2024 BeatlesFest Speech

BEATLES/KRISHNAS: THE UNTOLD STORY!”

ZOOM TALK GIVEN BY SHYAMASUNDAR DAS AT AUGUST 2024 “BEATLESFEST” CONVENTION IN CHICAGO

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Hare Krishna!

My name is Shyamasundar das, the spiritual name given to me 57 years ago by my spiritual master, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. In 1967, Bhaktivedanta Swami brought to the western world the greatest secrets from ancient India, the most profound philosophy and process for understanding and loving god, or Krishna consciousness. All glories to Prabhupada!

I would title my talk here today at the 2024 BeatlesFest:

“Beatles/Krishnas: The Untold Story!”

Over the past 60 years, nearly every aspect of the Beatles’ collective and individual lives, every word and note of their vast body of music has been explored in great detail. But what about the Hare Krishnas? Till now, no one has chronicled Bhaktivedanta Swami and the Krishna devotees’ profound and enduring impact on the Fab Four!

What about “elementary penguins, here comes the sun, give peace a chance, instant karma”—what about “My Sweet Lord” and “Give Me Love” and another dozen of George’s songs?

Rocketed into the stratosphere of magic, fame, and fortune, the Beatles asked, “Why me, Lord? Who am I? What’s the purpose of this amazing life? Where am I going?” By the mid-60s, the Beatles had achieved almost godlike status in the world like no four persons ever had or maybe ever will.

And like millions of us youngsters in those emerging psychedelic days, these guys were searching and they were trying to understand the meaning of it all.

Millions of us hung on their every word, examining everything they said, hoping they would answer for us the same cosmic questions that disturbed and inspired our revolution-minded lives.

From late 1968 onwards, the London-based Krishna people lived in the Beatles’ orbit, feeding them spiritual information that subtly shaped their world-views and many of their greatest songs.

…………….

I guess I should backtrack just a bit here. In early 1967 I had met Bhaktivedanta Swami in the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco and had become his initiated disciple, Shyamasundar das; later that year I was in jail for an old pending drug-dealing charge, and I got this idea in my head, “Krishna, if you get me out of here, I am going to London to tell the Beatles about you!”

So a month later I was miraculously released from jail, and I proposed to the Swami and to my best Krishna friends that we go to England. And we got the green light from the Swami, and by the first of September 1968 we were in London. There were six of us, young Krishna devotees, and my little 3-month-old daughter, Saraswati. We didn’t have any money and we didn’t know anyone in the UK, but we were kind of riding Krishna’s inconceivable plan.

And three months later we were friends with the Beatles!

Over the past ten years now I’ve written a three-volume series of books called “Chasing Rhinos With The Swami”. There are dozens of Beatles stories in these books, never-heard-before stories and never-seen-before photos about all the Beatles, and especially about George and his love for Krishna and Bhaktivedanta Swami and the Krishna devotees. These “Chasing Rhinos” volumes, I feel, fill a huge and important missing gap in the Beatles’ vast biography. There’s a total of about 1400 pages–and over a hundred Beatles/Krishnas photos.

So, imagine this: It’s December 1968, we’d been in London for a couple of months, trying to survive and spread a little Hare Krishna cheer around this vast and unfamiliar city. We lived in a derelict abandoned warehouse in Covent Garden, and suddenly some of my San Francisco friends from the Haight-Ashbury came over as a group to London, guys like Ken Kesey and Peter Coyote and Rock Scully, manager of The Grateful Dead (who had been my college roommate), Sweet William from the Hell’s Angels–and they needed a place to stay, so we put them up at our place in Covent Garden.

And these guys had been invited to the Apple headquarters on Savile Row for the 1968 Apple Christmas party. So I tagged along, and there I met George. I’ve described this amazing first meeting in Vol-1 of “Chasing Rhinos”:

“Upstairs, we enter a big lounge with armchairs, sofas, small tables and lamps, a Christmas tree winking in one corner. The place is crowded with about fifty people drinking and talking—rock stars, elegant women, Carnaby Street hippies, guys in suits, and our motley San Francisco crew spread out among them. I greet Rock, then take a seat at the far end of the room away from two doors at the opposite end, behind which everyone says the Beatles are having a meeting and will be out shortly. Hours pass. No Beatles.

“Finally, one by one, Paul, John, and Ringo each stick their head out of one of the doors and then bolt for the exit, not pausing to speak to anyone. A few minutes later, George pokes his head out too, and those famous, intense dark eyes scan the room and light on me. Before anyone can react, George shoots out the door, crosses the room, and comes straight at me, grinning. ‘Hare Krishna! Where have you been? I’ve been waiting to meet you!’”

