Talk:The Beatles in India

Suggested changes

I'd like to rework part of this article's Background section. I appreciate that the article's had a lot of work put into it over the years, but right now it misrepresents the situation somewhat regarding how the Beatles came to meditation. Part of the problem, I think, is that the first sentence is attempting to convey the situation for the band collectively: "In the mid-1960s, the Beatles became interested in Indian culture,[3] after using drugs in an effort to expand their consciousness[4] and in 1966 Harrison visited India for six weeks and took sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar." In fact, George Harrison was the best part of a year ahead of the others in his search, certainly compared to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. For instance, while LSD opened the door for all of them, Harrison and John Lennon first took the drug in March or April 1965, followed by Starr in August, yet McCartney didn't touch it until November 1966 at the earliest. By that time, Harrison and Pattie Boyd had already visited India (including Vrindavan), and Harrison was already fascinated with Hindu religious texts, chanting and meditation.

Along with his introduction of Indian music to the group and, via their unprecedented popularity, to the cultural mainstream, this is part of Harrison's legacy as a member of the Beatles, surely: he introduced Eastern spirituality to both the band and their vast audience. Some writers actually say Harrison "led" the Beatles to Rishikesh. Here are some relevant quotes (I've got plenty more):

• From an April 2001 Record Collector feature on Harrison's solo career on Apple Records, by Peter Doggett (the magazine's managing editor): "By the end of 1967, Harrison's deep immersion in Eastern culture had become the most important spiritual and artistic influence over the Beatles."
• Chris Ingham in The Rough Guide to the Beatles: "George's death prompted a media outpouring and a reassessment of the contributions of The Quiet Beatle, often focusing on his introduction of spirituality to the rock agenda …"
• Harrison obituary by Will Hermes in Spin magazine (Feb 2002, p. 22): "He promoted Eastern religions decades before the Beastles discovered Buddhism, turning his fellow Beatles on to the Hindu philosophy of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi."
• Bio at rollingstone.com (1st paragraph): "Harrison was also a gifted, fluid guitarist and hugely influential in introducing the Beatles – and, by extension, the entire Sixties generation – to Eastern religion and musical influences."
• Religion News Service reporter Steve Rabey, in a 2011 article for Huffington Post: "his greatest legacy may be the way his decades-long spiritual quest shaped the ways the West looks at God, gurus and life … In 1968, Harrison led the Beatles and their celebrity friends on a pilgrimage to Rishikesh, India …"
• Paul Du Noyer's Harrison obituary, in Blender: "The day that he picked up a sitar for The Beatles' 1965 track 'Norwegian Wood', he set Western musicians on another new trail, echoing his own exploration of Eastern religion. Whenever The Beatles yearned for weird, or new or strange, it was George who led the way."
• Mikal Gilmore, writing for Rolling Stone in December 2001: "Harrison's experience with LSD would dovetail influentially with two other quests he had undertaken and would help transform the Beatles' meaning and history. The first was musical [and the other was spiritual] … In the hotbed of late 1960s hippie culture, Harrison's spiritual interest spread like wildfire – to other musicians and groups (including the Beach Boys, Mick Jagger and Donovan) and to much of American and British youth, as well."
• Peter Doggett, writing in Mojo magazine's The Beatles' Final Years Special Edition (2003): "Once Harrison emerged as the champion of all things Indian, however, his power within the group increased. Gradually, his cultural and spiritual agenda began to shape everything from the sound of their records – encroaching sitars and tablas – to their infatuation with transcendental meditation."
• Harrison and Lennon biographer Gary Tillery, writing in his book Working Class Mystic: "Not to minimize the contribution of Vivekananada, Yogananda, the Maharishi, Prabhupada, and others like them, but let's be honest – would their success have been as far-reaching without the tremendous boost given their efforts through the influence of the Beatles? … And of the four, Harrison led the way spiritually. He was the first Beatle to embrace chanting and meditation … the first intrigued by the Maharishi, and the one who first committed to join the guru in Rishikesh – inspiring John and then the others."

I think this point needs to be covered not only under Background, but also under Legacy, with wording in the Lead paragraphs changed to reflect Harrison's role. There are some other things missing in the article – for instance, Nicholas Schaffner writes of the profound changes after the Beatles' combined LSD/meditation experience, such that Lennon, McCartney and Harrison "emerged … [as] three very different personalities who seldom saw eye-to-eye any more"; also, this was the last time the Beatles undertook a group activity outside of their (increasingly fraught) professional commitments. Right now, though, I believe the issue of Harrison's influence is the most important thing. JG66 (talk) 18:00, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Mantras/cards

According to Paul either in the Beatles Anthology book or Many Years From Now, each Beatle was granted a lone audience at Bangor with the Maharishi where he received a card telling him what his personal mission in life was, and Paul's read something like, "Make people happy" or "Make people smile". I think Paul also mentions what John and George's cards read, I think George's was something like, "Reach spiritual profundity". No idea whether this was the same as their personal mantras, but if someone can identify the source out of those two I've listed, it'd certainly make a relevant addition to the article. --79.242.222.168 (talk) 08:35, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Cutting down and changing focus of Background section

I've just written an article on The Beatles in Bangor – partly because the subject seemed far too notable to condense into the Background section here. I'll therefore cut the description given here on events leading up to the Beatles' early involvement with the Maharishi. What I'll add instead is some discussion of the coverage given to the Beatles' direction and to the Maharishi over late 1967 and early '68, and the build-up to their arrival in Rishikesh. They certainly faced a lot of suspicion and ridicule, for instance, which Lennon and Harrison each responded to in interviews before February '68. JG66 (talk) 10:52, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

