A trip to India which came to define The Beatles was done because the group were “spiritually exhausted,” Paul McCartney has said.
The Wings frontman and Beatles member says he, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, headed to India as being in the lucrative band was getting a bit too much. Though the Fab Four had done a “marvellous” job in not letting the fame get to their heads, it appeared the four were running out of patience. It led to The Beatles taking a trip to India and saw the four begin their involvement in meditation, which all four members spoke highly of on their return home.
McCartney, speaking as part of The Beatles: Anthology, confirmed their trip to India was made in part because the four were exhausted with being famous. He said: ” I think by 1968 we were all a bit exhausted, spiritually. We’d been The Beatles, which was marvellous.
“We’d tried for it not to go to our heads and we were doing quite well – we weren’t getting too space out or big-headed – but I think generally there was a feeling of: ‘Yeah, well, it’s great to be famous, it’s great to be rich – but what’s it all for?’
“So we were enquired into all sorts of various things, and because George was into Indian music, the natural thing was to ask: ‘Well, what is this meditation lark? Do they levitate? Can they really fly? Can the snake-charmer really climb up the rope?’ It was really just pure enquiry, and after we met Maharishi and thought about it all, we went out to Rishikesh.”
Harrison shed further light on what they did while in India, saying meditation was the primary reason for their trip. He said: “John came, and Paul came after him, and then Richard followed with fifteen Sherpas carrying Heinz baked beans. There was also the world’s press; I pretended to be asleep all the way to Delhi so I didn’t have to talk to them.
“It was a long drive from the airport to Rishikesh, and at that time they only had 1950s cars – Morris Cowleys or Morris Oxfords – so the journey took four or five hours. If you go to India you can’t wear Western clothes. That’s one of the best bits about India – having these cool clothes: big baggy shirts and pajama trousers. They also have tight trousers that look like drainpipes.”
The Beatles would split up just two years later, following their Abbey Road and Let it Be recording sessions. A documentary of their studio sessions at the time, Get Back, profiles the band’s fraught relationship at the time.