Thus it began. George and I had an incredible, maybe 15- or 20-minute discussion, and we clicked on a very deep and unusual level, I would say much like two brothers after long separation.

After our first meeting at Apple, I went out to George’s home in Esher the next day. We spent the day talking about Krishna like ancient friends. And then lo and behold, about two weeks later George rings me up and says, “Please come down here to Twickenham Studios. I want you to explain Krishna consciousness to the boys.”

You probably saw the Peter Jackson “Get Back” film last year, right? There I am, early days of 1969, sitting in the background at Twickenham chanting on my beads while the Fab Four carries on. During the lunch break, the Beatles guide me to the lunch room:

“ ‘All right, what’s it all about then?’ asks John.

Somehow Krishna takes over my tongue. I start from the top: Krishna, the Supreme Person; Bhagavad-gita, the book; Bhaktivedanta Swami, the teacher. ‘I mean, in a way I’m no different from you guys. I’m your age, I’m looking for answers to life, I took LSD—there’s gotta be more to it than this. And it’s not easy. You can grope your way in the dark and, if you’re very lucky and after a lot of pain, you might find the light. But it’s so much easier, so much less suffering, and you don’t waste time, if you can find a spiritual master like I found the Swami, who just says, “Here. Here’s the light. Take it.” Everyone would have to say that you guys are very, very lucky, but I consider myself even luckier than you, because I found a perfect teacher.’

“They asked me questions like ‘Who is god?’ And ‘What is the purpose of life?’ And ‘Where do we go from here?’ These essential questions of the soul got asked, these incredible questions, for about two hours. And somehow or other Krishna gave me the tongue to answer. How else do you bear such intense scrutiny from the world’s most famous men? Anyway, so the call finally came, ‘Back on the set everyone.’”

Over the next few months of 1969 a few English boys and girls joined us, and our little Krishna gang would often go out to George’s home in Esher for kirtan and picnics, sometimes with Billy Preston. George released his hit record “Here Comes the Sun” and he said to me, “It’s really about Krishna coming into my life, but I can’t really say that, can I?”

With the Beatles’ help, we rented a 5-story building in the heart of London for our first Radha Krishna temple, on Bury Place, just a block from the British Museum.

In June, 1969, at their Montreal Bed-In, surrounded by Hare Krishnas, John and Yoko gave the world their mantra-like “Give Peace A Chance”.

London in the late ‘60s was the hip music center of the world. The city was alive with bands and cutting-edge music. We knew that the only way we could attract young people to Krishna—and capture the Beatles’ attention–was if we had a band ourselves, that we were fellow musicians. So luckily, Mukunda das and Yamuna dasi, two of my fellow London devotees, were accomplished musicians. Yamuna had the sweetest voice you ever heard. I played the esraj, an Indian stringed instrument played with a bow, and we put together a band—(all six of us plus anyone else who showed up were in the band)–and we began chanting and performing at the Roundhouse and other gigs around London, and there was lots of publicity about us in the underground press. We called ourselves “The Radha-Krishna Temple”.

In early July 1969, George rings me up from Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles were recording their Abbey Road album, and he says, “John’s been in a bit of a car smash-up and can’t make it tonight. There’s some studio time. Come on down and we’ll make a record!” That night, in a few hours’ time, the Radha-Krishna temple, with George playing harmonium, and Paul in the mixing booth, the “Hare Krishna Mantra” 45-rpm single was in the can.

Suddenly we’re pop stars! Top Ten! Hare Krishna Mantra was Apple’s fastest-selling non-Beatles single yet! The Radha-Krishna Temple did a concert tour of Britain and Europe and we appeared on TV shows like BBC’s Top of the Pops and Top Pop in Amsterdam. George often said later that one of the happiest moments in his life was sitting at home watching us do “Hare Krishna Mantra” on the telly!

George tells me that he is beginning to realize that his life purpose is to inform the world about eternal spiritual truths.

Well, if the Beatles liked the Hare Krishnas and their music, so did the whole world. For us, this fame in popular music was a preaching tool for higher knowledge, to tell the whole world about Krishna consciousness. Our music is embedded with information about ancient philosophy and the practice of God consciousness. Stuff like “I am not my body. I am a tiny spark of spirit soul longing to be reunited in love with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who likes to be called Krishna.”

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Anyway, going back to that first meeting with all the Beatles in the lunchroom at Twickenham Studios, as we were walking back to the set, John Lennon says to me, “Me and Yoko are getting a new place out in Ascot. Plenty of room out there, but it’s a bit run down. You guys need a place to live. Do you think you guys could come out and stay with us there and help fix the place up?”