@JG66: Looking at the Background section, I was about to write that there is a way too insufficient introduction to it in the section, when I saw the above. I feel that just starting out the Background section by saying that they’d gone to Bangor to see the Maharishi in retreat and then discuss what happened after that just isn’t enough. Doesn’t there need to be a few sentences which set out the reasons for their complete change of emphasis and their search for enlightenment? Great Bangor article, by the way. I’ve put a talk piece there too. 😉 Boscaswell talk 22:19, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi Boscaswell, sorry to take a while to reply (and thank you for your encouragement re the Beatles in Bangor article). I suppose I feel the hatnote under Background is sufficient: the Beatles are where they are philosophically, and if a reader needs more, the link is there to the Bangor page ... Then again, I could just be being a bit lazy(!). JG66 (talk) 14:38, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

my apologies to you, JG66 for my delay! Hmmm…I couldn’t possibly say that there was laziness involved…😉 I’ll try to come up with something. I have stacks of Wiki'work' lined up, but don’t seem to get round to it lately.🙄 All the best! Boscaswell talk 09:15, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

TM acronym

Not a big deal, but regarding this edit [[1]]:

It's standard copyediting practice. There's no sense in introducing an acronym, using it once, reverting to the expanded term again, then reverting to the acronym in the next paragraph. Popcornduff (talk) 16:08, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

... OK, and regarding this edit summary: [[2]]

I wrote the WP:ELEVAR essay so I could set out my arguments for why I remove elegant variation - it's easier than explaining it repeatedly in edit summaries and so on. You're free to disagree with my reasoning, of course, but a response like that isn't very constructive. Popcornduff (talk) 16:12, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I ought to add, before we get off on the wrong foot completely, that I appreciate the corrections you made to my changes and didn't just flatten them outright. Cheers. Popcornduff (talk) 16:16, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

<edit conflict>It wasn't constructive, and I apologise for that. Clearly, I disagree, unless the variation is particularly flowery. But generally, I'm just a bit pissed off that you made such a large number of changes in a single edit, and you introduced some errors. JG66 (talk) 16:22, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for paying attention and catching the fuck-ups. Hopefully between us the article is slightly improved overall. Popcornduff (talk) 16:24, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

In the case of that "latter", even though it's a single word, I see no purpose in obscuring the noun when directly stating "Pattie" is perfectly natural. Again, not a big deal, just explaining my reasoning. Popcornduff (talk) 16:37, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

<edit conflict>Thanks for your input. Despite my grumps, many of your changes were good and are much appreciated. JG66 (talk) 16:38, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Regarding "TM" vs. "Transcendental Meditation": it's a bit non-standard compared to the way most other acronyms are used, for whatever reason. Writings about TM—whether from an "official" source like tm.org or secondary sources—tend to switch fluidly between using the full phrase and the abbreviation (and back again). "How the Beatles in India Changed America" from Rolling Stone switches between the two, despite being a comparatively short piece. Articles about Transcendental Meditation on Wikipedia also have this tendency.

Not sure why this tendency developed or if there's any hard-and-fast "rule" underlying this usage, although switching back to "Transcendental Meditation" seems to be used for emphasis (especially an inflection of formality) or as a method of subject-contrast when naming one of the other distinct things that shares the name (the organization, the technique, the broader "movement," etc). Either way, JG66's switching between the full name and its abbreviated form does reflect real-world usage, however idiosyncratic it may be. Whether it's the best usage is a different story, but it's not necessarily "wrong" and I don't think it was done out of ignorance of the general rule about avoiding flagrant switches between full names and abbreviations.

(P.S.: This is coming right on the heels of another, totally unrelated post where I also happened to disagree with Popcornduff—I swear this is not targeted! I think you're a very good editor, and I even sometimes use that Hemingway Editor app you used to link on your user page as a handy tool to curb my tendency for, shall we say, loquaciousness. This page is on my watchlist and I thought the topic was interesting/worth unpacking in detail.) —BLZ · talk 20:55, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

I doubt the erratic contracting and expanding of TM in sources is anything to do with some special property in the term. I'd more likely put that down to bad subediting, or the occasional need for the kind of journalistic flourish that Wikipedia ought not to be dealing in.

As far as I can tell there is no reason why TM is written as an acronym in the article sometimes but not others - it feels random. Popcornduff (talk) 05:06, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I think this is the height of pedantry, quite honestly, and fucking stupid. In some instances, the term is referred to in a more meaningful context than others. There's no need to be so robotic about it – the idea that once defined as "TM", "Transcendental Meditation" simply should not be used, that it's some sort of editorial faux pas. In the same way, "UK"/"US" might be used in most cases for United Kingdom/United States, but there might also be instances where the acronym seems inadequate. Transcendental Meditation wasn't a mathematical formula, it was something that its adherents applied to life and the world as a whole. JG66 (talk) 05:24, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I argue always for simplicity. If you introduce an acronym, you don't have to spell the original thing out again; the simplest thing to do is to use the acronym from thereon. Readers know what it means.

Yes, it's pedantic. So if you don't think it matters, why oppose it? Popcornduff (talk) 05:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Songs written by the Beatles in Rishikesh

Would it be useful to name the writers of the songs listed? Especially, which one was Ringo’s? Boscaswell talk 10:33, 22 August 2022 (UTC)