the music, write the visual and the script for the film, edit it, do everything ourselves, but then it's such a hell of a job that you have to get involved, and that means you can't do other things. But we'll have to get other people to do things, because we can't give that much time to just a film, because it's only a film, and there are more important things in life.
Q: Do you think the film will come off in the near future?
George: Yes, I think it'll probably all happen next year, sometime.
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