So in August of 1969, about 20 of us Krishna devotees moved in with John and Yoko on their 72-acre estate in Berkshire called “Tittenhurst Park.” In September, our guru, Bhaktivedanta Swami, flew in and lived with us out there, too. Imagine that: 20 Hare Krishnas and their Indian guru living with John and Yoko for nearly three months! A lot of great stories happened at Tittenhurst—you can read them in “Chasing Rhinos”– including transcriptions of actual conversations between John, Yoko and the Swami!

In February of 1970, George got us back into the studio, and together with George Martin, Ringo on drums and Eric Clapton on guitar, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Radha Krishna Temple recorded their second single, “Govinda”. Another smash hit! Three appearances on Top of the Pops. And again, the Radha-Krishna Temple goes on concert tours throughout Britain and the European continent.

A month later, in March 1970, George acquires a 35-acre estate in Oxfordshire called “Friar Park”. Like John’s country place, the grounds, gardens, and the huge castle at Friar Park are run-down and neglected, so George asks me if some devotees can move in with him, to help fix the place up. So me, my wife, my child, and several others, we went out to live with George and Pattie at Friar Park. And over the next four or five months while we lived there, George wrote and recorded his first solo album, All Things Must Pass, perhaps his most spiritual statement in all of his music. “My Sweet Lord”, “What Is Life”, “Beware of Darkness”, “The Art of Dying”, “Awaiting On You All”, “Hear Me Lord”—these songs are George’s soul, crying out with his love for Krishna!

George was inspired somewhat by us living under the same roof, but he was already there. He already knew the Krishna philosophy and way of life. Ok, sometimes he’d ask me “What rhymes with this or that word” or he’d play a few lines and ask me, “What do you think of this?” But by now George was complete unto himself with a full wind in his sails, and we were simply fellow travelers. George really got it: Action means service for God. The Sanskrit word for this is bhakti or activity performed in the mood of love for God.

After our 1970 summer together at Friar Park, I left England for India, and all over the world, traveling as personal secretary to Bhaktivedanta Swami. But George and I kept in touch, often—I wrote him letters almost every week, telling him what Prabhupada was doing here or there—and sometimes we’d meet, like at the Bangla Desh concert in NYC, where I sat in the front row.

In 1973, George donated to Prabhupada a 17-acre ashram in Hertfordshire, “Bhaktivedanta Manor”, which has become the headquarters for the Hare Krishna movement in the UK. George would visit Prabhupada there often, and many of their deepest conversations are included in “Chasing Rhinos With The Swami”.

Over the years, George and I hung out in India together, or I would pop into Friar Park from time to time–and I was with him in his final days in Los Angeles.

George Harrison chanted Hare Krishna mantra every day for much of his life, and in the end he was very happy to leave this entangled, conditioned material realm and go back to Krishna’s place, back to godhead.

George understood the ancient truths in Prabhupada’s message, and in the highest meaning of devotional service he used his God-given talents and energies to give back to Krishna all he had received. Through George Harrison, and the Beatles, the whole world heard the Hare Krishna mantra, and thousands of people who were ready to hear were awakened to spiritual life.

Like many of us in this modern high-speed world, the Beatles struggled to spiritualize their material lives—imagine how much more magnified their struggle was compared to ours! And their glory is that they have largely succeeded. You see in all the Beatles—George in particular—the symptoms of self-realized souls.

If you can try to wrap your mind around this–that there’s no doubt in my mind, looking back, that George and the other Beatles, but especially George, were highly developed yogis in their past lives, and they were born into this incredible opportunity to finish the job and get out of this material plane and take as many with them as will listen. So in a way, you can say that we, the Krishnas, didn’t really have that much influence on the Beatles, other than just to remind them that we are all eternal spirits stuck here together in this material world on the journey back to our true home. “We’re on our way home…” The sound and the music came from within them, from their ears, through their ears and their brains and from their souls.

And just as Krishna devotees will be listening to our Radha Krishna Temple records forever, you can also say that “Get Back,” “My Sweet Lord,” all these Beatles songs will be playing in peoples’ hearts and heads forever and ever.

The Beatles were and they always will be the most vivid examples of musicians striving for transcendence, for going beyond and getting to the heart of our brief and rather comical existence in this material world. I would say that the Beatles and Krishna consciousness are both forever ideas, and they are somehow inextricably linked in this eternal dance of time.

I still have dinner with Ringo and Barbara, or with Olivia from time to time, when I’m in Los Angeles—and Paul sometimes pops by the London Krishna temple from his office just around the corner in Soho Square. But George…George and I were together right to the end of his life—and we still visit in my dreams, and sometimes, I swear, I hear him whispering, “Hare Krishna, Shyamasundar…What’s new?”

Hare Krishna!

Thank you very much.