Expert: Elizabeth - 10/12/2009

Question
What's up Elizabeth I'm Alex. I'm currently writting a research paper for English and the assingment is to form an argument I can explain and support about the value of their music and its importance or significance to the genre and the music world. My
question is Why did George Harrison start taking sitar lessons?
and what made him and The Beatles become so interested in eastern
religion and philosophy? Please answer asap. Thanks again Lizz.

Answer
George first came across a sitar when it was used as a prop in the 1965 Beatles movie "Help!"  I'll let him tell the rest of the story.  From a 1997 interview on VH1:

"Well in those days, you know we were growing very quickly, and there was a lot of influences that we were... I mean that was the best thing about our band. We were very open minded to everything and we were listening to all kinds of music you know. Like avant-garde music, later became known as avant-garde a clue, and various things like that. So you know, they just thought well that’s good, they liked the sound of it, and on "Norwegian Wood" it was just one of those songs that just needed that little extra, and the sitar I’d bought, a very cheap one in a shop called India Craft in London, and even though it sounded bad it still fitted onto the song and it gave it that little extra thing so they were quite happy about it. I went to India to be with Ravi, to see India, to learn some music, and just to experience India, but I also wanted to know about the Himalayas. That is the thing that’s always fascinated me about the idea that...um, I mean it sounds like a lofty thing to say on VH1 but basically, you know, what are we doing on this planet? And I think throughout the Beatle experience that we’d had...we’d grown so many years within a short period of time. I’d experienced so many things and met so many people but I realized there was nothing actually that was giving me a buzz anymore. I wanted something better, I remember thinking, I’d love to meet somebody who will really impress me, and that’s when I met Ravi. Which is funny, cause he’s this little fella with this obscure instrument, from our point of view, and yet it led me into such depths. And I think that’s the most important thing, it still is for me. You know I get confused when I look around at the world and I see everybody’s running around and you know, as Bob Dylan said, "he not busy being born, he’s busy dying" and yet nobody’s trying to figure out what’s the cause of death and what happens when you die. I mean that to me is the only thing really that’s of any importance. The rest is all secondary. I believe in the thing I read years ago, which I think was in the bible, it said, "knock and the door will be opened", and it’s true. If you want to know anything in this life you just have to knock on the door. Whether that be physically on somebody else’s door and ask them a question or, which I was lucky to find, is meditation, is you know it’s all within. And that’s really why for me this record’s important, because it’s another little key to open up the within. For each individual to be able to sit and turn of, um..."turn off your mind relax and float downstream" and listen to something that has it’s root in a transcendental, because really even all the words of these songs, they carry with it a very subtle spiritual vibration. And it goes beyond intellect really. So if you let yourself be free to let that have an affect on you, it can have an affect, a positive affect."

Let me know if you have any followup questions.